Research prose has beginnings, middles and ends that collectively answer the questions “What happened?” and “Why should I care?” . The “middle” part of an article addresses the question, “what happened?” — in qualitative research, two types of information are supplied: a methods statement (how the data was collected) and the research outcomes (how the data can be understood).
Explaining Qualitative Methods
Two kinds of explanation are implied by “methods” in qualitative research: 1) the actual processes of data collection; 2) justification for the data collection process. As work contributing to the research (science) literature, all qualitative research reports must explain how data was collected. However, the degree of justification for methods varies in relationship to the intended readership.
Actual Processes of Data Collection
Qualitative research is unique in that it cannot achieve the gold-standard of traditional quantitative methods: replicability of the method. Because qualitative researchers acknowledge the impact of shifting contexts on outcomes, methods statements are not intended to be recipes or formulas for a reader to follow precisely. Instead, the writer aims to meet two standards: 1) provide enough information about how data was collected to reasonably assure a reader that the interpretation of outcomes based on those methods is credible; 2) provide enough detail about methods that a reader could adapt the study to a novel context. (For guidance, see Trochim’s Qualitative Methods and Qualitative Validity.)
Justifying a Qualitative Approach
Interestingly enough, unless the researcher is squarely in the field of cultural anthropology (and some kinds of sociology), writers feel compelled to explain to readers why a qualitative approach was taken. In any research field dominated by quantitative methodology, most readers will need an explanation of how qualitative research works and what such data contributes to the field. In fields where qualitative research is well-understood, the writer does not need to justify the methodology itself, but instead, explains how the particular qualitative design and/or theoretical frame generate new and valuable perspectives.
The excerpts below exemplify the two ends of the continuum. The first two examples illustrate justifying qualitative methodology itself to an audience presumed to be unfamiliar with the approach. The second two examples assume a knowledgeable audience, thus focus on what made the qualitative study unique. The third set of examples demonstrates that when the writer’s audience is assumed to be both knowledgeable of and friendly towards qualitative design, there may be very little “method” explained at all.
Set One
Example || First assessments by specialist cancer nurses in the community: An ethnography
Method
An Ethnographic approach was selected as the research method for the study. This approach combines non-participant observation of first visits by specialist cancer nurses to patients in the community followed by semi-structured interviews with the specialist nurses. The ethnographic approach enabled the researcher, who is also a specialist cancer nurse, to question the familiar (Lambert and McKevitt, 2002) and to provide a ‘thick’ description of how the first assessment was carried out and to hear specialist nurses’ views on the impact of using the SCC.
The naturalistic approach using ethnography regards the knowledge and practice of ‘experts’ as locally variable rather than assuming that biomedical concepts and practices are universal (Lambert and McKevitt, 2002). A purposive sample of seven specialist cancer nurses experienced in using the SCC were invited to participate in the study and six came forward to participate. The specialist nurses were all female, aged between 40 and 50 years. They had been specialist nurses from between two and seven years and had prior experience in oncology of between two and ten years. So they were all experienced specialist nurses with a minimum of two years experience in the field.
Data were collected from 6 non-participant observation episodes followed by 6 semi-structured interviews with specialist nurses following the first assessment visit. The first assessments in this study represented non-urgent referrals to the service. Three methods of recording data were used: non-participant observation and the writing of field notes; semi-structured interviews, which were audio recorded as a means to further illuminate the use of the SCC and uncover specialist nurses views of the SCC; and finally a field journal was kept to reflect on the research as it unfolded and to document how the specialist nurses were reacting to the researcher. The research journal helped the researcher to reflect on her insider (specialist nurse) and outsider (researcher) status and to integrate thinking and avoid fragmenting of the data and to keep a footing as a researcher. Credibility and rigour were maintained by use of the research journal, by the use of thick description within the field notes and by keeping an audit trail including regular interaction with the research supervisor and avoidance of ‘going native’ as a practitioner rather than a researcher (O’Reilly, 2008).
The researcher travelled to the patient’s home with the specialist nurse. The first assessment was observed to take between 45 min and 1 h 15 min. The field notes were recorded at the time of the assessment while sitting with the specialist nurse and the patient. The semi-structured interviews with the specialist nurse were conducted with the same nurse as soon as it was possible following the observed episode. The interview was audio-recorded and lasted between 25 and 35 min in length. An interview schedule (topic guide) was used which consisted of an opening question: ‘How did you feel the assessment went?’ followed by other open-ended questions about the first assessment. The audio-recordings were transcribed verbatim as soon as possible after the interview.
Data from the semi-structured interviews and field notes were analysed using iterative thematic analysis. This approach stems from a tradition of qualitative research where the researcher is guided by the data rather than a pre-established hypothesis (Hansen, 2006; Silverman, 2012). Throughout the period of data collection the researcher was immersed in the data as it arose through non-participant observation and the writing of field notes. A process of colour coding the data was employed highlighting interesting aspects, assigning parts of the data to codes for future retrieval and then assigning them to emerging themes (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007; O’Reilly, 2008). The researcher became familiar with the data in its entirety by reading and re-reading the transcripts and field notes. The research journal enabled the researcher to reflect on the emerging themes and to begin to refine and check the themes for completeness. Ethical approval for the study was granted by the National Research Ethics Committee.
Analysis: This methods statement begins with the subheading, “Methods”, making it an actual functional Methods section. This cues the reader immediately that the writer has something to say about Methods, whether for the purpose of educating a novice audience, persuading a hostile one, or explaining context details to an informed and friendly readership. In this case, the writer is assuming an audience who is likely unfamiliar with qualitative methods; in this situation, the writer generally begins with an explanation of qualitative research itself before providing the details typically associated with a methods section (subjects/participants, procedure, and tools/instruments). The sentences in blue explain and justify qualitative methods. The first set of blue sentences names, then explains the hallmarks of this approach. The second set of blue sentences introduce the reader to how researchers analyze qualitative data. The orange sentences lay out the procedures of the study, from participant recruitment to how data was collected and managed. (The final sentence in orange is a normal statement required when working with human and animal subjects.)
Example || The “knucklehead” approach and what matters in terms of health for formerly incarcerated Latino men
Methods
Investigating the masculinity of FILM in relation to health promotion messages is a challenge, given the multiple social processes that influence health-seeking behavior (Macnaughton, 2008). Ethnography is an ideal methodology for elucidating social processes within a particular culture. The dynamic nature of the ethnographic design can capture multiple perspectives of the social phenomena of study, including the following: the voices of individuals, the interactions between individuals, the external observation of group behaviors, and the documentation of belief systems and their transition to practice (Fonseca, 2004, Fuller, 2004, Gutmann, 2004 and Olavarria, 2004). Our ethnography was divided into two components: participant observation of the socialization situations of FILM and key informant interviews.
Ethnographic observations
In this study, we conducted observations in three spaces: 1) a church that was attended by a large number of Puerto Rican FILM; 2) antiviolence youth spaces (“peace zones”); and 3) street corner gatherings that included FILM. We began the ethnography in an antiviolence program in the South Bronx, New York. The above three types of spaces were identified after conducting the first 5 key informant interviews, for which the informants were recruited by the first author during his initial ethnography of street corners in the Bronx, New York. These three spaces were stable socialization points for FILM in these neighborhoods. During each ethnographic observation, the ethnographers collected information and classified it into four major categories: 1) traits: the characteristics of the social scenarios and social actors; 2) activities: the types of socializing and/or commercial activities that take place in these spaces; 3) dynamics: the interactions among group members regarding the control of group conversations, teasing patterns and collective responses to the social scene; and 4) reactions: the non-verbal and verbal reactions that occurred once topics of health were introduced into the conversation by the ethnographer (this introduction was performed after a number of ethnographic observations). Ethnographers wrote down their observations immediately after leaving the observation site, and these records were used for this analysis. Informed consent was not obtained during ethnographic observations of public behavior. This methodology was approved by the Columbia University Medical Center Institutional Review Board.
Key informant interviews (KIs)
KIs are an essential data collection method in ethnographic research and one of the most effective ways of obtaining detailed information about issues of interest in hidden populations (Schensul, Schensul, & LeCompte, 1999). During the course of the initial field observations in the South Bronx, two individuals were identified and agreed to serve as “street mentors” to the first author. The street mentors became research assistants in the field and helped to identify and interview key informants. The KIs ranged in age from 16 to 29 years old (n = 32) and were divided into tertiles among three age sub-groups: 16–19; 20–24 and 25–29. Interviews were conducted concurrently with participant observations. Key informant interviewing does not require a specific amount of time or number of interviews (Schensul et al., 1999). We asked key informants for their assessments of the accuracy of our observations of their perspectives and experiences regarding the salience of health. For those who were interested in health and who took actions to protect their health, we asked about the transition process by which they became aware and conscious of their decision-making with respect to health matters. We conducted two to four interviews per key informant. Key informants were compensated $25 for their time during the second interview. All of the interviews took place while drinking coffee or having a light meal with the participant in a food establishment. The informed consent process consisted of describing the focus of the study, the risks and benefits of participating as a key informant, rights to privacy and confidentiality, and the procedures that would be used for the multiple interviews. Interviews were conducted in Spanish, English, or both, depending on the participant’s choice. The interviews were taped and transcribed within two weeks of the day of the interview. Written parental assent was obtained for youths aged 16 and 17. For all of the names of the key informants who are cited in this paper, pseudonyms have been used to protect informants’ privacy and comply with human rights procedures approval from the Columbia University Medical Center Institutional Review Board (IRB AAAA 7371).
Key informants had served at least 2-3 sentences in jail, and a third of them served time in a New York State prison. All key informants had been released within the prior 5 years. Half of the sample had 1–2 years of high school but only one completed high school. Three quarters of the sample obtained their GED while in prison/jail. 42.3% of the respondents worked full time, while 28.2% worked part-time and 29.5% were out of work. There were 4 ethnographers, including the first author. The informants were males, of a similar age, working class and of Puerto Rican ancestry.
Data management and analysis
Fieldnotes and key informant interview transcripts were entered into ATLAS.ti, a software package that is specifically designed to analyze text data. ATLAS.ti allowed for the coding of textual data by general themes and by specific topics that can be retrieved at the conclusion of the coding for the execution of data analysis. To examine the first study aim, identifying what matters to FILM in terms of their health, we listed each of the issues that were mentioned during the key informant interviews. The first part of our analysis consisted of a thematic analysis (Neuendorf, 2002), for which we generated lists based on the answers to questions about general priorities and FILM’s thoughts and perspectives in regard to health matters. We conducted a similar theme list generation procedure to address the second study aim, which was to explore the reasons for FILM’s risk practices. The second part of the analysis focused on case studies (Yin, 2009), in which we identified case studies of key informants to illustrate central themes. These case studies were selected based on consensus among the authors. In this second part of the analysis, fieldnotes were coded based on the following: 1) how issues of health and well-being were brought into group discussions; 2) health and risky practices observed and 3) group dialogs about health and risk. Consensus was obtained through discussions among the authors. In this paper, we present our findings from both the key informant narratives and the ethnographic observations.
Analysis: As above, the methods statement is headed by a functional heading, cluing the reader that more details about method are to follow. The blue sentences provide a brief justification of ethnography as a technique for collecting data in this population. The brevity of the justification suggests the writer assumes a friendlier or more knowledgeable audience; most of the Methods section is devoted to explaining the typical parts of a method section: participants, materials, and procedure.
Set Two
Example || The Dialectical Gaze: Exploring the Subject-Object Tension in the Performances of Women who Strip
METHOD
To explore the stripping performances at Paper Dolls, I spent three months (120 hours) observing the practices in the club, including time watching the front-stage activities and hanging out backstage in the dancers’ changing room and in the manager’s office. Field notes were taken whenever possible, and as discreetly as possible, so as not to draw too much attention to my presence as a researcher. Extensive field notes were written after each observation period. During observations, I informally interviewed dancers, waitresses, bartenders, and floor managers. These interviews were conversational and were not taperecorded, but notes were taken and the interviewees were aware of the study. I formally interviewed ten dancers, the general manager, two assistant managers, a doorman, a waitress, and the housemother (the person who helps the dancers put on makeup and change clothes). Interviewees were selected to provide a cross section of day- and night-shift workers, ages (ranging from eighteen to thirty-nine), and dancing experience (from two months to nine years). Each person approached agreed to be interviewed for the study and was promised confidentiality in exchange. These formal interviews lasted between one hour and four hours and were all tape-recorded and transcribed. The interviews followed a moderately scheduled format that asked the same questions of each party but allowed for flexibility to follow up interesting tangents. Five of the formal interviews with the dancers, the general manager, the two assistant managers, and the doorman took place privately in the manager’s back office. The housemother, waitress, and three of the dancers were interviewed in the dancers’ changing room. The final two dancers were formally interviewed in a restaurant. Afraid of how the customers would react to questions, the general manager requested that I not interview them. Following prescribed research methods, field notes and interviews were all analyzed according to prevalent themes of power and resistance (Bantz 1993).
Several characteristics of Paper Dolls merit mention as a context for the research presented here. First, the club sells alcohol and is therefore regulated by the state to follow specific policies. For example, the dancers are only allowed to strip to G-string underwear and must wear pasties over their nipples. Legally, customers are only allowed to touch the dancers on their arms and hips. Second, the club has a policy that no single women are allowed to enter alone as management views them as competition for the dancers. Therefore, throughout this research a male companion or off-duty dancers accompanied me. Third, the dancers are considered employees of the club. They do not have to pay an independent contractor fee for dancing. They do, however, have to tip out the DJ and the housemother.
Prior to this research, I had never been to a topless bar. As a naive participant, I was a woman experiencing a space primarily created for the fantasies of men. Callaway (1992) noted the implications of gender in fieldwork: simultaneously constrained and enabled by gender, researchers will “experience” their fieldwork differently (p. 29).4 Clearly, my experience of life at Paper Dolls cannot be identical to others. Indeed, Clifford (1986) stated, “Ethnographic writings can properly be called fictions in the sense of ‘something made or fashioned’ ” (p. 6). In this spirit, throughout this analysis I provide italicized ethnographic fictions drawn from interviews and field note data to help provide more contextual narratives for my findings.
Analysis: In this article, the writer chooses to use the functional subheading, but not to justify ethnography itself. There is no language here which explains what qualitative research is or why it is a valid approach in this context. Thus, the sentences in orange serve the same purpose as in Set One: they provide typical methods information on participants, materials, and procedures. Then, in green, the writer specifies what makes this environment unique; the reader is apprised of the challenges of gender in ethnographic research and told how this writer dealt with those challenges.
Example || A Couple of White Guys Sitting around Talking: The Collective Rationalization of Cigar Smokers
METHOD
This study employed ethnographic methods of data gathering. As Nick Trujillo (1992) has asserted, “Ethnographic methods require researchers to immerse themselves in the field for an extended period of time in order to gain a detailed understanding of how members interpret their culture” (p. 352). The data presented in this study were collected using participant observation and interviewing over a three-year period (September 1997 through June 2000) that, in total, entailed more than six hundred hours of fieldwork.
Before I became an ethnographer studying the regulars at Tullio’s, however, I was first a “Tullio’s regular.” This position allowed me a privileged opportunity to be both a friend and a researcher with unlimited access to the shop’s rituals, conversations, self-disclosures, arguments, parties, and weekend outings. The men in the shop freely shared their professional and private lives with me, expecting only to be treated fairly and respectfully in the finished monograph.7 My close relationships with the regulars, however, were always tempered by my concern as a researcher of “going native,” a term used by Frey, Botan, Friedman, and Kreps (1991) to refer to “researchers who become so close to the people they are studying that they begin to ignore or deny unpleasant or unethical aspects of their behavior” (p. 238).
During the three years under study, I spent an average of two days per week, two hours per visit, at Tullio’s. Besides the observational time I spent in the cigar shop during official store hours, I am also the percussionist for the cigar shop’s rock ’n’ roll band—Up in Smoke. The band rehearses every Tuesday night (after the store closes) in Tullio’s basement. The band consists of seven regulars from the shop with varying degrees of musical expertise, including James who is the band’s defacto leader given that he is the (1) common denominator linking our friendships together, (2) owner of our practice studio, and (3) lead singer and front man for the band. The majority of the band’s “gigs” are private parties given by other regulars outside the shop. As one can imagine, cigar smoke and cigar talk are always key ingredients at both gatherings.
During observation sessions of this project, I adopted three specific practices that enabled me to capture more detail and accuracy of the interactions. First, I took extensive field notes in the shop that reconstructed our verbatim conversations. While this activity was reported to be conspicuous during the first week, my presence with my notebook over the subsequent three years became an established, and welcomed, expectation. Second, I recorded many of our more lengthy exchanges on a portable tape recorder that I kept by my side, enabling me to turn it on inconspicuously without drawing attention to me or away from the discussion. While I am aware that both taking notes and recording conversations change the dynamics of any naturalistic encounter, I attempted to take every precaution to minimize its disruptive influence. In cases in which recording interactions posed a significant barrier to spontaneous and truthful interactions, I opted for the use of post encounter field noting. Specifically, I dictated descriptions of significant events or dialogues into a portable tape recorder immediately after leaving the shop.
Along with the copious field notes that were taken over this three year period, I also conducted twenty audiotaped interviews that specifically focused on health-related issues of cigar smoking.8 Although the regulars at Tullio’s are a fairly homogenized group of men, I attempted to balance the age, class, occupation, and seniority of the interviewees. These observational and interviewing sessions complied with the academic and moral guidelines established by Agar (1986), Fetterman (1989), Spradley (1979), and other ethnographic researchers. After all the field notes and interviews were transcribed, statements dealing with health issues of cigar smoking were organized by their dominant arguments. The overwhelming majority of such statements took the form of prosmoking arguments aimed at refuting antismoking assertions. These prosmoking arguments were clustered around five dominant arguments (detailed in the fifth section).9
Analysis: Most of this Methods section provides the kind of specific details expected when writers explain the research process; these sentences are in orange. The green portions indicate sections where the author provides additional information about what made his interaction in this environment unique.
Set Three
Example || Willing to Work: Agency and Vulnerability in an Undocumented Immigrant Network
“SOMETHING IS INSTILLED IN THEM FROM BIRTH, I THINK”: ON CULTURE, STRUCTURE, AND WORKERS’ AGENCY
The ethnographic focus of this article is a cohort of ten undocumented immigrant men: Alejandro, Alberto, Chuy, Lalo, Leonardo, Luis, Manuel, Omar, Rene, and Roberto.3 All of these men have worked as busboys in Chicago-area restaurants, and they all are members of the same transnational social network that moves between Chicago, Illinois, and León, Guanajuato, Mexico.4 These workers differ meaningfully in their beliefs, experiences, and plans for the future, but they also have important things in common. They are friends, and in some cases brothers and cousins, who share the stigma of being “illegal aliens” and the dignity of being hard workers and family men. In this article, I examine how these workers use their agency to create a culture of hard work that is responsive to their particular structural vulnerabilities. But how to best conceptualize the everyday interactions of culture, structure, and agency remains an enduring anthropological problem.
Analysis: Two major differences characterize this method “statement”. First, there is no separate methods subheading; instead, the writer immediately begins parsing the text according to the analytical themes uncovered in the study. These are signaled using topical subheadings that indicate something about content in that section. (More on that in the Middles: Outcomes section.) Second, there is no additional explanation provided for what ethnographic methods were employed. The phrase in purple is the only overt mention of study approach (the word, “ethnography” is used a few times in the same manner throughout the introduction, but never further explained). Clearly, this writer expects the reader to be familiar enough with ethnographic methods that no explanation is necessary. In other words, the term, “ethnography”, is being used in its technical sense, as a “term of art“: the uninformed reader will need to do some additional research if more explanation is required.
My interviews targeted women who regularly used a specific space, Prospect Park, and asked them to qualitatively describe their patterns of physical activity in the park, preferred features of the park for physical activity, and concerns or difficulties in using the park. Data presented here come from semi-structured interviews with women who used the park during summer of 2001, who ranged from age 18 to 85, and who identified as White (31 women), African American (5), Filipina (2), Latina-Asian American (1), Jamaican (1), and Cuban (1). In the section below, I present some themes that emerged regarding women’s uses of the park.
Analysis: This sole paragraph about methodology comes after two literature reviews about health, physical activity and the use of public park spaces (the built environment). The writer does not use the word “ethnography” or “qualitative” to describe the methodology (the word “qualitatively” as used above does not describe the method, but the kind of information informants were asked to provide). Instead, the writer supplies a straightforward, concise statement of how data was collected.
This article is based upon an 18-month ethnographic study of the New York City-based website and organization ‘freegan.info’, which included participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and analysis of key freegan documents and communications. I begin my argument by reviewing the literature on NSMs, and showing how freegan.info fits into the framework created by Melucci and others. Existing publications on dumpster diving, scavenging, and freeganism, however, largely eschew a social movement interpretation and treat freeganism as a totalizing, sub-cultural lifestyle. Yet most participants in freegan.info do not entirely ‘drop out’ of capitalism. Instead, they engage in a limited repertoire of practices, with dumpster diving being by far the most central. This emphasis on dumpster diving seems odd, since eating food waste seems to be an entirely unappealing mode of collective action. This article explores freegan collective dumpster dives as acts of political street theater, through the lens of social dramaturgy introduced by Goffman (1959). I ultimately suggest that freegans perform their identities through dumpster diving in a way that is, at least in part, strategically calculated to garner media attention, attract new adherents, and make concrete demands.
Analysis: This paragraph is the final paragraph of the Introduction and is followed by Outcomes section of the research; there is no “Methods” section. The writer provides a straightforward declaration of the methods used, clearly assuming a reader who is familiar with the terms (in orange). The rest of the paragraph lays out the research goals and overviews the rest of the article, as is standard with the final paragraph of the Introduction.