Rubin & Babbie parallel material. This presentation covers Chapter 19 course material related to Qualitative Research Methods. Use this presentation as a supplemental source of information for both your Chapter 19&20 Review Assignment and your upcoming Week 7 Quiz.

1. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
Chapter 19
Qualitative Research:
Specific Methods
PowerPoint presentation developed by:
E. Roberto Orellana & Lin Fang

2. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
Overview
Preparing for the Field
The Various Roles of the Observer
Relations to Participants: Emic and Etic
Perspectives
Qualitative Interviewing
Focus Groups
Life History
Feminist Methods
Recording Observations

3. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
Preparing for the Field
Search of relevant literature
Use key informants
Discuss the group/community with others who
have already studied it
Discuss the group with one of its members
Establish initial contacts with the group to be
studied

4. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
The Various Roles of the Observer
Four different positions on a continuum of
participant observation roles are:
− Complete participant
− Participant-as-observer
− Observer-as-participant
− Complete observer

5. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
The Various Roles of the Observer
A complete participant may either be a
genuine participant in what she is studying or
pretend to be a genuine participant. People will
see her only as a participant, not as a
researcher
A participant-as-observer would participate
fully with the group under study, but would
make it clear that he is also undertaking
research

6. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
The Various Roles of the Observer
The observer-as-participant is one who
identifies herself as a researcher and interacts
with the participants in the social process but
makes no pretense of actually being a
participant
The complete observer observes a social
process without becoming a part of it in any
way. The participants in a study might not
realize they are being studied because of the
researcher’s unobtrusiveness

7. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
Relations to Participants:
Emic and Etic Perspectives
Qualitative researchers should learn how to
simultaneously hold two contradictory
perspectives:
Trying to adopt the beliefs, attitudes, and other
points of view shared by the members of the
culture being studied (the emic perspective)
Maintaining objectivity as an outsider and raising
questions about the culture being observed that
wouldn’t occur to members of that culture (the etic
perspective)

8. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
Qualitative Interviewing
Qualitative researchers often engage in in-depth
interviews with the participants, interviews that are far
less structured than interviews conducted in survey
research
Qualitative interviewing tends to be open-ended and
unstructured. Three forms of qualitative, open-ended
interviewing are:
1. The informal conversational interview
2. The general interview guide approach
3. The standardized open-ended interview

9. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
Qualitative Interviewing
An informal conversational interview is an unplanned
and unanticipated interaction between an interviewer
and a respondent that occurs naturally during the course
of fieldwork observation
With the interview guide approach to qualitative
interviewing, an interview guide lists in outline form the
topics and issues that an interviewer should cover in the
interview, but it allows the interviewer to adapt the
sequencing and wording of questions to each particular
interview

10. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
Qualitative Interviewing
The standardized open-ended interview
consists of questions that are written out in
advance exactly the way they are to be asked
in the interview. Probes are to be limited to
where they are indicated on the interview
schedule

11. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
Focus Groups
To conduct a focus group, researchers bring
participants together to be observed and
interviewed as group
Focus groups are based on structured,
semistructured, or unstructured interviews.
They allow the researcher to question several
individuals systematically and simultaneously

12. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
Focus Groups
Focus groups offer several advantages:
Inexpensive
Generate speedy results
Offer flexibility for probing
The group dynamics that occur in focus
groups can bring out aspects of the topic that
the researchers may not have anticipated and
that may not have emerged in individual
interviews

13. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
Focus Groups
Focus groups however, also have disadvantages:
Questionable representativeness of
participants
The influence of group dynamics to pressure
people to say things that do not accurately
reflect what they really believe or do
The difficulty in analyzing the voluminous data
generated

14. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
Life History
Life histories or life stories involve asking
open-ended questions to discover how the
participants in a study understand the
significant events and meaning in their own
lives. AKA: Oral history interviews
Because life histories provide idiographic
examinations of individuals’ lives, they can be
viewed within the case study paradigm

15. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
Feminist Methods
Many studies using feminist methods to generate
findings that can be used to improve the well-
being of women in an historically male-dominated
society
Feminist studies use both quantitative and
qualitative methods. However, qualitative
methods are used more commonly, as they can
employ features that attempt to let the voices of
women be heard from their own point of view

16. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
Recording Observations
Tape recorders are powerful tools for
qualitative interviewing. It ensures verbatim
recording and frees interviewers to keep their
full attention focused on the respondents
The field journal is the backbone of qualitative
research, because that is where the
researcher records the observations. Journal
entries should be detailed, yet concise.

17. ©2011, Brooks/Cole Publishing, A
Division of Cengage Learning, Inc.
Recording Observations
Note-taking in qualitative research should include
both the investigator’s empirical observations and
the investigator’s interpretations of them. You
should record what you “know” has happened and
what you “think” has happened.
If, possible observations should be recorded as
they are made; otherwise, they should be
recorded in stages and as soon as possible. Don’t
trust your memory any more than you have to.