TYPES OF RESEARCH

DIFFERENT TYPES

Phenomenology

Ethnography

Grounded theory

Case study

Biography

PHENOMENOLOGY

The descriptive study of how individuals experience a phenomenon.

Foundational question:What is the meaning, structure, and essence of the livedexperience of this phenomenon by an individual or by manyindividuals?

RESEARCHER:

Gain access to:

Individual´s life worlds.

Experiences Conducts

Depth Interviews.

Searches:

Invariant structures. (Essence ofexperience)

Commonalities across individuals.

Should write a report:

Provides rich description.

“Vicarious experience“.

The discovery anddescription of theculture of a group ofpeople.

Foundationalquestion:

What are the culturalcharacteristics of thisgroup of people?

ETHNOGRAPHY RESEARCH

Culture:System of sharedbeliefs, values, practices, language, norms, rituals, andmaterial things that group members use to understand theirworld.

Micro cultures and Macro cultures.

Originates:Discipline of Anthropology. (Culturecentred)

ETHNOLOGY:

The comparative study of culturalgroups.

ETHNOHISTORY:

The study of the cultural past of agroup of people.

TYPES

OTHER TERMS:

Ethnocentrism (i.e., judging others based on your cultural standards).

Emic perspective (i.e., the insider's perspective)

Emic terms (i.e., specialized words used by people in a group).

Etic perspective (i.e., the external, social scientific view).

Etic terms (i.e., outsider's words or specialised wordsused by social scientists).

Going native (i.e., identifying so completely with thegroup being studied that you are unable to beobjective).

Holism (i.e., describing the group as a whole unit, inaddition to its parts and their interrelationships).

Report provides:

Rich Holistic description of the culture under study.

CASE STUDY

The detailed account and analysis of one or more cases.

Foundational question:

What are the characteristics of this single case or of these comparison cases?

A case is a bounded system (e.g., a person, a group, an activity, a process).

CLASIFICATION (According to Robert Stake)

Intrinsic case study(where the interest isonly in understandingthe particulars of thecase).

Instrumental casestudy (where theinterest is inunderstandingsomething more generalthan the case).

Collective case study(where interest is instudying and comparingmultiple cases in a singleresearch study).

Interviews.

Observation.

Documents.

Questionnaires.

Report provides:

a rich (i.e., vivid and detailed)and holistic (i.e., describes thewhole and its parts) descriptionof the case and its context.

Methods of Data Collection

GROUNDED THEORY

The fourth major approachto qualitative research.

the development ofinductive, "bottom-up,"theory that is "grounded"directly in the empirical data

Foundational question:

What theory or explanationemerges from an analysis ofthe data collected about thisphenomenon?

CARACTHERISTICS

Fit (i.e., Does the theory correspond to real-world data?),

Understanding (i.e., Is the theory clear andunderstandable?),

Generality (i.e., Is the theory abstract enough to movebeyond the specifics in the original research study?),

Control (i.e., Can the theory be applied to produce real-world results?).

The grounded theory process is "complete" whentheoretical saturation occurs (i.e., when no newconcepts are emerging from the data and the theoryis well validated).

Report provides:

Detailed and clear description of the grounded theory.

BIOGRAPHY

A study of a single individual and his or her experiencesas told to the researcher or as found in the documents and archival materials (Denzin, 1989). Broadly include biographies, autobiographies, life histories, and oral histories. The researcher investigates the life of one individual, often collecting data primarily through interviews and documents of many types (e.g., diaries, family histories