This week’s module has provided me with new insights and learnings. In my professional context, I relate much more to qualitative data. I recently participated in a year-long study with a researcher who was very open about the process of preparing for analysis and explained the 5 stages guide for analysis by Morris (2015) to all of us research participants. The researcher being open about the process of how data was collected made it easier for me to participate in the study, which was on Assessment and Evaluation strategies in the classroom. As a result, I felt like I could really express my answers without fear of judgement, especially because the researcher would ask follow-up questions to statements I made. Engaging in this dialogue discussion made things feel much more natural and less scripted in my responses.
Collecting qualitative data allows for more genuine responses from people, though this also makes it more subjective. There have been other research studies I have participated in where I know I gave less genuine responses because I found the researcher posing the questions to be cold in personality, or I was uncomfortable with the questions they were posing. It does make me wonder how this can skew the data results. A question I had while I was reading through this week’s content is: Does qualitative research always have to involve human subjects? What are some examples of qualitative research that does not involve people?
References
Morris, A. (2015). A practical introduction to in-depth interviewing (pp.121-137). Sage. Chapter 8: Transcribing, analysing and writing up the interviews.
Toronto, February 2017
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