Harriet!
Good to hear from you!
Sorry, list, will now say something erudite and relevant - yes I agree that
the qualitative community has struggled to form a separate identity (v.
psychotherapeutic/anthropological, man). At first I (due to relative
isolation) that this was mainly occurring in Ireland, where (at risk of
offending irish listers here) qualitative research has really been the poor
and inferior cousin of quant methods. Qual researchers has to compete for
limited funding with the established paradigm, and justify itself over and
over in terms of scientific value, validity, all the old chestnuts, even
today. It really is only in the last 5 years that things have begun to open
up. An example is the availability of training in qualitative software (all
you qual-soft listers have heard me wittering on about this before) in
Ireland. Almost (acknowledging the trainers that do exist - Catherine
Conlon, Trinners and UCD inviting Ann Lewins over) non-existent.
However, as I have gained more experience and met more people it is becoming
clear to me that this really is an international problem. I believe that
there are a number reasons behind this. First there was and still is an
element of 'preciousness' about the origins of qual, and the disciplines
involved. The Chicago School in Sociology and Anthropology in general
preserved an air of mystic, even myth about ethnography and how to do it.
Practical training in what this thing was and how the *** one, as a
student, was meant to go about was seen as almost taboo. Students were
expected to go on to post-graduate study and apprentice themselves to senior
people and pick it up - not really suitable to today's high pressure, high
output, audit oriented world.
This had the effect of creating a false division between the 'pure'
ethnographic tradition, and somehow 'polluted' (long live Mary Douglas)
techniques, such as narrative techniques, group approaches and even grounded
theory (not mentioned in my ug degree, sorry anyone who knows me!).
The other factor was the environment in which the young qualitative method
had to grow. Hostile, to say the least, and from the get go qual had form
an identity in opposition to, and therefore referential (and indeed
deferential) to the traditional positivist paradigm. This did not foster
the development of new concepts and a new language to describe the
fundamentally different concepts and purpose of the qualitative endeavour.
So perhaps it is time to look at where we stand now. At the 2000 QSR
conference, serious concerns about the quality of qualitative research, how
fragmented it was, how we coded too much, were raised. I feel that this
thread is part of the same concern. Is it time to consolidate our position?
I personally never felt very comfortable about using the term 'sampling' to
describe something that was not a poor relation of the ideal of random
sampling - but rather a fundamentally different process - a process of
selection, either self-selection, or intra group selection (aka 'snowball
sampling') or researcher-driven selection.
Jaysus, it's happening again - doors opening in me head while I have a
document to proof!
dear oh dear. Feedback most welcome....
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: Harriet Meek
> Reply To: qual-software
> Sent: Friday, November 23, 2001 2:41 pm
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Haphazard sampling
>
> Yes, Sarah. It makes an enormous amount of sense. I think we are
> seeing results of the growing pains of the qual field. And, thank
> you for reminding us that we might need a slightly deeper reply to
> this questions.
>
> Hope you are feeling better today and that you are finally getting
> used to a Mac!
>
> Harriet Meek
>
> >followed this thread with interest yesterday but was unwell so didn't
> >contribute - now here's my short but sweet contribution
> >
> >sometimes I wonder whether even using the term 'sampling' with all it's
> >connotations can be construed as attempting to 'live up' to a quant
> >standard, when really qual should be setting it's own. What does
> 'sampling'
> >mean? How relevant is it to the qual endeavour when it is so associated
> >with the positivistic tradition that you have explain for hours to
> someone
> >why qualitative sampling is different?
> >
> >does this make any sense?
> >
> >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]
>
> --
>
>
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