The main objective of the paper is to present the characteristics and the fundamental principles of the computer assisted qualitative data analysis. The article also includes some examples of free CAQDAS, which are an alternative to the expensive version of this software. It is also the most important functions of the programs, which are obtained at the disposal of users interested in computer assisted qualitative data analysis. The paper is also intended to highlight the most important advantages of CAQDAS and present some of the limitations and potential problems which may result using the software.
PL
Głównym celem artykułu jest przedstawienie ogólnej charakterystyki oraz podstawowych zasad, na jakich funkcjonuje oprogramowanie CAQDAS1. W artykule zaprezentowano również kilka przykładowych i bezpłatnych programów z rodziny CAQDAS, które stanowią alternatywę dla odpłatnych wersji tego rodzaju oprogramowania. Wskazano także na najważniejsze funkcje opisywanych programów służących do wspomagania analizy danych jakościowych. Artykuł ma ponadto na celu podkreślenie najważniejszych zalet oprogramowania CAQDAS, ale też przedstawienie niektórych ograniczeń i ewentualnych problemów, jakie może powodować jego zastosowanie w badaniach jakościowych.
This contribution is a theoretical study of the figures of speech used by speakers during qualitative in-depth interviews. The aim of the text is, first, to explore the procedures and figures speakers use when narrating and, second, how such figures can be developed later in a specialist text or article. How memories are presented by the narrator and how it can be used by the researcher in a text, is the two main questions this article is about. Using the author’s own empirical material, fourteen figures of speech are described in detail, showing which figures may enhance the credibility of a high quality research report.
This paper analyses values in punk subculture. It defines the punk subculture as one of the natural environments of education and as such an important subject of Social Education. The use of the term ‘subculture’ in an age which is defined as ‘post-subculture’ is also discussed. The research is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with seven young members of the punk subculture. Creative values, social and environmental values, material values, and the value of fun. Finally, the study tries to uncover values which are partly hidden and ascribed to other subcultures.
The paper has 3 objectives: (i) identify QoL determinants of Russian Students; (ii) assess their relevance for decision-making when choosing life strategies; (iii) recognize their implications for academic teaching. The research sample were students from two Russian Universities. The study employed: literature analysis;exploratory research (direct individual in-depth interviews, survey based on a self-administered, web-based questionnaire with single-answer, limited choice qualitative & quantitative questions and gradings based on the Likert-type scale); explanatory research (informal moderated group discussions). The research findings show the relatively high significance of finance, career,stability, family, free time and other non-material QoL determinants. Research analysis reveals an inconsistency between respondents’ expectationsand their work-life balance, which imposes a question about decision-makingcriteria at an early stage of career planning and the role of tertiary educationin this process. Implications & Recommendations: (i) multicriteri decision-making processes, such as career planning, should comprise worklife balance; therefore both material and non-material QoL determinants should be incorporated into the analysis; (ii) as the role of Universities, beside educating, is also to guide and shape characters, Academia seems to be the right place for this task; (iii) therefore Universities should promote conscious lecturers as assistants to the process of identification of individual QoL determinants by their students. Contribution & Value Added: the research provides a fresh and improved perspective on quality of life and its determinants; it includes non-material QoL components and therefore brings qualitative determinants into economic research; it will provide data future comparisons; it comes from a research network linking European and Russian tertiary education institutions and University lecturers with intercultural teaching experience.
The article focuses on a method for collecting qualitative data. The method is the asynchronous email interview. The authors assess the advantages, challenges and best practices of the asynchronous email interview method. They base their assessment on the academic literature and their own experiences using this data collection method in qualitative research on women who had experienced perinatal loss. The asynchronous email interview will never fully replace traditional face-to-face interviews, but it could gain a solid position as a qualitative research method thanks to its unique benefits.
This paper explored the value of learner’s stories for ESL (English as a Second Language) teachers’ teaching and research through a narrative inquiry of the lived English learning experience of a first generation Canadian immigrant. It first reviewed the concept of narrative and the significance of launching narrative inquiry. Then, it presented an interview conducted with the Canadian immigrant as a model of narrative inquiry. Themes of the narrative interview were found to resonate with theoretical issues of SLE (Second Language Education), ESL and SLA (Second Language Acquisition). Considering the themes and the entire interviewing process, this paper closed with a discussion of the benefits of narrative inquiry for ESL teachers’ teaching and research.
Research on decision making has mainly been based on economic models that have tried to downplay the overall context of decision-making situations. When we look into the social influences on decision making we realize it is crucial that we bring the issue of context back into the spotlight. In the present paper we explore the methodological foundations of selected qualitative approaches for studying social influences on decision-making, focusing especially on their strengths and weaknesses. We conclude that this area has great potential for further research providing academic rigor is maintained when using qualitative methods.
An increased interest in qualitative research is connected with the revival of the discussion on reliability and credibility of research conducted by qualitative methods. The aim of the article is to present certain selected issues related to conducting qualitative research. Relatively common research methods used in this area are a case study and, well established in the literature on educational research, participatory action research. Other important methods are observations and interviews that are often used as a way of collecting qualitative data, which, supplemented by actual writing, are already recognized as research methods. Finally, the article describes problems of researcher’s positioning towards subjects and the social justice pedagogy based on the concept of service learning (learning in the service of society).
An increased interest in qualitative research is connected with the revival of the discussion on reliability and credibility of research conducted by qualitative methods. The aim of the article is to present certain selected issues related to conducting qualitative research. Relatively common research methods used in this area are a case study and, well established in the literature on educational research, participatory action research. Other important methods are observations and interviews that are often used as a way of collecting qualitative data, which, supplemented by actual writing, are already recognized as research methods. Finally, the article describes problems of researcher’s positioning towards subjects and the social justice pedagogy based on the concept of service learning (learning in the service of society).
viding sex services in escort agencies. Escort agencies, where women provide sex service to men, are a specific context of generating and maintaining masculinity. Individual and collective visits of men in escort agencies are an opportunity to develop and present their own vision of masculinity. It takes place both in the generally accessible space of the agency towards other visitors, and during the sex meeting, alone with a female sex worker. Based on interviews with escort agencies’ employees three types of masculinity presented by clients can be reconstructed: obvious masculinity, problematic masculinity (with following subtypes: uncertain, unfulfilled and denied) and non-masculinity. Every type relates to different expectations as to the course of the meeting, and with different manners of treating the female sex workers. The article is based on qualitative data (interviews and observations), collected during the research project regarding work situation of women in escort agencies.
The paper tackles issues related to selected both ethical and practical aspects of conducting research among persons with disabilities and their relatives that constitute a vulnerable social group. The author analyzes its consequences in the research process, discusses the significance of the research problem undertaken both for the development of academic knowledge and for research participants, and analyzes the conditions for obtaining informed consent. Limits of sociological interview and researcher’s engagement are also discussed.
The aim of this article is to shed light on diverse problems a researcher might encounter in the process of conducting field research on difficult phenomena which are often enough, resistant to immediate cognition. Drawing on specific experiences and research situations, in the context of data collection techniques applied during the study, the focus is here on the importance of self-reflection regarding one’s own research behaviour at every stage of developing a study. It is also indicated in this article that specific standards of conducting a research are often of no use when it comes to research practice, what a researcher refers to, dealing with specific dilemmas, back to his/her experience in the field work or one’s intuition. Therefore, with an eye to expedite research projects regarding difficult phenomena, reflections on methodological and ethical dilemmas – along with difficulties resulting from one’s bodily constraints – that emerged during the study regarding female prostitution within the universe of escort agencies are presented in this article.
Qualitative research is always about some form of intervention into the real world, however that intervention is always mediated by various material practices employed in the research process. This article engages with material practices accompanying research to discuss the ways in which they influence the research process, the observed and the observer. More specifically, this article attends to the use of video technology in qualitative research to reflect upon the material practices that not only make the world visible but also shed light on the research process through which such worlds become known. Reflections from research on institutions and institutional life are used to demonstrate points of interaction that transform the worlds of research and the worlds of everyday life.
Students’ free option power of learning is an important part of students’ power of learning. It emphasizes respect for students’ learning rights and freedom, so that students have a certain freedom of learning choice. In the theory and practice of Chinese higher education, undergraduates’ free option power of learning has long been weakened and restricted by various factors. This study provides an understanding of the current situation of undergraduates’ free option power of learning through 20 interviews with undergra duates from a university in Central China in a pilot project, whose purpose was to provide students with freedom in selecting higher education options. The interviews address three areas where students were given the option to select: (a) learning content, (b) learning processes, and (c) learning environments. Discussion follows on the problems experienced by Chinese undergraduates’ in the free option power of learning project. Lastly, as China hopes to expand this project beyond the pilot, we advance recommendations to promote effective implementation of the free option power of learning of Chinese undergraduates, such as: (a) establishing sound laws to ensure the effective implementation of the power of students; (b) empowering undergraduates to have more choice to choose and change their majors; (c) carrying out the flexible program duration to let students have free choice of getting credits; and (d) establishing a sound and perfect transfer mechanism to let students have more choice of universities.
The article describes the innovative method of qualitative research, Collective Biography Writing (CBW), which is not well known or not known at all in the pedagogical research of the region of Central and Eastern Europe. This method is especially useful in the re-exploration of issues connected with being, becoming, development, and learning in the context of education and pedagogical research. The article presents the theoretical foundations of the CBW method and its basis in the notions of being as emergent within the encounter, intra-action, entanglement of agencies, and the significance of matter. An outline of the scientific procedure is also presented.
These reflections tackle a specific understanding of researching everyday life, which presents itself as a methodological demand, i.e., as a constitutive element of the new forms of inquiry. Consequently, the discourses revolve around the specificity of the anthropology of everyday life, as seen from various angles entailing third wave of sociology, cultural anthropology, and symbolic interactionism. It also elaborates on the methodological issues encompassing idiographic, emic characteristics of a qualitative inquiry that with relation to everyday life can provide a useful and cognitively attractive tool of reconstructing the world of different cultural groups.
The paper discovers the presence of abduction in teachers’ activities and emphasises the role of trichotomous systems (abduction, deduction, induction) in discovering human reality. The paper focuses on the presence of abduction in education sciences research, and its main goal is to detect abduction in teaching activities and classroom interaction. Abduction is a type of reasoning requiring philosophical, logical, and psychological background, distinct from induction and deduction, and it contributes to a viewpoint in social research that strives to make research in human reality easier to understand. The qualitative study involved explores the presence of abduction in teachers’ communication based on unstructured observation. The observation was carried out in a primary school. The objects of observation were the Geography, Art, and PE classes of the same teacher. The data of the class observation were recorded verbatim. The records were processed using an inductive, data-driven method after the classes. The reliability of the process was ensured by intracoding. The results of the observations reflect the presence of abduction in classroom interaction. The results showed that abduction appeared in the Geography, Art, and PE classes observed, and every class witnessed right and wrong abductive conclusions. The paper is relevant to anybody interested in the appearance of abduction in education sciences research and aims at completing the arsenal of tools available for analysing teachers’ activities.
Family – as each social phenomenon – is for researchers a methodological challenge, which means answering the questions: How to investigate family? Which methods to use? And how to achieve research goals? Among many realized research projects in pedagogy, family sciences, sociology and social anthropology, the paper proposes application of qualitative research methodology in family studies based on constructivist assumptions. Benefits and cost of such research made through observation, interviews, documents analysis will be the subject of interest in the article based on a case study made by the author. The paper is not the whole analysis of qualitative research methods due to many textbooks and papers concerning such topics. The aim of the paper is to present possibilities of using qualitative methodology in family research.
Current psychological research is dominated by a quantitative approach, which may be deduced from the number of research papers published at home and abroad; this applies to the research into quality of life as well. What is more, research endeavours utilizing both research strategies in the area of quality of life are rare. The objective of the paper is to present results of psychological research from a different area, in which mixed methods were successfully implemented, and to suggest alternatives for their employment in research into quality of life. The objective was reached in two ways: a) by describing five different pieces of research which use "mixed methods" in their analysis of teaching process, and by offering alternatives of their use within research into quality of life, b) by presenting a brief description of a suggestion of how to apply "mixed methods" in research into quality of life, which is a result of the author´s own research in the given area.
In this paper, the author presents a pedagogical insight of conducting a detailed exploratory study through methodological departures within the subjective boundaries of a specific field. The work is based upon inferences drawn from the study of “queer” identities in an urban but inherently parochial setting of a postcolonial city – Kolkata. The paper attempts to map and chart the various aspects of conducting qualitative research in a relatively unexplored area, with rapidly evolving socio-cultural values and systems of identity formation. The paper charts out the experiences from the field, while dealing with both the apparent and the esoteric, with objective and empirical evidence to support the arguments presented herein.
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