Qualitative Methods



Juan C. Rocha

slides: juanrocha.se/presentations/USES_qualitative_methods

Outline

  1. Qualitative research

  2. Approaches

  3. Qualitative methods
    • Ethnography
    • Interviews
    • Focus groups
    • Conversation & Discourse Analysis
    • Document Analysis

  4. Coding: from data to insights

  5. Examples on SES research

Emphasis on words and narratives

Qualitative research



  • Inductive view of the relationship between theory and research
  • Epistemologically described as interpretivist
  • Ontological position of constructionist

Bryman. 2008. Social Research Methods. Oxford University Press

Main steps



  1. Research question
  2. Selection of site or case
  3. Data collection
  4. Data analysis / interpretation
  5. Conceptual work
    • Redefine research question(s)
    • Data collection
    • Back to 4
  6. Writing findings


Bryman. 2008. Social Research Methods. Oxford University Press

Reliability and validity



  • External reliability: can be replicated?
  • Internal reliability: inter-observer consistency
  • Internal validity: match between obs and theory
  • External validity: generalized to other settings?

Approaches to qualitative data analysis

  1. Interpretivism
  2. Ethnography
  3. Action research

Interpretivism


“Human activity is seen as "text" – as a collection of symbols expressing layers of meaning”

How should one interpret such text? Interpretation is made both by researchers and actors.

Problem: researchers are not more detached from their objects of study than their informants. They have convictions, understandings, and conceptual orientations. Difficult to separate “external” from what they contribute when decoding & encoding informants words.

Miles & Huberman. 1994. Qualitative Data Analysis. Sage

Ethnography


  • Direct or indirect participation
  • Extended contact with community
  • Description of local particularities
  • Little structured instrumentation (but audio, video)
  • Behavioural regularities in everyday situations

Miles & Huberman. 1994. Qualitative Data Analysis. Sage

Action research


“an approach in which the actions researcher and members of a social setting collaborate in the diagnosis of a problem and in the development of a solution based on the diagnosis” – Bryman

Aim: Transform social environment through a process of critical inquiry – act on the world rather than being acted on – Miles & Huberman

  • Researchers join with participants from the outset
    • Define research problem, question, and method
  • Field experiment: intervention
  • Data collected are given to social actors for feedback and plan next stages

Pros and Cons

  • Seeing through the eyes of the people being studied: meanings
  • Description and emphasis on context
  • Emphasis on process
  • Flexibility and limited structure
  • Concepts and theory grounded in data


Bryman. 2008. Social Research Methods. Oxford University Press

Ethnography & participant observation

Ethnography

  1. Researcher is immersed in a social setting for an extended period of time
  2. Makes regular observations of the behaviour of members of that setting
  3. Listens to and engages in conversations
  4. Interviews informants
  5. Collects documents
  6. Develops understanding of culture
  7. Writes up

Ethnography

Field notes & journals

  • Pen & paper
  • Mental notes
  • Scratch notes
  • Full field notes (end of day)
  • Recordings = transcription

Interviews

  1. Unstructured
  2. Semi-structured
  3. Structured = Survey



Examples: life history, oral history
Aim: the world views of the participant

Focus groups

Interview for groups

  1. Typically emphasize a specific theme or topic
  2. Researcher is interested in how the group discusses, the reactions of one opinion to others

Focus groups

What do you need?

  1. Participants (experience, expertise)
  2. Facilitator
  3. Recording + transcription



Bryman. 2008. Social Research Methods. Oxford University Press

Focus groups

Limitations

  • Researcher has less control
  • Data are difficult to analyse and organise
  • Recording and transcription is more time consuming
  • Multiple speakers, dominance of few, suppressed views
  • Participants prone to express culturally expected views
  • Conflict or discomfort



Bryman. 2008. Social Research Methods. Oxford University Press

Language

Conversation and discourse analysis

Conversation analysis

It is the fine-grained analysis of talk as it occurs in the interaction in naturally occurring situations

  • Contextual understanding of action (talking)
  • Ontological position of constructivism
  • Indexicality: the meaning of an act (speaking words) depends on the context it which it is used
  • Reflexivity: words are constructive of the social world in which they occur

Conversation analysis

Transcription with details

hh & .hh = breath in & out
We:ll = sound prolongation
(0.8) = silence in 1/10 secs
you know = emphasis
(.) = pause

Discourse analysis


“…emphasizes the way versions of the world, of society, events and inner psychological worlds are produced in discourse”
Stance:

  • Anti-realist: denies there is an external reality
  • Constructionist

Questions:

  1. What is the discourse doing?
  2. How is the discourse constructed to make it happen?
  3. What resources are available to perform this activity?

Document analysis



  • Document:
    • can be read, accessible?
    • not produced for the purpose of research
    • available for analysis
  • Types:
    • personal (letters, biographic material, pictures)
    • official public documents
    • official private documents
    • virtual documents

Source: Bryman (2008) Social research methods. Oxford

Now what?

Qualitative Data Analysis

Analytical strategies

  1. Analytic induction: researcher seeks universal explanations of phenomena by pursuing data collection until no cases are inconsistent with hypothetical explanations of the phenomenon found.
  2. Grounded theory: derived from data, in an iterative / recursive process

coding

Coding

Reviewing transcripts or field notes and giving labels to component parts that seem to be of potential theoretical significance or that appear to be particularly salient within the social words of subjects studied



  • Concepts: theory building blocks
  • Categories: eagles, doves = birds
  • Properties: fly
  • Hypotheses
  • Theories

Bryman, A. 2008. Social research methods. Oxford University Press
Miles & Huberman. 1994. Qualitative Data Analysis. Sage

Break (15min)

Examples

QCA | causal recipes: What makes Arctic communities resilient?

Inspiration

Berkes et al 2003 Navigating SES
Carson & Peterson 2016 Arctic Resilience Report

Case studies

Necessary and sufficient conditions

What makes a system resilient?

Communities with higher capacity to self-organise were more likely to remain resilient

Interviews | modelling: Misperception of feedbacks in a lobster fishery

Providence island



  • 2004 - Participant observation at Fish & Farm coop
  • 2005 - Semi-structured interviews
  • Mathematical model development
  • Use of behavioural games to test for effectiveness of institutions or management rules

Misperceptions


Human rationality is bounded by limitations of information, time, and cognitive ability, leading to systematic errors of judgment and choice. Misperceptions are a general term that account for such failures, often associated with the difficulties in accounting for delayed dynamics and the effect of feedbacks between human decisions and the environment
  • Temporal misperceptions (~2yrs delay)
  • Spatial misperceptions (migration patterns)
  • Power asymmetries (who fishes what)
  • Abundance (depletion of adults)
  • Social misperceptions:
    • Rule compliance
    • Power of others
    • Conservation attitudes
    • Drug smuggling

Coding


  • Interviews = 60 questions (past, present & future)
  • Categories:
    • Biological sustainability
    • Economic sustainability
    • Cultural sustainability
    • Resilience:
      • Indicators of change
      • Vulnerability
      • Innovation
      • External shocks
      • Slow and fast variables

Co-occurrence of causes: What are the main regime shift drivers?

Forest to savanna

Regime shifts are large, abrupt and persistence critical transitions in the function and structure of (eco)systems

Coral transitions

Regime shifts are large, abrupt and persistence critical transitions in the function and structure of (eco)systems

Fisheries collapse

Regime shifts are large, abrupt and persistence critical transitions in the function and structure of (eco)systems

How do we compare regime shifts?

Inspiration

.

Drivers

Re-cap

  1. Qualitative research

  2. Approaches

  3. Qualitative methods
    • Ethnography
    • Interivews
    • Focus groups
    • Conversation & Discourse Analysis
    • Document Analysis

  4. Coding: from data to insights

  5. Examples on SES research

Tack | Gracias

Questions?


email: juan.rocha@su.se
twitter: @juanrocha
slides: juanrocha.se/presentations/USES_qualitative_methods

Stockholm Resilience Centre
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