Hi Danielle,
You need to go back to your research questions as a guide to choosing the appropriate methodology - you seem to be going through the process backwards here :). What exactly are you trying to get from your data? I assume you are conducting interviews? For instance, if you wanted to look at the constructions of language you would use discourse analysis, if you want to look at people's stories of health-seeking you would use narrative analysis, etc. I think the best thing is to sit down and think in detail about what you want to get from your analysis. If you are totally unfamiliar with qual. analysis, thematic tends to be more "straight forward" if you are looking at themes occurring in the data across your 6 participants - once you have decided you can then investigate the epistemology underlying the methodology. The epistemology is very important as it does impact the types of conclusions you can have in qual. work. Hope this helps!
Best,
Jennifer
>>> danielle oliver 22/05/11 5:48 PM >>>
Hi all,
I would be very grateful if someone could help me with figuring out my epistemology for my qualitative MSc dissertation. The concept of stating my epistemology is very new to me and it's tying me up in knots. The more I read, the more confused I am.
A dummies guide i.e. someone to go through it with me in simple terms, would be great - especially since I need to submit it in a month.
So my project is on help-seeking behaviour of BME ex-offenders for mental health difficulties. I am going to use thematic analysis. I am aiming for a sample of 6. Questions are about their experiences of help-seeking or not help-seeking and their attitudes towards this and mh services and any cultural/political/systemic influences. They have commented on personal experiences and experiences of acquaintances, family etc. They have talked about their experiences of mental health difficulties and things such as racism, stigma etc as well as attitudes towards staff and helpfulness of services.
I have been reading about IPA and don't think that it's that but then I read about constructionism and think it might be that - I think in reality it's somewhere between the two! But I am not really sure.
I would be eternally grateful if someone could help me unpick this as I need to hand it in soon and the way I write up will be effected by the epistemology that I state I am using. Also, I think that if it is phenomenological, then I can't use thematic analysis - is that right?
Thank you
Confused!
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