Qualitative Research Methodology Flashcards

This set of vocabulary flashcards covers the fundamental concepts of qualitative research methodology, including reasoning logics, philosophical foundations, case study design, interview techniques, ethnography, and quality criteria based on the provided lecture notes.

Research

An original investigation involving creative activity to contribute new knowledge and understanding in a field, which is open to scrutiny and formal evaluation by experts.

Replication Crisis

A phenomenon triggered by the Reproducibility Project where only $39\%$ of $100$ geography and psychology studies replicated successfully, highlighting the critical importance of context in research.

Deduction

A form of reasoning where a necessarily true conclusion is drawn from two or more true premises, shifting from a general rule to a specific case.

Induction

Reasoning where specific observations are used to reach a probable (but not certain) generalization or general rule.

Abduction

A process-oriented reasoning starting from incomplete or surprising observations ($Huh?$) to arrive at the most probable explanation or plausible conjecture ($Aha!$).

Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE)

A concept often conflated with abduction that focuses on the product (selecting the single best explanation) rather than the process of generating plausible conjectures.

Fact

In abductive reasoning, the phenomenon of interest or the surprising observation $(C)$ that requires explanation.

Foil

The background or expected alternative against which a fact is juxtaposed, expressed in the form $Why\,C\,rather\,than...?$.

Abductive Novelty

A trigger for abduction occurring when events are not completely predicted by existing theory, leading to theory extension by adding causal mechanisms.

Abductive Anomaly

A trigger for abduction involving events that directly contradict prior theory, potentially leading to the development of new constructs or theories.

Abductive Imparity

A trigger for abduction where events are partially explained by multiple theories, but none is sufficient alone, leading to theory synthesis.

Deliberate Abduction

Abduction driven by a conscious interest in understanding a phenomenon that is commonly observed but lacks adequate theoretical explanation.

Opportunistic Abduction

Abduction that occurs when a researcher stumbles across surprising, counter-intuitive, or anomalous findings while investigating a different research question.

Exploitative Abduction

A mode of abduction where the researcher starts with systematic facts and tries to identify which existing framework best explains the patterns.

Exploratory Abduction

A mode of abduction occurring when no existing theory cleanly applies, requiring the researcher to conceive a general rule from the pattern of findings.

HARKing

Hypothesizing After Results are Known; a practice structurally avoided in abductive reasoning because the surprise itself triggers the development of the hypothesis.

Ontology

The branch of philosophy concerned with what exists in the world and what the researcher believes reality is.

Epistemology

The branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and sources of knowledge and how reality can be known.

Objectivism

The ontological position that reality and the social world exist independently of people and their actions.

Constructionism

The ontological position that social reality is produced by actors through social interaction and is an output of social and cognitive processes.

Positivism

The philosophical position that only knowledge from experience and empirical observation is legitimate, aiming to find causal explanations and regularities.

Interpretivism

A philosophical position focused on how people understand social settings and meanings, assuming reality is only accessible through social constructions like language.

Critical Realism

A position claiming an observable world exists independent of human consciousness, but knowledge of that world is socially constructed.

Reflexivity

The process of continuously and carefully reconsidering how knowledge is produced, described, and justified during the research process.

Case Study

An in-depth investigation of a contemporary phenomenon within its real-world context, particularly when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are unclear.

Holism

A core feature of case study research where the unit of analysis is viewed as more than just a collection of variables or summed parts.

Bounding the Case

The act of setting spatial, temporal, and other relevant limits on a case to prevent it from expanding indefinitely during study.

Critical Case

A single-case study rationale where the case is used to test a significant theory decisively because it meets conditions where theory propositions must hold.

Revelatory Case

A single-case study rationale where the researcher gains access to a phenomenon that was previously inaccessible for academic examination.

Analytic Generalization

A concept in case study research where empirical evidence is used to support, challenge, or extend theory, rather than Generalizing from a sample to a population.

Descriptive Validity

The form of validity concerned with the factual accuracy of accounts, such as whether information was correctly heard and transcribed.

Interpretive Validity

The form of validity concerned with how adequately a researcher presents the meaning of statements from the participant's point of view.

Communicative Validation

A quality strategy where researchers present interview transcripts or statements back to the participants for verification or modification.

The Black Swan Argument

Karl Popper's principle that a single case (e.g., observing one black swan) can falsify a general claim (e.g., all swans are white), making single cases scientifically powerful.

Analytical Interview

An interview practice emphasizing collaborative knowledge construction between the interviewer and respondent, often focused on exploring organisational dilemmas.

Dilemmas (Organizational)

Conflicting lines of thought or competing concerns in practice that seem irreconcilable but constitute the reality of organizational life.

Double Interacts

A unit of analytical interviewing consisting of a question-answer-follow-up sequence, where the follow-up adds new dimensions to the dialogue.

Saturation

The point in qualitative data collection where the researcher becomes empirically confident that no additional data are found to help develop properties of a category.

Focus Group

A research method where a group of individuals are assembled specifically to interact and discuss a topic based on personal experience.

Organizational Ethnography

A methodology grounded in presence and immersion within an organization to study its culture, rituals, daily interactions, and language.

Emotional Labour

Concept by Arlie Russell Hochschild referring to workers being trained to manage, produce, or suppress emotions as part of their job (surface and deep acting).

Experience Sampling Methods (ESM)

Structured self-report techniques using real-time and real-world assessments to capture participants' experiences as they occur in daily life.

Thematic Analysis

A research technique for identifying, examining, and recording recurring structures of meaning (themes) within a dataset.

The Hermeneutic Circle

The iterative process of interpretation where understanding the whole requires understanding the parts, and understanding the parts requires reference to the whole.

Coding

The analytical operation of identifying segments of meaning in data and labeling them with a word or short phrase.

Descriptive Codes

First-cycle codes assigned to small units of data to summarize what the segment is about in relation to the research topic.

Attribute Codes

Codes recording the basic contextual and demographic information of participants, sites, or datasets.

Gioia Methodology

A systematic inductive approach characterized by a data structure moving from informant-centric 1st-order concepts to researcher-centric 2nd-order themes and aggregate dimensions.

Analytical Memos

Ongoing written reflections by the researcher during coding that capture intuitions, hunches, and emerging interpretive ideas.

Action Research

A collaborative, participatory research design aimed at solving real-world problems where research is conducted with people rather than on them.

Practice Architectures

The cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements that hold social practices in place.

Mixed Methods Research

Research combining qualitative and quantitative elements (viewpoints, data collection, or analysis) to achieve breadth and depth of understanding.

Convergent Design

A mixed methods design where qualitative and quantitative data are collected and analyzed separately and then merged for comparison.

Explanatory Sequential Design

A mixed methods design where quantitative results are collected first and then explained or elaborated by subsequent qualitative data.