Administrative

Our Teaching Assistant: Janaki Srinivasanjanakis@ischool.berkeley.eduOffice hours – Thursdays, 1-2pm, room 107

Reading for Thursday:Bauer & Gaskell reading on ‘corpus construction’

can skim pgs 24-29 on language corpora, read the rest carefully

INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods

Outline

The relationship between qualitative and quantitative research

Two versions of steps and sequencing in the research process – (1) linear vs. (2) iterative

Discussion of Becker’s ‘The Epistemology of Qualitative Research’

Questions to be Answered What are some of the possibilities and problems of mixed methods (qualitative + quantitative) approaches?

How is rigor defined in qualitative approaches that use an inductive analytical approach?

Bridging Qualitative and Quantitative1. Quantification also involves qualification

2. Statistical analysis requires interpretation

3. Interpretative approaches can involve systematic procedures (see grounded theory)

Bridging Qualitative and Quantitative Methodological pluralism? Time ordering:

Qualitative to define concepts Quantitative to refine, test

Quantitative to test Qualitative to explain/interpret results

The question of rigor

The Linear Model1) theory/model

2) hypothesis

3) operationalization

4) sampling / recruiting

5) data collection

6) data analysis

7) validation[adapted from U. Flick, An intro to qualitative research, chap. 4]

The Iterative Model

movement back and forth between these phases

1) research topic/questions

2) ‘corpus construction’

3) data gathering

4) analysis

5) write-up

The Iterative Model

movement back and forth between these phases

1) research topic/questions

2) ‘corpus construction’

3) data gathering

4) analysis

5) write-up

4) more analysis

Field work

A Double Iteration1) research topic/questions

2) ‘corpus construction’

3) data gathering

4) analysis

5) write-up

4) more analysis

Field work

academic setting: contextualized within the major debates in your discipline

‘the boy with the hammer’ (law of instrument) = match between research questions and methods used to answer those questions

(does not mean that questions always precede choice of method, nor does it mean that you will not tend to favor certain methods)

1) research topic/questions

recruiting people for interviews

selecting texts or images

Field site selection

• Why not ‘sampling?’• how to start, where to

look, when to stop – meaning saturation

• but more generally, the search for data richness and the visibility of certain cultural processes

2) ‘corpus construction’

interviews (transcripts)

participant-observation (field notes)

collecting texts/images (from the field)

• expediency• technique - how the

communicative process between researcher and researched influences the data produced

3) data gathering

Comments in your field notes, emerging themes

Established forms:Discourse analysisRhetorical analysisContent analysisSemiotics

Grounded theory

4) Analysis

Writing involves committing claims to paper/screen and is therefore an extension of analysis

Coping with heterogeneous data (tip: start with the most interesting bit)

Closeness to the data

5) Final Report

A Double Iteration1) research topic/questions

2) ‘corpus construction’

3) data gathering

4) analysis

5) write-up

4) more analysis

Field work