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Qualitative data would consist primarily of things like interview transcripts,
photographs even
artifacts, documents.
The primary difference between qualitative and quantitative data is that qualitative
data
is experiential and
it's collected from participants
by a researcher.
So unlike in a quantitative study where you have a model or you're running a
certain
mathematical model to come up with a regression or whatever
in a qualitative study you are actually looking for people to express their lived
experiences. So quantitative data is good at dichotomous sort of outcomes: So is this
intervention having a certain effect? That's pretty easy to do with a
quantitative study.
In qualitative studies you're really looking at the more lived experience of
the participants.
That becomes important, so
let's suppose there's an intervention that has
good outcomes. We've looked at the quantitative data. We know that it's generally a good
thing.
Looking at the qualitative will help us understand
what are the experiences of people who actually went through that process.
What are they,
what parts are working really well? What parts are challenging? Instead of just a
sort of
solitary sort of variable that says yes it's good, or no it's not good,
you get more of a variance and more of an understanding of what's happening moment
by moment.
And you can also ask things about, sort of,
what brought
the participants to this particular experience,
what happened after the experience, it's much more I think
fully encompassing. So you get to know the people behind the numbers.
And I think a lot of folks want to say, well
quantitative studies are the way to go or qualitative studies are the way to go. It's really combining both I think
is the way you want to do it because
because a quantitative study will give you a pretty good understanding of
what the outcome is
but then the qualitative data will tell you why it is the way it is.
There's a problem or issue, connection or correlation between
performance
and attendance,
so now with the qualitative
approach, what you can do is go and ask students about
you know, what are the things that are causing the absences to happen.
What happens to you when you are absent from school when you come back to class?
you know
And then they might tell you: well, I feel lost. I don't know what's going on.
I don't know what the
content was before and I'm sort of behind on things. And you start, sort of, figuring
out what the stories could actually be.
Qualitative research sort of presumes that there is not one unified reality.
So each student's going to have a different perspective, and they might sort of come
together in some
cohesive
understanding. Okay, something is going on. It has to do with a lack of
understanding when they're absent from class.
You can use it in combination with the qualitative data to sort of get
at the "why"
of why students are not
having more positive outcomes and what they can,
what they are
attributing these issues to.
Whether it's a lack of sleep or a lack of
interest or just a general feeling of being lost or maybe just the fact that they don't
feel that they're as invested because they're not there.
In the field, we some times call that "free writing."
And you just ask people to sort of
stop what you're doing and just give us a reflection of what's going on with you and so what
you can do is take that data and start chunking it, right?
Look for chunks that have common themes.
So perhaps when people are saying I'm confused about
you know, remainders, if we're doing divisions or something like that.
If you see that happening in
quantity then that helps you understand that that's something that people are
struggling with, right?
I think it matters
the first important, the most important thing I might say would be along the
lines of:
Who you are matters.
The questions ask matter.
If you don't have rapport with your students, you're not going to get good data. So it's really
important to establish a sense of community in a classroom
where students feel they can share their perspectives without
you know, being penalized in some way.
The experienced qualitative researcher really knows how to draw in a subject
so
it's a conversation typically, mostly led by the person who is responding
of course, but
part of the role of the qualitative researcher is to be the actual research
instrument.
so
it's your job as a qualitative researcher to go into the field and talk to people and
have them respond to you with the answers you wanted to obtain.
A pretty common sort of response from qualitative novices is like, okay, I did an
interview
I don't know what happened. I might have talked too much.
I'm not sure.
And that happens.
I think the more you do it the better you get at it, so
it's not a one-off kind of thing. You have to keep on going back
into the field, which would be your classroom I suppose
and honing your craft and finding out what works well, and
what time of day is the best time to ask questions, you know.
Maybe it's not right before lunch; maybe it's after lunch, I don't know. So those are
the kind of things you will
detect and I think
when somebody is conducting qualitative research
you know yourself much better and that's something that's really important
because you're the instrument, you're the
researching tool, so you have to be
adept at, sort of, moving questions forward,
asking probes when somebody's responding and, you're like, that's not what I wanted
to hear, I wanted to know more about this or
you made an interesting comment there: can we hear more about that?
Finding out those things. So it's like
being like Phil Donahue or Oprah in some respects, right,
being a really good interviewer
is what that's about, so a lot of this job is pretty fun,
I think.
So what we do
in a classroom, for example, I would say is just that
you know, be mindful of not identifying students individually.
When you sort of use of a data, you can explain to the students, I'm using the data in aggregate
so this is what
a number of students said
and not necessarily singling out people and, you know,
Bill you said this.
Well, you know, you simply say:
some participants said this was an outcome. And I say participants; that's very
clinical, so maybe you say some students said... whatever.
And some students have this perspective. And certainly it's important
not to take the data
and move it beyond the classroom purposes unless you've got permission to
do that.
And if that's the case I would certainly advocate that you talk to
somebody in the faculty, a university researcher, about how to
use your data outside of the classroom setting to make sure that your students are protected
because one of the most important things about conducting research -
qualitative or quantitative - is not harming your participants and
you might say: Well, I'm not drawing blood from people or, you know,
poking their skin.
It doesn't really matter. There's other ways you can harm people by disclosing confidential
issues and so forth.
It's also helpful to tell
the students
what you are using the data for.
So if you're using it simply for a class discussion great
but if you're using it for a class discussion and then probably talking to other teachers
about it, they should know that
because that will change how they approach,
they approach the discussion
and you want to make sure that people feel
comfortable
and trust what's happening.
We use that term trustworthiness a lot in qualitative research and
the minute you don't have trustworthiness with your participants
is the minute that you've lost the ability to do this research effectively.