Ray Maietta and Alison Hamilton, October 31-November 1
The main goal of this course is to position you to develop an active and engaged posture toward your work. To accomplish this goal, we emphasize principles, strategies and tips to remain open, flexible and responsive through the life of a qualitative inquiry project. This approach helps you to understand how the conversations and interactions occurring during data collection, analysis and write-up fit with what is currently known about, and practiced in, your field.
Data Collection:
To empower qualitative data collection, we work with you to ensure that you can hit the following goal for strong qualitative work:
Data Analysis:
We introduce you to the principles of ResearchTalk’s Sort and Sift, Think and Shift qualitative data analysis approach.
1. Principle 1 is to adopt and maintain a flexible posture to facilitate the evolution of your thinking and your use of analytic tools.
2. Principle 2 is to let the data be your guide; qualitative data content directs project decisions from fieldwork to analysis to final presentation.
3. According to Principle 3, the holistic picture of each data collection episode is of paramount importance.
4. In Principle 4, topics that direct analysis emerge and evolve throughout the life of a project and should be monitored actively by diagramming and memoing.
5. Principle 5 reflects that, through iterative phases, the Sort and Sift toolkit focuses on where and how key concepts integrate and work together (i.e., bridge and thread) to define participants’ lived experience.
Writing Practices:
We introduce you to writing practices and tips to use through the entire research lifecycle of your projects.
“Writing” can and should start early in your work on a new project. We encourage you to begin memoing and diagramming to contemplate emerging ideas early in each project. Writing threads through your entire project, especially during data analysis—writing and analysis are intertwined activities rather than sequenced tasks.
