When qualitative research gives you options...
Hello Qualitative Mind,
March has been extremely busy for Quali Q and has included a bit of everything – from proposal writing to data analysis and reporting. The proposal writing was an enriching experience because I had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with two qualitative scholars that I highly respect. During the process, I decided I wanted to share some of the discussions we had with you. Choosing our study design was so interesting and I knew you would gain something from my experience with this!
When I was first approached to work on the project, the team working on the proposal was considering doing ethnography or grounded theory for the qualitative phase in a mixed methods study. As I read the draft proposal for the first time, I didn’t think grounded theory was appropriate given the objectives, methods of data collection and timelines of the study. But, within the field of ethnography, I thought we could do either focused or institutional ethnography (I also thought of qualitative description with ethnographic hues). It seemed like we had many options but I needed help to think through them. And so I proposed institutional ethnography (IE) to the team, and immediately invited someone on board with expertise in IE.
With my superficial knowledge of IE, I was certain the qualitative study was a perfect fit for that qualitative approach. Yet, when my colleague who has a lot more experience in IE read the proposal, they flagged a number of things including proposal title, research questions and objectives that didn’t align with IE…the things you don’t know you don’t know until you learn them. In addition, as a team we discussed that the proposal was being written for an organization where most members/reviewers would have limited knowledge of qualitative methods; therefore, we had to be very careful not to use many methodological jargons in our writing.
So, in light of all of that, we discussed how to move forward with our application. We had options but needed to consider the methodological consequences of those options, and how to keep the congruence between study title, objectives and design in our proposal. Given the audience for the proposed study, the topic being studied and our overall purpose, we decided to move forward proposing a qualitative study informed by IE. We didn’t think we were well-positioned to propose a full on IE; however, there were elements of that methodology that we really wanted to employ. As such, we worked on aligning the title and qualitative objectives with what we were proposing for the qualitative phase of the project. The final version of the proposal was well-rounded and a result of true collaborative work (March madness was real for all of us so everyone contributed as much as they could).
I felt compelled to share the discussions around this study design because I know many of you find yourselves torn between the options you have for your own qualitative research. I want you to see, through the example I presented here, that it’s not about being right or wrong or choosing the right approach. The key is to align different elements of your research and, consequently, writing when you choose A versus B.
Talk soon,
Maira