Qualitative Research Methods in Social Sciences
Ethnography
Ethnography has been conceived as the science which describes and classifies cultures or peoples.
Features:
- Direct observation
- Working with unstructured data
- Working with hypotheses
- Having a new number of recorded data
- Exploring nature
Reach:
- Describes
- Interprets
- Includes
- Theorizes
Example: School textbooks which do not have the same rating. Children and teachers have their own socio-cultural patterns, which are not taken into account when incorporating them into the school. They have their own models because of socio-cultural factors, which must be understood.
Phenomenology
It is described as a descriptive, rigorous science that studies, shows, and explains the being in itself. It is concerned with the essence of lived experience (phenomena, intimate feelings).
Husserl:
Phenomenon as the study of the structures of science to enable knowledge to refer to objects outside of yourself. Intimate and search for the essence of phenomena.
What Does Phenomenology Describe?
It describes the experience as presented in consciousness, using the theory of inferences or assumptions.
Phenomenology = Phainomenon
A phenomenon that shows itself and that means studying science achievements.
Basic Principles of Phenomenology
- Intentionality of consciousness: All other acts of intentional human intentionality are always in a behavior aimed at anything in the world.
- The world can be considered as a phenomenon, as it shows man.
- A return to philosophy as the pursuit of truth and original pillars, without attempting to theorize, but to describe things in themselves.
- Philosophy without propositions suspends judgments about what you see up close a little more to them through the intersubject.
How Does Phenomenology Focus its Interest?
- Occurrence: Consider the issue as a philosophical search for truth and knowledge.
- Explaining the phenomenon
- Search for the truth and essence of the phenomenon record and phenomenological elements.
- The researcher seeks to establish direct contact with the phenomenon that is being experienced.
- The concern is the sense of showing and not showing.
- Study the experience of being human in a particular situation.
- Try to examine the experience, the meanings the subject of attributes.
Comment
Participant Observation
Observation is a systematic process by which a teacher-researcher collects selected information by itself about some problem that happens in it.
O = P = 1
Observation, perception, intention
- Categorical systems
- Descriptive systems
- Narrative Systems
- Technical Systems
Example: A teacher-researcher is trying to find if the school system’s vertical ducts lead to more selfishness than the horizontal.
Case Studies
The case study consists in addressing the particular, prioritizing the unique case where the effectiveness of particularization replaces the validity of generalization. Emphasis is placed on deepening the results above this.
Anguera: The case study involves an intensive and in-depth examination of various aspects of the same phenomenon. That is a specific phenomenon such as some programs, an event, a person, a process, an institution, or a social program.
Stake: This is not the choice of method but rather the choice of an object to be studied. We chose a case study. While the research approach is a case study defined by interest in individual cases rather than by the research methods used.
Characteristics of Case Studies
- Cases must raise a real situation.
- The description of the case must come from contact with real life and concrete and personal experiences of someone. It should stimulate curiosity and invite analysis.
- It should be clear and understandable.
- It should not suggest solutions but provide concrete data to reflect, analyze, and discuss in groups.
- It should encourage participation and appeal to students’ critical thinking.
- The major and minor aspects of information should be intertwined.
- The time for the “who’s who” mailing and decision-making should be limited.
- The case study technique trains the student in making decisions.
Steps to Develop a Research Project
- Choose the case
- The research question
- The collection and analysis of information
- The roles of the researcher
- The validation of results from triangulation
- The wording of the final report
Steps of Case Studies
Pre-active:
It takes into account the epistemological foundations that complete the problem or case, even pretend objectives, information available, the criteria for the selection of cases, the influences of the context where studies have been developed, and the resources and techniques needed. This phase also considers the expected timing and its relation to the monitoring to be made of the research very important.
Interactive:
Corresponds to fieldwork and procedures of the study, using different qualitative techniques: scenes of contacts and negotiation that serve to determine the early outlook of the researcher, interviews, observation, and documentary evidence. Anyway, at this stage, the triangulation procedure that can contrast different information from different sources is essential.
Post-active:
Refers to the development of the ethnographic and final report detailing critical reflections on the problem or case study. This critical appraisal of research staff can be included in the final report or added as a reprint of the same. In this sense, the studies differ consulted in the preparation of these extremes of the report.
Diagram
Pre-active Phase (What to Take into Account)
- Our preconceptions
- Theoretical foundations
- Prior information
- The objectives sought
- Case selection criteria
- Influence of interactions of the context
- Materials, resources, and techniques
Interactive Phase (Proceedings and Development of the Study)
- Journal of research
- Interview file (tapes and transcripts)
- Documentary evidence file
- Open interviews, touchdown, and business
- Transcription and discussion with the subject
- Interviews with teachers, colleagues, management, students, and parents
- Participant and non-participant observation
- During the preparation and development of curriculum modules
- Systematic monitoring throughout the course
- Analysis of documentary evidence: daily
Post-active Phase (The Report)
- Preparation of the initial report
- Discussion of the initial report
- Preparation of the final report
- Reflection on the results