Introduction: The Discipline and Practice of Qualitative Research (paper)

Notes from Handbook of Qualitative Research - Ch. 1

On the previous post, and with the remaining questions on my 'Research Quest' I found myself spiraling into eddies of repetition. So I am leaving those important questions (on ethics and aporia) to have a quick look at what form my research may take. To this end I am having a quick look at Denzin and Lincoln's third edition of their Handbook of Qualitative Research (2005). I have not read any of this text since the first edition - which I used to guide earlier inquiries. I think this text will be useful for me now for finding some possibilities for the for of my inquiry and giving me something further to ponder and pursue. I expect in this process I will be able to do more justice to the questions from Roy and Bevis that I have left unanswered. I know what follows is very general - but that is where I am most comfortable and, I think, where I need to be.

Three interconnected, generic activities define the qualitative research process. They go by a variety of different labels, including theory, analysis, ontology, epistemology, and methodology. Behind these terms stands the personal biography of the researcher, who speaks from a particular class, gender, racial, cultural, and ethnic community perspective. The gendered, multiculturally situated researcher approaches the world with a set of ideas, a framework (theory, ontology) that specifies a set of questions (epistemology) that he or she then examines in specific ways. (methodology, analysis). (p. 21)

Well that is good news - looks like I am on the right track. It is pretty clear where I am headed for the first of these, though the other two have less clarity. The reason for the muddiness here is partially because it is the nature of the beast and, I reckon, mostly because I have not given it enough thought.


Interpretive Paradigms

The net that contains the researcher's epistemological, ontological, and methodological premises may be termed a paradigm. (p.22)

Three broad categories for paradigms according to the handbook:

Positivist / postpositivist

They work from a realist and critical realist ontology and objective epistemologies, and they rely on experimental, quasiexperimental, survey, and rigorously defined qualitative methodologies. (p. 24)

Constructivist

The constructivist paradigm assumes a relativist ontology (there are multiple realities), a subjectivist epistemology (knower and responder cocreate understandings), and a naturalistic (in the natural world) set of methodological procedures. Findings are usually presented in terms of grounded theory or pattern theories... ...Terms such as credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability replace the usual positivist criteria of internal and external validity, reliability, and objectivity. (p. 24)

Feminist, ethnic, Marxist, cultural studies, and queer theory models

...privilege a materialist-realist ontology; that is the real world makes a material difference in terms of race, class, and gender. Subjectivist epistemologies and naturalistic methodologies (usually ethnographies) are employed. Empirical materials and theoretical arguments are evaluated in terms of their emancipatory implications.(p.24)

On first glance, the second option is the most attractive and if I had to pick one paradigm to inhabit I think that this would be the one. However, I think the other two have value for me and can have value for my inquiry - even if it is in the 'keeping it real' category. There is something about this way of organising paradigms that I am not entirely comfortable with. I think that I will end up skipping between these - playfully?


Strategies of inquiry

A research design situates the researcher in the world and... also specifies how the researcher will address the two critical issues of representation and legitimation.

A strategy of inquiry comprises a bundle of skills, assumptions, and practices that the researcher employs as he or she moves from paradigm to the empirical world. Strategies of inquiry put paradigms of interpretation into motion. At the same time, strategies of inquiry also connect the researcher to specific methods of collecting and analyzing empirical materials...

...These strategies include the case study, phenomenological and ethnomethodological techniques, and the use of grounded theory, as well as biographical, autoethnographic, historical, action, and clinical methods. (p. 26)

I am starting to have more questions - which is great. Even though I know there are many ways to form research, this brief summary has helped. I would still like it to be the case that I can weave together strategies as they become appropriate. I wonder how I can do this? I think I can... but how?

Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S. (Ed) (2005) The SAGE handbook of qualitative research 3rd Edition, Sage Publications, California, USA.