Hi Lyn and everyone
I have increasingly found myself having to do this sort of thing on an
impromptu basis - I'm teaching NUDIST to a variety of students at the minute
and more and more often I find that they have not in fact had any prior
instruction in qualitative research - and of course the software is so
inextricably linked with qualitative research as a whole that as soon as you
get past importing documents (or even before) the whole thing grinds to a
halt and the eyes start glazing over.
So I find myself doing a whistlestop tour of what qual is - why it evolved -
how it's different from quant - why there isn't a significance value
(???!!!) - the different methods involved - how long it takes to transcribe
an interview (recommendation: always tell people this, they really don't
know) - do's and don'ts. It really helps the class, but I am delighted to
hear that I'm not the only one trying to do this!
This is certainly not a criticism of my students who are genuinely
interested in the stuff, but it does make it difficult to understand the
purpose of what they're learning. I have also emphasised to them, however,
that if they decide to do a qualitative dissertation they should contact me
or another member of staff for more intensive work.
Ideally, qualitative research is better taught over a longer period of time
to allow for reading, thought, discussion, and practice (especially for
in-depth interviews, role-playing invaluable), but there's no point in
letting people flounder along trying to make sense of the software out of
context. With the growth of taught/vocational post-graduate degrees
(thinking of taught Masters here) this is becoming a common problem that
needs to be addressed if the 'quality of qualitative research' (sorry Clive
couldn't resist) is not to suffer.
Well as normal that's my rant over - ranty rant rant rant
PS - David Silverman gave a seminar in Trinity College here on how there is
too much emphasis on the one-to-one interview in qual research, wondering if
anyone went to it and what did they think?
Sarah Delaney
Research Officer
Health Services Research Centre
Department of Psychology
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
The Mercer Building
Mercer Street Lower
Dublin 2
00-353-1-4022121
[log in to unmask]
> ----------
> From: Lyn Richards
> Reply To: qual-software
> Sent: Monday, October 22, 2001 1:58 am
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Handling qualitative data - new course(s)
>
> Please don't press reply if you want to find out about this course.
> Details
> are at www.acenet.com.au/~patb - enquiries to [log in to unmask]
>
> I'm teaching a two-day interactive course on **handling** qualitative
> data,
> next month, in Sydney. Not on any software, rather on why you would be
> wanting to do this and what to do with qualitative data if you get some.
>
> I'm well aware that this is a highly controversial thing to do in two days
> -
> I too used to teach a year on QDA! But I'm responding to the rapidly
> growing
> number of researchers confronted by qualitative records and equipped with
> a
> software package but no prior research training. The course is aiming to
> offer a sense that this sort of data can be handled, a guide to the
> challenges and an introduction to some of the techniques for data access
> and
> interpretation used across the many methods, and where to go to read about
> those methods. The aim is that the researcher who otherwise comes to such
> data with no background and growing challenges from research design
> onwards
> should be able to approach the design stage and the learning of software
> with a sense of what they are trying to do, and why in this context, with
> this research problem, they would be trying to do that.
>
> I'd be interested to hear from listmembers about this approach - and what
> they'd look for, or try to fit in, such a course!
>
> (And if you're in the right hemisphere and want to join in, the course is
> 16-17th November, at Pat Bazeley's Research Farm, at Bowral, just south of
> Sydney, NSW. Pat has an NVivo workshop in the following week. Apologies
> for
> cross-posting.)
>
> cheers
> Lyn
>
> Lyn Richards,
> Director, Research Services, QSR.
> (Email) [log in to unmask]
> Please note QSR's new contact details from July 6th!
> (Ph) +61 (03) 9840-1100. (Fax) +61 (03) 9840-1500
> (Snail) Second floor, 651 Doncaster Rd.,
> Doncaster, Vic 3108, Australia.
> http://www.qsrinternational.com.
>
>
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