Week 4: Strategies for Starting a Qualitative Project by Dee Dubose

Before

2024-09-18 21:07:44 UTC

Before I had read Small, 2009 before this course, but before I read it the first time I di always feel like you had to have a large amount of qualitative research participants to justify your research findings. Before: Before reading Jiménez and Orozco, I knew there had to be a better way of interviewing. This is from my own experience with interviewing journalists about their "philosophy" of journalism. What is the role of journalism in society? What principles lead their work, etc. But most journalists do not have time or have not been given the opportunity in their training to think critically about these questions for themselves, so they were nowhere near equipped to adeptly answer these questions for us.

Dee's Thoughts

dubosed2 — 2024-09-18 21:08:48 UTC

2024-09-18 21:14:13 UTC

What I knew before I read...

I was aware I had to move beyond simple questions asking.
- No closed-ended binary questions
- No double-barrel questions
Invite stories, not answers.

What I learned

I found the comparative and counterfactual prompt structure super useful. In my experience, some interviewees phrase responses in this way naturally. However, seeing how interviewees respond when questions are phrased deliberately as comparative or counterfactual will be interesting.
How we ask questions matters

What questions I still have

How can I get participants to see what's hidden in front of their faces? The authors mention something about finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. How can we facilitate this in an interview without being too leading?

After

2024-09-18 21:15:10 UTC

After reading both Small and Jiménez and Orozco, I felt that I had a tool kit of interview types that were directly related to the kinds of data I wanted to have my participants generate. Similarly with Small, they provided more language behind the justification of why I would chose a particular methodology or interview/research type.

Questions I still have

2024-09-18 21:17:37 UTC

In my work for my other class this semester called Humanizing Research, I felt that Lareau's suggestions, while a great introduction and checklist for things you need to know as a qualitative researcher, felt a little prescriptive. What are the ways that we can continue to humanize research with participants and how might we create language that speaks to the justification/rigor of methods that from a positivist view are seen as "biased"

2024-09-18 21:22:15 UTC