I found some of the articles from the qualitative research report to be very useful in enhancing my understanding about qualitative research. For example, today there was an article that caught my attention as it was entitled 'From the Outside Looking In: How an Awareness of Difference Can Benefit in the Qualitative Research Process'. This paper problematised the insider/outsider dictohotomy and, in particular, some common criticisms of outsider research. It is argued that we are all insiders and outsiders to varying extents in every research setting. The issue is that notions of insiders and outsiders essentialise categories and therefore overlook important issues. There are inherent advantages and disadvantages with each approach. For instance, while an interviewee may be more comfortable to divulge information to an insider because they have similar characteristics (eg. background), an insider may take some things for granted and therefore neglect or overlook issues that an outsider would question. On the other hand, interviewees may not feel at ease speaking to an outsider.
The researcher's closeness to the subject of investigation may 'blunt' their criticality, causing them to overlook and take for granted aspects that appear familiar (Tinker and Armstrong, 2008). Closeness may hinder the researcher's ability to be rigorous in their analysis. The is akin to the notion of reflexivity. However, these potential biases may be conscious or subconscious. Tinker and Armstrong (2008, pg. 58) argue that being an outsider may be more advantagous than previously thought as "being on the outside looking in can provide a valuable sense of distance, which can allow the researcher an insight into other people's social worlds".
On the issue of subject/object, subjective/objective, for some types of research there is increasing blurring and fusion between these concepts. That is, they abandon notions of dualisms - such as ANT. I have found some really relevant articles within my disciplinary area about issues that I have been thinking about mor my research. Specifically, Ahrens (2008) in AOS is called 'Overcoming the Subjective-Objective Divide in Interpretive Management Accounting Research'.
I was reading the Qualitative Research Report and followed some of the links to other resources, which transported me to a paper called 'Qualitative Research: Validity and Reliability'. This is exactly something I was thinking about; my presumption was that in qualitative research there still exists the idea of reliability and validity, even though it is done differently and this is not what it is called. The article I read basically argued that the issue of reliability and validity in qualitative research is intertwined with the definitions of qualitative research. Contrary to scholars that claim that quantitative research is not as valid and reliable as quantitative research, this essay argued that it is possible for qualitative research to be properly valid and reliable by taking into consideration the qualitative criteria in social research including in its design and methods. This is a social research debate given that it is grounded in social theory.
A point that struck my attention in relation to qualitative research is that the inherent difficulty and diagreement comes about because we are trying to find answers about a subject matter that is in slow motion, however continuously changing. That is, we are trying to identify and observe a moving target: the social world. This issue is particularly acute in interpretive research. Interpretive qual seeks to interpret a socially constructed reality and given that perceptions and meanings play a crucial role, there may be multiple realities, not one concrete reality. It could be argued that qual and quant constitute different approaches to social investigation.
Qualitative validity has to do with the association between data and conclusion. What valid conclusions can one draw from the data that you have? It is claimed that to achieve validity in qualitative research, you need to reduce the gap between reality and representation; the more the data and conclusion are correspondent the more a piece of qualitative research is valid. Validity in qualitative research concerns the relationship between the data and the construct, the findings and the conclusion.
With reliability I think of consistency. Internal reliability may refer to a case in which more than one observer agree to what is seen and heard. External reliability refers to the degree to whcih the study can be replicated. Analogous to my thinking, this paper states that reliability refers to "the degree of consistency with which instances are assigned to the same category by different observers or by the same observers on different occasions" (Hammersley, 1992, pg. 67). Also, reliability may refer to "the degree to which the finding is independent of accidental circumstances in the research" (Kirk and Miller, 1986, pg. 20). To record the observations consistently is to have a reliable method. Reliability relates to the extent to which the concepts used appropriately describe what they ought to describe.
I am realizing the benefits of having both a qualitative and quantitative mindset. In qualitative research when you are looking for relationships between the concepts, this is like quantitative research when you are testing the structual model and path coefficients. In the first stage of coding qualitative data (when you are doing your open coding) you are breaking down your data into discrete parts to produce concepts, labelling data with concepts into categories based on similarities. This is analogous to quantitative research where the individual items in your survey instrument measuring a particular construct are the concepts in qual and the category in qual is the construct in quant.
When collecting qualitative data and trying to make sense of it to form meaningful conclusions, prediction is important. In terms of prediction in qualitative research, it is a softer prediction compared to quantitative research because you are not necessarily stipulating specific variables and predicting the nature/direction between them. Rather, your soft prediction is based on the theory that you use to provide a unique language and tools for how you explain the underlying processes behind the observed phenomena.
These are all issues that I hope to address in our qualitative research project.
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