Qualitative Research and Intercultural Understanding

Conducting Qualitative Research in Multicultural Settings

Deborah Court

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138080096
• eBook ISBN: 9781351625777
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Qualitative Research and Intercultural Understanding: Conducting Qualitative Research in Multicultural Settings makes an important contribution to the fields of multiculturalism and qualitative research methods.

The first section of the book is a textbook on qualitative methodology. Beginning with a sketch of the historical roots of qualitative research and its place in the research landscape, the book then explores the notion of culture and our individual and collective experiences of culture. The chapters that follow explain how to frame a study and ask qualitative research questions, how to strengthen the trustworthiness of qualitative findings and how to collect and analyze data and write a research report. This section closes with a chapter on research ethics.

Every chapter is infused with the idea of researcher reflectivity in order to see beyond the researcher's personal cultural worldview. Examples of research studies are provided in every chapter, and each chapter concludes with questions and exercises for critical thought. The second section of the book is comprised of five contributed chapters in which researchers describe their own challenges in conducting research in multicultural settings. Graduate students, experienced researchers and all those interested in multiculturalism will find something to learn and enjoy in this vivid and unusual book.

Part I
Conducting qualitative research in multicultural settings

1
The Roots of Qualitative Research and its Place in the Research Landscape

An overview of research and basic terminology

Why do we do research? The basic reason is that we want to acquire new knowledge. We have questions we want to answer, problems we need to solve. We need to collect information in systematic ways not only in order to answer specific questions and solve immediate problems, but in order to contribute to shared bodies of knowledge that are the repositories of human understanding. These shared bodies of knowledge are known by names like biology, religious studies, sociology, history and psychology. As new knowledge is added through research, understandings are refined, solutions to problems are discovered and new questions for investigation arise. New questions sometimes require new research methodologies, and so these are developed as well. The goal of all of this work is to improve the human condition. What that means in different fields and to different peoples is often not clear-cut or unidimensional. Part of the work of research, or at least the continuation of this work, is to interpret and apply research findings to our lives.

In each knowledge domain, conceptual constructs are organized into theories. Broadly speaking, a theory is “a set of conceptual constructs that organizes and explains the observable phenomena in a stated domain of interest” (Pickett, Kolasa and Jones 2007, 62). Theory enables abstraction, prediction and generalizability. Theory sheds light on phenomena, above and beyond the details of a specific case. Research and theory are intimately connected. All research is related in some way to theory.

In the social sciences, as in the sciences, quantitative research turns to theory to provide or suggest the variables to be studied, and the research results lead to refinement of the theory or parts of it. The social sciences also embrace qualitative research, which usually begins with a broad theoretical framework but approaches a study with general questions and no hypotheses or specific variables. We assume that we do not know what colors, threads and patterns we will find in the cultural tapestry and we want to approach the investigation with open minds. Qualitative research is well suited for discovering new variables, for seeing a multitude of variables in interrelationship in their natural context, for describing as yet unexplored phenomena, and for constructing new theory. Qualitative and quantitative researchers thus contribute in different ways, and from different starting points, to the advancement of knowledge.

The underlying epistemology of quantitative and qualitative research is different. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with theories of knowledge. What do we consider to be knowledge, as opposed to, say, opinion, attitude, belief, superstition, experience, imagination? Is all knowledge provable through objective observation and testing? Positivist epistemology holds this view. Quantitative research, which involves observing and measuring variables and quantifying the results, is driven by positivist epistemology. Qualitative research, on the other hand, acknowledges that the subjectivity of the researcher perceives the subjective experience of research participants. This does not mean that ‘anything goes’, that any researcher can say what he or she likes about the lives of research participants. That would not be research! Research always strives towards truth (an inexact but precious idea). The constructivist epistemology underlying qualitative research holds that individuals construct their knowledge through experience, and that much personal and cultural knowledge is tacit, intimately tied to context, not easily expressed, and not suitable to the notion of proof. Some researchers call the epistemology underlying qualitative research interpretive, because the truth that qualitative researchers seek is the subjective truth of the research participants, the meanings they assign to their lives and cultures, perceived and understood through the researcher’s experience, empathy and intelligence. Other researchers call this kind of research naturalistic because people are studied in their natural environments. The constructivist, interpretive, naturalistic paradigm is also hermeneutic,¹ because it stresses subjective interpretation and the search for meaning and authentic truth, rather than ‘objective fact.’

These two different epistemological bases, positivist and constructivist, lead to the different approaches of quantitative and qualitative research in the social sciences. If knowledge is external, objective and measurable, we need tests and questionnaires to answer questions like, ‘what is the connection between x and y in this population?’ If, on the other hand, knowledge is personal, cultural, subjective, contextual and at least partly tacit, we need observations, in-depth interviews and analysis of cultural writings in order to answer questions like, ‘what is the lived experience of these research participants in their natural setting? What are the meanings of people’s actions, stories, symbols and beliefs?’ Sometimes qualitative and quantitative methods are combined in a mixed methods study,² but one research paradigm is dominant. A research paradigm is a framework of epistemological beliefs and methods. In no sense is one paradigm ‘better’ than the other. The different research paradigms are partners in our shared quest to advance knowledge, but quantitative and qualitative research, while their methods can sometimes be mixed, spring from different epistemologies, ask different kinds of questions, are designed and conducted differently, and generate different kinds of knowledge. In this context we often see the terms emic and etic. Emic refers to “the internal language and meanings of a defined culture,” whereas etic refers to “structures and criteria developed outside the culture as a framework for studying the culture . . .” and the use of “preexisting theories, hypotheses, and perspectives” (Olive 2006, np). Qualitative researchers “believe that rich descriptions of the social world are valuable” and are committed to “an emic, ideographic, case-based position that directs attention to the specifics of particular cases . . . Quantitative researchers, with their etic, nomothetic commitments . . . are deliberately unconcerned with rich descriptions because such detail interrupts the process of developing generalizations” (Denzin and Lincoln 2008, 12). Though the emic perspective is dominant in qualitative research, etic perspectives also have some role to play.

A delineation³ of research paradigms is provided by Guba and Lincoln (2008). They discuss positivism, post-positivism, critical theory, constructivism and participatory research. Positivism and constructivism we have defined above. Post-positivists are “less sure than classical positivists that it is always possible to separate the knower from the known and that there is a single shared reality that excludes all others . . . post-positivists have moved a little in the direction of the naturalists to argue that total neutrality of the researcher is not possible and that there may not always be a single reality that is acknowledged and shared by all” (Rubin and Rubin 2012, 19). Critical theory “aims to disrupt and challenge the status quo . . . questions the assumptions that [Western societies] are unproblemati-cally democratic and free . . . analyzes competing power interests between groups within a society . . . and the oppressive aspects of power” (Kincheloe and McLaren 2002, 87, 90, 96). Participatory research⁴ “attempts to make research a more inclusive and democratic process by fostering the development of partnerships between communities and academics to address community-relevant research priorities. As such, it attempts to redress ethical concerns that have emerged out of more traditional paradigms” (Flicker, Travers, Guta, McDonald and Meagher 2007, 478). These ideas are explored in the field known as philosophy of science, which investigates the historical, epistemological and conceptual bases underlying the search for knowledge that is the goal of all research. Philosophy of science entails:

beliefs or assumptions regarding ontology (the nature of reality and being), epistemology (the study of knowledge, the acquisition of knowledge, and the relationship between the knower [research participant] and would-be knower [the researcher]), axiology (the role and place of values in the research process), rhetorical structure (the language and presentation of the research), and methodology.

(Ponterotto 2005, 127)

Methodologies⁵ of quantitative and qualitative research

Research implications and methodologies spring from the different paradigms. The kind of knowledge we seek leads us to ask certain kinds of research questions, and to choose certain methods of data collection and analysis in order to answer our questions. This can be illustrated by the following accurate but greatly simplified view of different quantitative and qualitative methodologies.

Quantitative (positivist or post-positivist)

experimental – quasi-experimental – causal-comparative – correlational – survey

Qualitative (constructivist-interpretive)

• ethnography
• narrative
• case study
• phenomenology
• action research

Let’s say that we want to study bullying in schools with multicultural populations.

On the quantitative side, an experimental study essentially asks, ‘does x (the independent variable or cause) cause y (the dependent variable or effect), or a change in y?’ Four conditions must be met: there must be a treatment and a control group, random assignment to the two groups, a pretest and a posttest, and researcher manipulation of the independent variable. In our study of school bullying, we might introduce an anti-bullying program in 25 randomly selected schools (the treatment group) out of 50 randomly selected schools (the 25 schools that do not get the program are the control group) and study the levels of bullying in all the schools before and after the two-year program. Such a study can break students into subgroups according to, for instance, ethnic background, native language, age, gender and academic level, thus providing quite a complex statistical picture.

A quasi-experimental study is identical, except that one condition is missing. We are unable to randomly assign schools to the treatment or control groups; the school board insists on telling us which schools should get the program. The other three conditions are met. While there are statistical manipulations we can do to ‘even out’ the characteristics of the schools, there is still a chance that the schools that get the treatment are different than the schools that do not, and this somewhat decreases the trustworthiness of the results.

In a causal comparative study our research question is still the same, but another condition is missing: we do not initiate the anti-bullying program ourselves. An existing program is about to start running in some schools and not in others, and these become our treatment and control groups. We still have two groups of schools, and we will still do our pretests and posttests, but with less researcher control there is more chance that other variables are at work that will influence the results.

As we see from these examples, researchers must often choose between these three approaches to researching the same question according to what is possible in the field.

A correlational study does not seek out cause and effect; rather, such a study seeks out correlation between two (or more) variables. We ask, ‘what is the relationship between x and y?’ In our study of bullying the two variables might be immigrant students’ self-image and their reports of being bullied. Correlational studies have a kind of chicken-and-egg nature; the connection and interaction between the variables is of interest and there is no intention to prove that one causes the other.

We could also do a survey of many schools to find out teachers’, students’, parents’ and/or administrators’ views on or experience of school bullying. Survey research can give a broad snapshot of a population. Surveys can be distributed to hundreds or even thousands of people.

This highly simplified picture illustrates the kinds of important things we can learn from quantitative studies. These studies enable statistical generalization to the larger populations from which the study sample was drawn.

Arriving (finally!) at the qualitative train station, we begin to ask different kinds of questions that require different kinds of data collection and provide different kinds of knowledge. An ethnographic study aims to describe and understand culture. As we will see in chapter two, the idea of culture can be applied to groups of people living or working together in various settings such as organizations and schools. In our examination of bullying in schools with multicultural populations, we could study the cultures of, for instance, a school that reports a high level of bullying and a second school with a similar population that reports low levels of bullying. We would try to understand each school’s programs, interactions between the various players, stated and tacit norms and values. What is hung on classroom walls? What happens when someone bullies and is bullied? What kinds of relationships exist in the school?

We should note here that we can also contribute to understanding of school bullying through studying one of these schools. Qualitative research does not require, nor is it designed for, comparison. Rather, qualitative study sheds light on a phenomenon through in-depth study of even one case. When multiple cases are studied, each case is treated separately before any similarities and comparisons are drawn, the goal being understanding of the phenomenon, not comparison per se. Such study requires investment of considerable time. Like Rome, which was not built in a day, culture is not studied in a day. Cultural study takes time and patience. Understanding cultural patterns, norms and interactions can shed light on what might be dysfunctional in a school with a culture of bullying, as well as on what promotes and encourages different behaviors in a school culture where bullying is not prevalent. These understandings can contribute to ways of building positive school cultures.

A narrative study might seek out life stories of students from various ethnic and religious groups. Their stories would bring to life the persons behind the statistics and would also illuminate culture. Case studies shed light on a phenomenon through in-depth study of an instance of the phenomenon, revealing structures, interactions and processes that help us understand the phenomenon. This understanding of a phenomenon from the details of a case is called naturalistic generalization, as opposed to the statistical generalization that quantitative study allows (we will learn more about naturalistic generalization in coming chapters). Case study can certainly overlap with ethnography – an in-depth case study of one school cannot help but reveal aspects of the school’s culture. An ethnographic study of one school is certainly also a case study.⁶ Both ethnography and case study would to some extent include participants’ stories, though not to the depth and detail of a narrative study.

Phenomenology studies people’s lived experience: in our example, what is the lived experience of being bullied? And of bullying? Phenomenology, too, overlaps with the other kinds of qualitative research, since all qualitative research aims to understand participants’ lived experience. In some ways, while these four central kinds of qualitative research are ‘types’, they also embody the characteristics and nature of qualitative research as a whole.

A qualitative researcher need not necessarily rigidly define his or...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the author and contributors
• Introduction: why qualitative research and intercultural understanding?
• PART I Conducting qualitative research in multicultural settings
• PART II Voices from the field
• Index