Brantlinger
and his coworkers (2005) gives us a brief overview of the genre of qualitative
research. This article focuses on qualitative research of special education,
and the authors suggested that by giving voice to those participants who are
historically silenced or marginalized, this type of research aims at producing
evidence rather than creating universal prescriptions. And the evidence can be
transformed into and contribute to policy and practice.
As we
all know, there is no one-size-fit-all data collection and analysis method,
which is also stressed by the authors. This reminds me of a few qualitative
methods I have used in my research, such as interview and online questionnaire.
They were used in different papers and I found they have both strengths and weaknesses.
For example, I used online questionnaires in one of my papers, and this method
is very convenient and time-saving as I obtained sufficient data in a very
short time. However, the disadvantage is that among those questionnaires I
collected, there were lots of invalid ones because of participants
misunderstanding or other reasons. So, we can indicate that there are many possible
problems of each qualitative method which might result from defective design or
other external factors. Based on those problems, Brantlinger et. al. (2005)
listed some quality indicators for qualitative research to ensure that the
research can meet high standard, for example, appropriate settings and
researcher fitting into the sites in observations, which I think are helpful.
Another
important point mentioned in this article is about neutrality and objectivity. I
totally agree with the authors that the researchers should be explicit about
their personal position, perspectives and values rather than believing it is
possible to be completely neutral, distant and objective. As we discussed in
the last class, there is no perfect research. So, what the researchers are
supposed to do is to share every pertinent detail about themselves, the environment
and the background. In this article, the authors also mentioned some measures that
can increase validity and reliability in qualitative research, such as triangulation,
peer debriefing, member check and so on. I have used some of them while others are still new to me. I believe it is a good thing to use these techniques in my future research to ensure the validity and credibility.
Hi Yuxi!
ReplyDeleteI tried to post my comment, doesn’t look like it worked. So I’m posting again. Apologies if you see a similar comment twice!
A couple of thoughts came to kind reading your post.
I had a similar experience with online questionnaires, where the participant maybe misinterpreted the question (or perhaps my question wasn’t clear enough). In my personal experience, I ended up looping back with the participant to gain clarity. In my case the participant wasn’t anonymous, but I assume there could be a mechanism in place to loop back with someone anonymously. Thinking this approach would be consistent with validation as described by the author of this article. In the article I read, the researcher used a similar validation approach (for interviews) where he synthesized the interviews and looped back with the participant to make sure he understood correctly. Validating the results and explaining the approach is the transparent approach, and can therefore be critiqued effectively.
Another point you raised which stopped me is how a researcher should be explicit about their personal position. I wonder how would a researcher go about reflecting their position in a research paper appropriately, without coming across as biased.
Thanks for the detailed summary. Concerning validity and objectivity, as we discussed in last week's tutorial, there is no absolute objectivity in social science and every research is biased to some extent. As a researcher, we can to our best abilities justify the methodological choice we make in each case.
ReplyDeleteHi Yuxi! I really liked your personal comments about the article you read, together with the most important aspects mentioned by the authors. It is interesting to notice that no research method is perfect, but at the same time, there are ways of overcoming weaknesses to pursue more unbiased and effective results.
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