Ch.17 Test Bank Answers - The Nature Of Qualitative Research

Chapter 17 - The nature of qualitative research

Test Bank

Type: true-false

Title: Chapter 17 - Question 01

01) Qualitative research takes a deductive view of the relationship between theory and research, where the latter is tested by the former.

a. True

b. False

an inductive view of the relationship between theory and research, whereby the former is generated out of the latter.

Type: true-false

Title: Chapter 17 - Question 02

02) The epistemological position of qualitative research could be best described as interpretivist

a. True

b. False

Type: true-false

Title: Chapter 17 - Question 03

03) The ontological position of qualitative research could be best described as objectivist

a. True

b. False

• an inductive view of the relationship between theory and research, whereby the former is generated out of the latter;
• an epistemological position described as interpretivist, meaning that, in contrast to the adoption of a natural scientific model in quantitative research, the stress is on the understanding of the social world through an examination of the interpretation of that world by its participants;
• an ontological position described as constructionist, which implies that social properties are outcomes of the interactions between individuals, rather than phenomena ‘out there’ and separate from those involved in their construction.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 17 - Question 04

04) Which of the following is not a main research method associated with qualitative research?

Ethnography/participant observation. While some caution is advisable in treating ethnography and participant observation as synonyms, they refer to similar approaches to data collection in which the researcher is immersed in a social setting for some time in order to observe and listen with a view to gaining an appreciation of the culture of a social group. These methods have been used in Dalton’s (1959) study of managerial work in the USA and Lupton’s (1963) exploration of shopfloor factory life and restriction of output in England.

• Qualitative interviewing. This is a very broad term to describe a wide range of interviewing styles (see Key concept 9.2 for an introduction). Moreover, qualitative researchers employing ethnography or participant observation typically engage in a substantial amount of qualitative interviewing.
•  Focus groups (see Key concept 9.2).
•  Language-based approaches to the collection of qualitative data, such as discourse and conversation analysis. The collection and qualitative analysis of texts and documents.

a. Ethnography

b. Focus groups

c. Content analysis

d. Qualitative interviewing

Type: true-false

Title: Chapter 17 - Question 05

05) In inductive research, theory tends to be tested rather than developed.

a. True

b. False

Type: multiple response question

Title: Chapter 17 - Question 06

06) Which of the following are the main steps in qualitative research? Please select all that apply.

Step 1. General research questions (see Thinking deeply 17.3). Ladge et al.’s (2012) study focused on how professional women in pregnancy experience identity changes. Their theoretical interest, as they explain, ‘is in understanding how a life-altering change in an individual’s nonwork self often instigates a need to reorient his/her work identity’ (Ladge et al. 2012: 1450). They therefore chose to focus on professional women who were in the early stages of their first pregnancy, asserting that these women start to explore and enact the identity of motherhood long before the child is born. Through this, Ladge et al. (2012) make a theoretical contribution to understanding how work and nonwork identities coevolve in ‘liminal periods’, when identity is in flux. Drawing on the identity literature, they assume that this liminal period will be characterised by ‘feelings of ambiguity, openness, disorientation, self- questioning and indeterminacy’ (Ladge et al. 2012: 1451), as women are no longer fully connected to their old professional identity and are anticipating a new identity where they will be mothers and professionals. This led the researchers towards the development of their research goal which was to ‘study women’s experiences of the liminal period of pregnancy as they develop their new maternal identity and begin reconstructing their professional identity in light of impending motherhood’ (Ladge et al. 2012: 1453). A set of general questions including ‘How do women manage their work identity while pregnant?’ guided the research, ‘but as we moved through the data, we were open to making adjustments to these questions ... based on our own interpretations of the data and the interpretations of respondents’ (Ladge et al. 2012: 1455).

Step 2. Selecting relevant site(s) and subjects. The first stage of the project involved a pilot study of ten inter- views with pregnant women who were either pregnant with their first child or within six months of having given birth to their first child. Interviewees had a minimum of three years’ professional experience and were planning on returning to work after their maternity leave.

Step 3. Collection of relevant data. The researchers justify their choice of qualitative research methods as a response to calls from work-life scholars for more research that explores the lived experience of participants, their choice of semi-structured interview methods enabling the exploration of women’s work experience while pregnant. Interviews were between

60- and 90-minutes’ duration and were taped and transcribed verbatim.

Step4. Interpretation of data. Ladge et al. describe their study as based on a grounded theory approach. The process of analysis began by developing a set of codes that emerged inductively from the interviews. The three researchers worked together to develop shared agreement on these codes, each coding a subset of the transcripts independently and then meeting up to compare and consolidate, returning to the literature and then recoding. Following techniques developed by Strauss and Corbin (1990), they went through several cycles of this process. Eventually, ‘after coding 29 interviews, we felt we had reached the point of theoretical saturation because no new codes were being generated’ (Ladge, et al., 2012: 1456).

Step 5. Conceptual and theoretical work. Consistent with their grounded theory approach, Ladge et al. describe their goal as to expand knowledge about liminal periods and to build new theory about identity transitions. The researchers therefore develop a theoretical model (in the form of a detailed flow diagram) to illustrate the experiences of identity transitions in liminal periods. In this model, pregnancy is labelled as a ‘triggering event’ that evokes identity uncertainty. The emphasis in this model is on explaining the process of identity transition as it unfolds in the liminal period.

Step 5a. Tighter specification of the research question(s), and Step 5b. Collection of further data. Having done the pilot study, Ladge et al. refined their definition of the population being studied, their theoretical frame, and the questions that comprised the interview protocol. The extent of these changes illustrates the extent to which qualitative researchers are flexible in their approach to study, changing direction in the course of the investigation, a point which we will return to later in this chapter. They explain: ‘we learned from the pilot study that we needed to focus on a precise segment of working women ... Thus, we decided to focus our attention on women who had at least three years professional experience’. The women in this second sample held a variety of professional occupations, including manager, lawyer, and college professor. Through analysis of the interview transcripts from the pilot study, the researchers returned to the literature on identity transitions ‘and recognized that pregnancy represents a liminal space. Thus, we modified our full study to focus exclusively on pregnant women, excluding those who had given birth’ (Ladge et al. 2012: 1453–1454). They then interviewed a further 25 women based on these refined sampling criteria. A snowball sampling technique was used to identify participants in the main study. Initially this involved publicising the study via University alumni and professional networks. Although they do not make this explicit, all of the interviews appear to have been conducted in the United States, where the three researchers are based. Ladge et al. give much more detail about the interview questions they asked in the main study than they do for the pilot. Questions covered three main themes. The first set asked participants to share thoughts and ideals related to work and pregnancy in light of their back- grounds—an example would be ‘What aspects of your youth and history have formulated your views of motherhood?’ A second set probed women’s experiences of pregnancy and work, e.g. ‘Tell the story about when you first found out that you were pregnant’. A third group of questions explored women’s specific experiences in the workplace related to their pregnancy and their strategies for managing pregnancy in the work- place. Such a strategy is frequently referred to as iterative: the stages of data collection and analysis take place in parallel, as initial stages of data collection and analysis are used to refine subsequent phases of data collection and analysis.

Step 6. Writing up findings/conclusions. There is no real difference between the significance of writing up in quantitative research and qualitative research, so that exactly the same points made in relation to Step 11 in Figure 7.1 apply here. An audience has to be convinced about the credibility and significance of the interpretations offered. Researchers are not and cannot be simply conduits for the things they see and the words they hear. The salience of what researchers have seen and heard has to be impressed on the audience. Ladge et al. do this by making clear the theoretical and practical implications of their study. They also suggest how the findings from this study may be generalizable to other situations where a future nonwork role has an impact on one’s work role, such as when a manager finds himself with responsibilities to care for an aging parent. The practical implications arising from the study relate to the role of organizations in more proactively supporting women during pregnancy, ‘as they wrestle with conceptualizing possible selves’ (Ladge et al. 2012: 1467), rather than providing work-life support for working mothers when they return to work after the baby is born.

a. General research questions

b. Analysis of variance

c. Interpretation of data

d. Construction of hypothesis

Type: true-false

Title: Chapter 17 - Question 07

07) Blumer’s (1954) idea of “sensitising concepts” argued for the use of a definitive concept in social research

a. True

b. False

Type: true-false

Title: Chapter 17 - Question 08

08) The terms “reliability” and “validity” have no relevance to qualitative research, they are more applicable to quantitative research.

a. True

b. False

However, there has been discussion among qualitative researchers concerning the relevance of reliability and validity for qualitative research. Even writers who do take the view that the criteria are relevant have considered the possibility that the meanings of the terms need to be altered. For example, the issue of measurement validity almost by definition seems to carry connotations of measurement. Since measurement is not a major preoccupation among qualitative researchers, the issue of validity would seem to have little bearing on such studies. As foreshadowed briefly in Chapter 3, a number of stances have been taken by qualitative researchers in relation to these issues.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 17 - Question 09

09) Which of the following is not a criterion typically associated with the term “trustworthiness”?

• credibility, which parallels internal validity;
• transferability, which parallels external validity;
• dependability, which parallels reliability;
• confirmability, which parallels objectivity.

a. Credibility

b. Dependability

c. Confirmability

d. Adaptability

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 17 - Question 10

10) Which if the following is not associated with interpretivism?

Section Reference: 17.6 The main preoccupations of qualitative researchers

a. Symbolic interactionism

b. Verstehen

c. Critical realism

d. Phenomenology

Type: true-false

Title: Chapter 17 - Question 11

11) A key preoccupation in qualitative research is seeing the world through the eyes of the researcher.

a. True

b. False

Section Reference: 17.6 The main preoccupations of qualitative researchers

Type: true-false

Title: Chapter 17 - Question 12

12) In qualitative research there is a strong emphasis upon social life in terms of processes.

a. True

Section Reference: 17.6 The main preoccupations of qualitative researchers

b. False

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 17 - Question 13

13) Which of the following is not a critique of qualitative research?

Qualitative research is too subjective

Quantitative researchers sometimes criticize qualitative research as being too impressionistic and subjective. By these criticisms they usually mean that qualitative findings rely too much on the researcher’s often unsystematic views about what is significant and important, and also upon the close personal relationships that the researcher frequently strikes up with the people studied. Precisely because qualitative research often begins in a relatively open-ended way and entails a gradual narrowing-down of research questions or problems, the consumer of the writings deriving from the research is given few clues as to why one area was the chosen area upon which attention was focused rather than another. By contrast, quantitative researchers point to the tendency for the problem formulation stage in their work to be more explicitly stated in terms of such matters as the existing literature on that topic and key theoretical ideas.

Difficult to replicate

Quantitative researchers also often argue that these tendencies are made more problematic because of the difficulty of replicating a qualitative study, although replication is by no means a straightforward matter regardless of this particular issue (see Chapter 7). Precisely because it is unstructured and reliant upon the qualitative researcher’s ingenuity, it is almost impossible to conduct a true replication, since there are hardly any standard procedures to be followed. In qualitative research, the investigator him- or herself is the main instrument of data collection, so that what is observed and heard and also what the researcher decides to concentrate upon is very much a product of his or her preferences. There are several possible components of this criticism: what qualitative researchers (especially perhaps in ethnography) choose to focus upon while in the field is a product of what strikes them as significant, whereas other researchers are likely to empathize with other issues; the responses of participants (people being observed or inter- viewed) to qualitative researchers are likely to be affected by the characteristics of the researcher (personality, age, gender, and so on); and, because of the unstructured nature of qualitative data, interpretation will be profoundly influenced by the subjective leanings of a researcher. Because of such factors it is di cult to replicate qualitative findings. The difficulties ethnographers experience when they revisit grounds previously trodden by another researcher (often referred to as a ‘restudy’) do not inspire confidence in the replicability of qualitative research (Bryman 1994).

Problems of generalization

It is often suggested that the scope of the findings of qualitative investigations is restricted. When participant observation is used or when unstructured interviews are conducted with a small number of individuals in a certain organization or locality, they argue that it is impossible to know how the findings can be generalized to other settings. How can just one or two cases be representative of all cases? In other words, can we really treat Perlow’s (1997; see Key concept 19.1) research on the time and the work–life balance of software engineers in a high-tech corporation in the USA as representative of all software engineers; or Ladge et al.’s (2012) research on pregnant women professionals as representative of the identity transition experiences of women working in non-professional occupations? In the case of research based on interviews rather than participation, can we treat interviewees who have not been selected through a probability procedure or even quota sampling as representative? Are Watson’s

(1994a) managers typical of all managers working within the telecommunications industry, or are Ram’s (1994; see Research in focus 19.5) small-firm case studies in the West Midlands typical of small firms elsewhere? The answer in all these cases is, of course, emphatically ‘no’. A case study is not a sample of one drawn from a known population. Similarly, the people who are inter- viewed in qualitative research are not meant to be representative of a population and indeed, in some cases, like managers, we may find it more or less impossible to enumerate the population in any precise manner. Instead, the findings of qualitative research are to generalize to theory rather than to populations. It is ‘the cogency of the theoretical reasoning’ (J. C. Mitchell 1983: 207), rather than statistical criteria, that is decisive in considering the generalizability of the findings of qualitative research. In other words, it is the quality of the theoretical inferences that are made out of qualitative data that is crucial to the assessment of generalization.

These three criticisms reflect many of the preoccupations of quantitative research that were discussed in Chapter 7. A further criticism that is often made of qualitative research, but that is perhaps less influenced by quantitative research criteria, is the suggestion that qualitative research frequently lacks transparency in how the research was conducted.

Lack of transparency

It is sometimes di cult to establish from qualitative research what the researcher actually did and how he or she arrived at the study’s conclusions. For example, qualitative research reports are sometimes unclear about such matters as how people were chosen for observation or interview. This deficiency contrasts sharply with the sometimes laborious accounts of sampling procedures in reports of quantitative research. However, it does not seem plausible to suggest that outlining in some detail the ways in which research participants are selected constitutes the application of quantitative research criteria. Readers have a right to know to what extent research participants were selected to correspond to a wide range of people. Also, the process of qualitative data analysis is frequently unclear (see Bryman and Burgess 1994a). It is often not obvious how the analysis was conducted— in other words, what the researcher was actually doing when the data were analysed and therefore how the study’s conclusions were arrived at. These issues of lack of transparency are being addressed (see Thinking deeply 17.12), but not always in ways that are consistent with the principles of qualitative research.

a. It is too subjective

b. It is too simplistic

c. It lacks transparency

d. It has a problem of generalisation

Type: multiple response question

Title: Chapter 17 - Question 14

14) Which of the following is a contrast between qualitative and quantitative research? Please select all that apply.

Numbers vs Words. Quantitative researchers are often portrayed as preoccupied with applying measurement procedures to social life, while qualitative researchers are seen as using words in the presentation of analyses of society, although, as we have emphasized, qualitative researchers are also concerned with the analysis of visual data.

Point of view of researcher vs Points of view of participants. In quantitative research, the investigator is in the driving seat. The set of concerns that he or she brings to an investigation structures the investigation. In qualitative research, the perspective of those being studied—what they see as important and significant— provides the point of orientation.

Researcher is distant vs Researcher is close. In quantitative research, researchers are uninvolved with their subjects and in some cases, as in research based on postal questionnaires or on hired interviewers, may have no contact with them at all. Sometimes, this lack of a relationship with the subjects of an investigation is regarded as desirable by quantitative researchers, because they feel that their objectivity might be com- promised if they become too involved with the people they study. The qualitative researcher seeks close involvement with the people being investigated, so that he or she can genuinely understand the world through their eyes.

Theory and concepts tested in research vs Theory and concepts emergent from data. Quantitative researchers typically bring a set of concepts to bear on the research instruments being employed, so that theoretical work precedes the collection of data, whereas in qualitative research concepts and theoretical elaboration emerge out of data collection.

Static vs Process. Quantitative research is frequently depicted as presenting a static image of social reality with its emphasis on relationships between variables. Change and connections between events over time tend not to surface, other than in a mechanistic fashion. Qualitative research is often depicted as attuned to the unfolding of events over time and to the interconnections between the actions of participants of social settings.

Structured vs Unstructured. Quantitative research is typically highly structured, so that the investigator is able to examine the precise concepts and issues that are the focus of the study; in qualitative research the approach is invariably unstructured, so that the possibility of getting at actors’ meanings and of concepts emerging out of data collection is enhanced.

Generalization vs Contextual understanding. Whereas quantitative researchers want their findings to be generalizable to the relevant population, the qualitative

researcher seeks an understanding of behaviour, values, beliefs, and so on in terms of the context in which the research is conducted.

Hard, reliable data vs Rich, deep data. Quantitative data are often depicted as ‘hard’ in the sense of being robust and unambiguous, owing to the precision offered by measurement. Qualitative researchers claim, by contrast, that their contextual approach and their often prolonged involvement in a setting engender rich data.

Macro vs Micro. Quantitative researchers are often depicted as involved in uncovering large-scale social trends and connections between variables, whereas qualitative researchers are seen as concerned with small-scale aspects of social reality, such as interaction.

Behaviour vs Meaning. It is sometimes suggested that the quantitative researcher is concerned with people’s behaviour and the qualitative researcher with the meaning of action.

Artificial settings vs Natural settings. Whereas quantitative researchers conduct research in a contrived context, qualitative researchers investigate people in natural environments.

a. Numbers vs Words

b. Order vs Chaos

c. Fantasy vs Reality

d. Structured vs Unstructured

Type: true-false

Title: Chapter 17 - Question 15

15) In action research the action researcher and the client collaborate in the diagnosis of a problem and in the development of a solution based on the diagnosis

a. True

b. False