Alternative qualitative data collection methods

What is a focus group

a group of individuals selected and assembled by researchers to discuss and comment on, from personal experience, the topic that is the subject of the research

When/ Why might you use focus groups

• To understand participants perspectives and motivations

• To understand how participants collectively make sense of and organise their knowledge, and why they feel the way they do (context)

• Generate discussion/ debate

• When you think that individuals may not be able to provide adequate responses

• Open-ended questions

• When you are exploring a complex research area where little is known (theory generation)

• When you are wanting to explore or generate a hypothesis/question(s)/ concept(s) for other phases of a study

Benefits of focus groups

• Allows for interaction and open and free discussion to generate new ideas

• Participants ‘bounce’ off each other

• Allows for people to change their mind/ revise their words

• Many forms of communication: jokes, anecdotes, teasing, arguing

• Allows participants to interpret each other's responses

• There is joint production of meaning

• Large amount of information in short space of time

• Facilitates discussion of difficult/taboo topics

• Encourage contributions from people who feel they have nothing to say or are reluctant to be interviewed on their own

• Can be empowering to participants

Challenges/ limitations of focus groups

• Power dynamics

• Can be less detailed or in-depth

• Can be expensive

• ‘Generalisability’ ‘reliability’

• Participants who dominate/engaging shy or quieter people

• Researchers has less control

• Time and labour intensive

• Practically difficult to arrange

• Managing conflicts of opinion

• Honesty

• Less confidentiality and anonymity

Conducting a focus group study

• Sample

• Advertising

• expenses/ incentives

• 6-10 per group (8 is ideal)

• Refreshments

• Recording equipment

• Appropriate venue

• Ground rules: confidentiality

• Co-moderator: 1 asking questions another checking everything else

• Semi-structured engagement, exploration and exit questions

• 1-2 hours

What is photovoice

Uses interviews, group discussion and photographs that participants are invited to take. These photographs are used to document their experiences and ‘tell stories’ which identify and represent issues of importance to them

When was photovoice developed

By health promotion researchers- Wang & Burtis (1997)

Freire’s 1974 approach to critical consciousness

1. Critical reflection: encouraging individuals to reflect about their community

2. Critical motivation: becoming conscious of the contradictions that govern the world

3. Critical action: advocating for positive social change

What are the phases of a photovoice study

1. Recruit participants, plan the study, provide photographic training

2. Take the photographs

3. Facilitate group discussion (after transferring photos into slide form)

4. Use three-stage process to select the photographs which most accurately reflect the research issue, then contextualise what photos mean (provide captions) and codify issues, themes or theories

5. With participants use the key photographs to narrate the stories (VOICE- voicing our individual collective experience)

6. Disseminate the findings (select slides and stories for photo exhibitions and journal articles)

Which issues/ phenomena have been explored through photovoice?

• Feelings (of health, social inclusion, loneliness in the community)

• Experiences (of living with mental health issues, of being a homeless, of living with chronic pain, diabetes, with intellectual disabilities)

• Features of the environment (e.g. how the local environment influences people’s diets, physical activity, access to green spaces, access to clean cooking energy)

Challenges of using photovoice methods

Ethics:

• Important to obtain written permission before taking photos of individuals

• Some people may not want their photograph taken, and will have individual reasons for this. People often feel protective of their communities

• Photo ownership: ask for written permission to use participants’ photos in dissemination of results

• Photographing negative social concepts and Time periods can prevent participants taking photographs they want to take

What is Ethnography

• Participant observation, with the researcher participating / observing the daily lives and events being studied over an extended period of time

• Using multiple methods of data collection

• Placing emphasis on context

• Focusing on what people do as well as what they say

The assumption of the ethnographic approach

Accessing beliefs and behaviours in the context in which they occur will aid understanding and provide a holistic perspective (Patton, 2002).

When use ethnography

When aiming to: “describe how cultural groups work and explore the beliefs, language, behaviours and issues such as power, resistance and dominance”

The method of ethnography

• aims not hypothesis- has a flexible design

• reliant of: gatekeepers, snowballing and networking

Types of data collection

• Observation/ field notes

• Photos

• Documents

• Informal interviews

• Formal interviews

Benefits of ethnography

• Draws on the strengths of each of the types of data collection while in compensating for some of their weaknesses

• Possible to see the interlinking between different aspects of the culture under study, rather than looking at one person’s perspective in isolation

• The researcher can establish rapport and trust= honest, uninhibited discussion

Challenges of Ethnography

• Time consuming: Observations, Field notes, Quantity of data

• More subjective

• Greater potential to invite ethical issues: invasion of privacy and informed consent

•Depicts the people it studies as being in a void, uninfluenced by time and broader social constructs

What is the inductive approach

observation → pattern → tentative hypothesis → theory

What is the deductive approach

Theory → hypothesis → observation → confirmation

Types of data analysis

• Content analysis

• Discourse analysis

• Grounded theory

• Narrative analysis

• Thematic analysis

• IPA

Content analysis

blends quantitative into a primarily qualitative analysis (counting)

Discourse analysis

analysing conversations and interactions (stories)

Grounded theory

specific question and using the data alone to build a theory in response to that question.

Narrative analysis

Narrative analysis:

Thematic analysis

about identifying themes and patterns.

IPA

IPA: