Harriet, Sarah and all,
These recent and emerging discussions ring a lot of bells for me. I am a
nurse and have been conducting qualitative research and am currently writing
up my PhD thesis. Many of the things mentioned have been close to my own
experience. Things liking writing a research proposal with an at best
half-understood concept of qualitative research and even less understanding
of the different methodological approaches. This was further complicated by
enormous concern that I had to 'sell' the proposal to potential funders so I
was caught astride the two camps of qualitative and quantitative and tried
to increase the numbers and fill out the proposal with quantitative-type
measures to supplement the methods. This resulted in me taking on much too
much work and realising some way along that my research was trying to be all
things to too many people.
Similarly with the issue of sampling. I knew the funders would be suspicious
if the word random was not included.... but then realising later just how
inappropriate such an approach was to my work.
As has been said, a lot of this is about a lack of education and
understanding of qualitative appraoches and theory whilst also having lived
and worked in a positivist-dominated society and workplace. Health journals
are enormously weighted towards quantitative research and indeed, within
mental health nursing especially, there is a strong lobby that is very
dismissive of anything other than randomised controlled trials. Which makes
it very difficult for those individuals making relatively tentative steps in
the world of research.
But I have also experienced difficulties in the qualitative world -
attending nurse-led ethnography conferences that were baffling and
mystifying rather than illuminating, largely due to a central body of people
who were almost arrogantly confident of their knowledge and made little
attempt to bring in new-comers. This was not just my experience as was
confirmed to me when I spoke up about it and found numerous other new
researchers thanking me for saying what they were thinking.
Having said that there are great exceptions, including this list.
So, thanks to those who help clarify and who encourage open deabte.
Alan Simpson
Brighton, UK.
>From: Harriet Meek <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: qual-software <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Haphazard sampling
>Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 10:15:50 -0600
>
>Thank you, Sarah!
>
>This most certainly is an international issue. And some of that
>preciousness you describe still exists. I don't know how many
>graduate students -- in many different fields -- who appear to have
>had no research training whatsoever. And there are different
>problems with some of them who have had some training -- they seem
>all bogged down in quantitative language (even if they have been
>exposed to some qualitative thinking). To my mind, this is
>particularly a difficulty with people who are primarily practitioners
>(social workers, teachers, nurses, etc.) and wish now to do some more
>formal research.
>
>This is related to another aspect that has to do with qualitative
>research being taken up (and partly developed by) folks who haven't
>traditionally been researchers and who aren't altogether confident
>about their researching capacities. I'm one of those. Qualitative
>methods are wonderfully suited for practice-oriented field like my
>own of social work, but the practitioners (who most need qual
>methods) tend to be very unsure of themselves in the research arena.
>Now that more of us are doing research, things are coming together
>more.
>
>I think of an example. A couple of years ago I was advising a
>student who was developing a very complex dissertation, looking at
>particular aspects of the experience of adults who have experienced
>sexual abuse as children. Much of her understanding of her subject
>came from her own clinical experience, working with patients, but she
>couldn't use this material directly because of ethical
>confidentiality requirements. We developed a sort of triangular
>model, looking at the topic from several different directions. She
>used her own experience to inform her research. She did a very very
>careful reread of several texts which This is proving very valuable
>and the dissertation is moving along beautifully. spoke in great
>detail about the experience she was investigating, identifying themes
>as they appeared and then subthemes, etc. until a pretty clear
>picture of the experience began to emerge. There were a couple of
>other aspects that escape me at the moment. We thought of it as
>shining a light from several directions on something partly hidden in
>a dark corner, rather like investigating something in a corner of
>grandmother's attic. But the student had to take exquisite care in
>preparing the proposal, selecting committee members, etc. because it
>hardly seemed straightforward to the powers-that-be. And although
>she read the research literature carefully and fully and found some
>work that helped, in the end, she really had to "invent" her
>methodology and in a way which allowed it to continue to evolve as
>she went. There was one point when she couldn't really see where she
>was going and it was my, and another advisor's support, that let her
>take a sort of flying leap which has proven useful. This had to do
>with the close reading of the texts and the emergence of themes and
>what on earth she would do with them once they emerged.
>
>Even after several years of doing my own research and advising on a
>good many dissertations and other projects, I am still not at all
>comfortable with the language of more formal researchers and very
>often I don't know what words to use to help me find someone who
>speaks about a methodology which might be useful, eg. this triangular
>sort of model I've been talking about. We finally did well enough
>with that one, but the difficulty remains each time I embark on a
>project. I don't think it is a matter of lack of exposure or
>training; it seems to have more to do with an affective connection or
>resonance. Fundamentally I am a practitioner and much of the
>research language simply doen't "connect" for me, so it seems almost
>meaningless other than in a very abstract way. I think we are seeing
>a good many new researchers who struggle with this problem (it is not
>just me!).
>
>Harriet
>--
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