Project 1:

What is Qualitative Research?

Qualitative Research is a bit hard to define, at least for me.  This is partly because it is defined by what it is not.  Denzin and Lincoln (2003) provide this definition:

Qualitative research is a situated activity that loctes the observer in the world.  It consists of a set of interpretive, material practices that make the world visible. These practices transform the world. They turn the world into a series of representations, including field notes, interviews, conversations, photographs, recordings, and memos to the self.  At this level, qualitative research involves an interpretive, naturalistic approach to the world.  This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or to interpret, phenomena in terms ot he meanings people bring to them (p.4-5).

So, in a nutshell:  not an experiment, not a survey, not using a representative sample, not generalizable.

What is Qualitative Content Analysis?

Qualitative or ethnographic content analysis is a systematic analysis of texts or images to answer the research questions through discovery, documentation, and understanding the communication of meaning and theoretical relationships found in the text (Altheide, 1987; White & Marsh,  2006; Mayring, 2000).  The researcher, as instrument, uses both inductive and deductive reasoning to develop and apply codes derived from the foreshadowing questions as well as codes emerging from the data (White & Marsh,  2006).  The steps include:  developing foreshadowing questions and related categories, developing a collection of cases, selecting a theoretical or purposeful sample of cases for analysis, analyzing the cases using the categories from the foreshadowing questions and formulating inductive codes from the material, and then interpreting and analyzing the results.  These steps are not linear, rather, the researcher must continually compare the evidence with other evidence and the categories, and must question and verify the coding (White & Marsh,  2006).  Cases are added as necessary to achieve saturation (White & Marsh,  2006).

What are Qualitative Interviews?

Qualitative interviews are different than those conducted by journalists, by reference librarians, by doctors, etc.  

Responsive interviews have the following characteristics (Rubin & Rubin, 2005):

  • the goal is to obtain the participant’s interpretations of their experiences
  • the personality and style of the interviewer matter
  • the interview is an exchange
  • the questions are modified to explore what is said
  • the design is flexible and adaptive.

References

Altheide, D. L. (1987). Ethnographic content analysis. Qualitative Sociology, 10(1), 65-77.

Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2003). Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage

Mayring, P. (2000). Qualitative content analysis. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 1(2), December 9, 2004. Retrieved May 5, 2007, from http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/2-00/2-00mayring-e.htm.

Rubin, H. J., & Rubin, I. (2005). Qualitative interviewing: The art of hearing data (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

White, M. D., & Marsh, E. E. (2006). Content analysis:  A flexible methodology. Library Trends, 55(1), 22-45.


Project 2: 

What is Social Network Analysis?

Unlike other research methods, social network analysis (SNA) focuses on the connections or relationships between actors, not the attributes of the actors themselves (Wasserman & Faust,1997). The collection of connections and actors or nodes forms a network. The connections can be directional and/or weighted. SNA can also be used to address actor-event, or two mode networks, but for this study, only one-mode networks are used.


The connections between actors can be analyzed using graph theoretic methods to describe the nature of the network including its density and diameter, as well as to determine the centrality and prestige of actors, cohesive subgroups of actors, and roles and structural equivalence of actors. Centrality and prestige measures can be useful to understand the potential flows of information or resources or the opportunities or constraints on actors in a network (Wasserman & Faust, 1997). Once interesting actors or groups are identified through SNA, quantitative or qualitative methods can be used to explore or make inferences about the attributes of the actors.

How can links tell you about community?

Community is about more than just linking; it is a sense of belonging, giving help and receiving help, the ability to influence, a shared emotional connection, and the fulfillment of needs (Blanchard, 2002).  These things cannot be determined using SNA; however, SNA can tell you where to look, for one thing, and also can inform you on the ability to influence.  Measures of centrality, prestige, and power can provide valuable information on possible information diffusion and opportunities or constraints on the actors.

References

Blanchard, A. L. (2002). Sense of virtual community - maintaining the experience of belonging. System Sciences, 2002. HICSS. Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on, 3566-3575.

Wasserman, S., & Faust, K. (1997). Social network analysis: Methods and applications. New York: Cambridge University Press.