Qualitative Methods

QUALITATIVE METHODS

PhD-course

Mansholt Graduate School and CERES Graduate School

WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY

by Kristof Van Assche and Patrick Devlieger

June 5-9

2006

Introduction:

This course is designed as a short yet intensive introduction to the use of qualitative methods. A variety of contemporary methods is presented, some of them directly linked to post- modern theories, others originating in different times and theories, grown into the role of classics. In a combination of lectures, literature analysis, group and individual exercises and a debate, the instructors will try to elucidate the network of connections existing between a given qualitative method and assumptions on the general concept of method. Clarifying these connections is helpful in research design –assigning a place to a method- and in the design of the resulting texts. In a scientific text, some methods are presented as such, while others can be silently present in the background, or hidden in the concepts used. During the course, explicit reference will be made to the participant’s individual research projects and experiences, in order to sharpen the focus, and to smoothen the translation of theoretical insights into a personal strategy of reassessing research design and potential roles of qualitative methods.

Intended results: At the end of this course, the participants will be able to rethink their own research and reassess the potential use of qualitative methods. This means that they will have an insight in the variety of qualitative methods, their embedding in methodology, and their connections with research design and text structure.

Lecturers: Kristof Van Assche, Minnesota State University- St Cloud State and Patrick Devlieger, Leuven University [KULeuven]

Target Group: the course is set up for PhD students from various backgrounds with an interest in qualitative methods, and for other researchers interested in re- evaluating the potential uses and epistemological ramifications of present- day qualitative methods.

Course duration: 5 full days

Group size: minimum 10 participants, maximum 15 participants.

 (the organizers may cancel the course 2 weeks in advance in case the number of registrations did not reach the minimum).

Language: English

Location: Wageningen University (exact location will be announced later)

Programme

Day 1, june 5

9.00 Introduction, presentation of the participants and their research [briefly]

10.00 Brainstorm, based on essays joining application. Interactive definition of the goals of this course, within the general frame offered.

11.00 Lectures Devlieger and Van Assche on method, theory, and knowledge

13.30 Joint exercise 1: analysis of theoretical texts [representing different ways to use methods; conceptions of method]

15.30 Reading of literature offered. Identification of research traditions, methodological tradition, assumptions in the own research. Reflection on the linkage between method- question- object in your own research project

Day 2, june 6

9.00 Short presentations of methodological approaches in the participants’ projects. Discussion: two participants comment on every presentation; next open discussion

11.00 Lectures Van Assche and Devlieger on recent qualitative methods

13.30 Individual exercise 1: Analysis of scientific text: Which methods are used? Concept of method? Link with research design? How are the methods used? Evaluation?

Day 3, june 7

9.00 Feedback on ex1 by teachers and selected participants [they evaluate each others work]

10.30 Lectures Devlieger and Van Assche on classic qualitative methods

13.30 Intro individual exercise 2: link with individual research revisited. Try to improve the linkage of method- question- object while using qualitative methods. Work on ex. 2

Day 4, june 8

9.00 Lectures by Van Assche and Devlieger: two or three methods introduced earlier are treated more in depth. Participants choose which ones.

11.00. More lectures: given the previous analyses, what can we say about interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research? How to combine methods stemming from different disciplines in a project combining other disciplines?

13.30 Time to work on ex. 2

Day 5, june 9

9.00 One-on-one feedback on ex2 by teachers: individual discussions teacher- participants. The others in the meanwhile can finish their assignments.

13.30 Intro debate: theses to be defended handed out

14.00 Preparation debate: concept of method- value methods- combinations methods- interdisciplinary research. [reference to literature and experiences]

14.30 Debate: part individual; part 2 against 2

17.00 Drinks[interdisciplinary- interethnic etc]

Course description – theoretical backgrounds

Assumption

One central assumption underlying this course is that the ideological and philosophical assumptions and contexts of the topics treated and the methods used in research are not reflected upon sufficiently. And that a better understanding of the concept of method, and a better understanding of the consequences of a methods’ embedding in certain discursive traditions, leads to a better efficiency in the use of scientific methods, and in particular of qualitative methods, and to a better coupling of topic, question and method.

Basic questions

What is method? What is scientific method? What is a qualitative method? What kind of qualitative methods exist? Can they be helpful in your research? How and when should you use them? What would be the place of these methods in your research and in the structure of the resulting texts?

Structure

Reflection on the concept of method and the concept of concept

What could be a conception of method?

Take one more step back: what is a concept?

How do we use concepts? How are they linked? How can they be linked?

How are concepts used in methods? And in theories? Reflect on the linkage concept–theory—method.

Concepts of methods can differ, and the function and place of methods in research can change accordingly. The classic positivist scheme of research design and the design of the resulting text equals research methods to building blocks in the procedure, easily identifiable and easily assigned to a certain place in the text and the process: block A in place X of scheme Y in Z steps. This conception of method, linked to a conception of research and of research design, is now seen as only one of the many possible ways to look at research methods.

Still, some methods can be easily identified, easily placed in a text and in a process; some methods are more standardized than others and fit better in the classic scheme, and some questions and topics are more suited for the classic scheme than others.

This means that there still exists a list of methods that can be learned and applied, but the status of the list is different now than in the positivist age. Some methods on the list still have the nature of building blocks, while others haven’t.

One of the changes underlying the new nature of the list of methods is the acknowledgment that different relations between methods and concepts can exist. Applying concepts and conceptual frames is also a method. And the acknowledgment of the existence of meta- methods: there are methods in the application of methods, methods in the application of these methods, etc ad infinitum.

Methods referred to:

Concepts

Sensitizing concepts

Conceptual frames

Ideological and philosophical backgrounds

In order to understand the changes in the conception of scientific method, and more specifically qualitative method, one needs to understand some important philosophical and ideological changes that occurred in the 20^th century. These changes, based on a shift in epistemology, should be understood in order to fully grasp the palette of variations that exist in qualitative methods today, and this variation should be seen in order to find the best possible fit between topic –question- method.

Marx, Nietzsche and Freud were labeled by Paul Ricoeur as ‘Masters of distrust’ Since them, the view of the individual, autonomous, knowledge- finding subject has drastically changed. This triggered in the second half of the century a shift in the conceptions of knowledge- science- methods.

A second line of influence adding to this shift, is the combined legacy of Peirce and de Saussure, leading to the rise of structuralism in a list of disciplines in the fifties, and post- structuralism in the seventies.

These core thinkers of the 19^th and early 20^th century underlie the move from modernism to postmodernism in the eighties. This move codified a change in conceptions of method and science that was gradually becoming recognized in some disciplines and places.

The results of this evolution, i.e. the discovery of the basic tenets of postmodern science, are not visible everywhere, not accepted everywhere, not labeled the same way everywhere.

Short description of postmodernism –what about methods?

Postmodernism starts from the finding that reality is socially constructed. Every knowledge of reality bears the mark of human culture, personality, biology, and these marks cannot be separated from any kind of objective knowledge. However, laws still exist, logic still applies, science can still be sharply defined, mistakes can be made. The nature of the laws has become different: the laws are not necessarily grounded in nature [or in God], rather, they are the result of a cultural convention.

Different kinds of conventions exist, and one specific set of conventions delineated science.

In the definitions of science, the concept of method plays a pivotal role: knowledge is deemed scientific if a scientific method is applied. And applied in the correct way.

So, the definition, the boundary of science and scientific quality depends on the definition of method and its application.

In post-modernism, the idea of social construction of reality directly leads to a radical shift in the idea of method: a method not only discovers a part of reality, it simultaneously constructs it. This means that object and method are mutually defining entities. Since an individual, a subject, constructs its knowledge also by applying conceptual frames to unarticulated realities, one can even say that object and subject define each other.

How can validity/trustworthiness be secured in this new context? How can qualitative methods be used there? And which ones?

Validity and new methods

To start with: the laws of logic still apply. This entails that the demand of internal and external validity/trustworthiness is still extant. Different perspectives on the same thing are allowed to exist, different constructions of a same thing lead to different truths, to different things, and not necessarily to logical contradictions.

In the space of a method, following the rules of that method, no different constructions of the same object should arise. Using different methods, no differences may arise, unless the assumptions of the different methods are different, or the structure of the method implies choices between undecided options. In other words: using logics is still possible to test internal and external validity/trustworthiness. Only difference is that one can never tell completely surely that one discovered structure in reality can be equaled with reality itself; it is necessarily an interpretation based on our views of man, knowledge, method, structure.

Given this feature of post-modern science, the search for hidden assumptions, hidden structures of meaning, the unmasking of pseudo-clarity and pseudo-universality became important in the construction of new methods. Rephrased in a more positive manner: methods became more focused on the boundaries of laws, rules and knowledge as defining features, as opposed to the search for universality [often assuming the possibility of universality in places it cannot exist]

Different methods that focused on the identification of assumptions and the relations between assumptions:

General methodical frame: structuralism

Semiotics

Grounded theory

Narrative analysis

Discursive analysis

Methodological shift: structuralism to post- structuralism

Postmodern semiotics

Postmodern narrative analysis

Postmodern discursive analysis -deconstruction

Older methods reasserted in a new context

Not every method is new in the postmodern age. Not every qualitative method too. A lot of methods are older and still useful, and are not completely linked to the modernist assumptions that were underlying most of their older applications. They stem from different disciplines, as goes for the more recently constructed methods.

Some methods became more important or gained territory because of the epistemological changes appearing in the wider arena. When the structures of perception and signification thoroughly influence the construction of knowledge, then it becomes clear that one should study perception and signification. Older methods are useful in this effort.

Participant observation

Holds it value, with the warning that the participation will necessarily influence the observation. Long- term observations holds the promise of observing more complex patterns. Distrust of older objectivist methods brought the even older participant observation to the fore again.

Connected to this, as to other methods like discourse analysis, is the clearly defined and building- block- like method of

Interviewing

Rhetorical analysis

When texts are true in a situation when they convince a relevant group of people that they applied convincing rules in a convincing way, then it becomes interesting to study the ways people tried to convince each other in different ways. Different techniques of persuasion cannot be separated from different concepts of truth, of text, of science, of method. Studying method is a method, and studying rhetorics became an important method once again.

Historical method

Is the analysis of historical documents, interested in questions of authenticity, influence, causality, genre. Post- modernism, in its undermining of claims of universality, stressed the radical historicism of knowledge. Therefore, the historical precedents of behavior, structure, organization, knowledge, become more important, and the same goes for the ways to look for and ascertain these precedents. The classic methodology to find historical documents, check their authenticity, connect them chronologically and causally, finds application in other disciplines than the historical discipline proper.

A special and more theoretically refined version of the classic historical method is Michel Foucault’s duet of methods:

Genealogy and Archaeology

The first being a search for the background of a concept, its predecessors, looking in a wide variety of context [not only the concepts with the same name, e.g.] and using a wide variety of historical documents. A search for the predecessors of a concept then often leads to deconstructions and reconstructions of older frames of concepts, and older concepts of knowledge.

Archaeology is not limited to the series of transformations of a single concept, rather it looks for the backgrounds of a concept while digging deeper on the spot: the picture of the backgrounds on the spot is more important than the migrations of a concept [necessarily implying the reconstruction of some backgrounds]

Method, research design, text construction

Given all this, it is clear that there is no ideal design of a research, no ideal text construction, no ideal application of qualitative methods.

There are however methods that are better or lesser suited to certain question, certain topics, certain text constructions. And there are good and bad applications of a certain method.

If the qualitative method is not geared towards the deconstruction of knowledge, or towards the unveiling of hidden assumptions and their patterns, also then, it is of the foremost importance to identify the assumptions one wants to build upon, to identify the traditions you are inscribed in.

Then, the different palettes of available methods, and the different ways to use these methods, can become clearer.

Starting from the notion of social construction of reality, every existing and approved method is still useful and approved. The boundaries of its applicability may be drawn differently, its nature may be interpreted differently, its conclusions as well. Linked to this observation, one can say that in a post- modern frame, methods can sometimes be combined that once started from contradictory assumptions. This is useful in some cases, since the methods are not always completely linked to the assumptions, and since they can be used in a different way.

The same goes for the combination of disciplines. The boundaries of disciplines are interpreted in a different, more flexible way, and therefore the combination of methods stemming from diverse disciplines becomes easier in a postmodern frame. Like concepts, disciplines shape their objects, and shape the methods to construct these objects. Interdisciplinary research can enable us to disentangle part of the influence of the disciplines on the structure of knowledge, and therefore the combination of methods from different disciplines can enable us to unveil new aspects of the existing objects, it can construct new objects and it can lead to new questions.

In order to fruitfully combine disciplines and methods, one has to keep in mind however, that the mutual definition of object and subject also demystifies the idea of one single ideal text structure, and one ideal place and function of method. This implies among other things that object, question and method mutually define, and that they can be changed and attuned to each other several times during the research process, depending on the findings.

In some cases, consistency depends on sticking to the method, in other cases on leaving the method or adding a method. The same goes for concepts and disciplines. Difficulty is to find out what to do in which case. There, postmodernism forces us to think a bit deeper than modernism.

As a concluding note, we wish to reflect on the role of power in the construction of knowledge, and the relations between method and power. Methods construct boundaries that define and are defined by power. The same goes for disciplines and concepts. Combining methods, concepts, disciplines, is crossing boundaries, defying powers, changing power relations.

Prerequisite courses and recommended readings:

No prerequisites.

Recommended readings: Some [parts of] of these will be analyzed in class and- or used in the lectures

Burke, L., Crowley, T., Girvin, A., 2000, The Routledge language and cultural theory reader, London, Routledge [e.g. discourse analysis]

Brown, T. , Jones, L., 2001, Action research and postmodernism. Buckingham: Open university press.

Clarke, A., 2004, Situational analyses: Grounded theory after the postmodern turn. Thousand Oaks, Ca, Sage.

Deleuze, G., Guattari, F., 1994, What is philosophy? London, Verso. [especially chapter: What is a concept?]

Fine, M., Weiss, L., 1998, Writing the wrongs of fieldwork: confronting our own research/writing dilemma’s in urban ethnographies, in G. Shacklock and J. Smyth, eds, Being reflexive in critical educational and social research. London, Falmer Press, pp. 13-35.

Foucault, M., 1980, Power/ Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writing 1972-1977, New York, Harvester Wheatsheaf, .

Hodge, R., Kress, G., 1988, Social Semiotics, Cambridge, Polity Press.

Johnson,B., 1987, A world of difference, Baltimore, md, Johns Hopkins Univ Press [deconstruction]

Tashakkori, A., Teddlie, C., 1998, Mixed Methodology: Combining qualitative and quantitative approaches, Thousand Oaks, Ca, Sage.

Credits and Examination:

This will be a 3-ECTS credit course, which will be graded on the basis of two exercises:

Individual exercise 1: Analysis of scientific article: Which methods are used? Concept of method? Link with research design? How are the methods used? Evaluation?

Individual exercise 2: link with individual research revisited. Try to improve the linkage of method- question- object while using qualitative methods.

Exercise 1: 2 pages; exercise 2: 4 pages. Both are handed in Friday afternoon. [Individual exceptions can be granted] Grades will be given on a scale from 1 to 10.

The instructors of this course ask participants to send in a one-two- page essay describing their educational background, main research project, their present use of, interest in qualitative methods. Please mail these short essays to Irina.bezlepkina@wur.nl at least two weeks before the start of the course. This can greatly enhance the quality of the course, in giving the instructors the opportunity to address the specific needs of the group.

Course fee:

For PhD students of Mansholt Graduate School and CERES Graduate School with an approved TSP the course fee is reduced to €300,- The course fee for other participants is €450.

The course fee includes study and training material, coffee / tea and lunches.

Registration Procedure:

Register via the website

http://www.sls.wau.nl/mi/mgs/procedures_and_forms/Course_registration_form.htm

Please make sure you provide the most recent contact details so that in case of any changes you will be notified promptly.

After your internet registration you will receive a short notification that your name has been registered.

At least 2 weeks before the course you will receive a confirmation about the location and the schedule. MGS will also send a bill to your address indicated in the registration form.

Please e-mail to Marcella.haan@wur.nl in case you have not received the second confirmation two weeks before the course.

Cancellations:

The participants can cancel their registration without any fee 3 weeks before the course starts. Cancellation fee of 100% applies if participant cancels the course less than 3 weeks prior to a course.

The organisers have a right to cancel the course not later than 2 weeks before the course starts in case the number of registrations did not reach the minimum.

The participants will be notified of any changes at their e-mail addresses.

Further Information

For details about the logistics, accommodation, registration, fees, study materials, etc. please contact

Marcella Haan

Tel +31 317 484126

Marcella.haan@wur.nl

Further information on Mansholt Graduate School and its educational activities: http://www.sls.wau.nl/mi/mgs/courses/index.htm