Negotiating the Complexities of Qualitative Research in Higher Education

Essential Elements and Issues

Susan R. Jones, Vasti Torres, Jan Arminio

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000488364
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Hochschulausbildung

Negotiating the Complexities of Qualitative Research in Higher Education illuminates the complex nature of qualitative research, while attending to issues of application. This text addresses the essentials of research through discussion of strategies, ethical issues, and challenges in higher education. In addition to walking through the methodological steps, this text considers the conceptual reasons behind qualitative research and explores how to conduct qualitative research that is rigorous, thoughtful, and theoretically coherent. Seasoned researchers Jones, Torres, and Arminio combine high-level theory with practical applications and examples, showing how research in higher education can produce improved learning outcomes for students, especially those who have been historically marginalized. This book will help students in higher education graduate programs to cultivate an appreciation for the complexity and ambiguity of the research and the ways to think through questions and tensions that emerge in the process.

New in This Edition:

• Emphasis on participant representation and researcher reflexivity and positionality
• Additional conceptual frameworks that ground qualitative work in higher education and analyze power to reveal structural inequities
• A wider array of approaches including Participatory Action Research, Critical Discourse Analysis, and visual methodologies and methods
• A new chapter on writing that covers getting started, writing as analysis, writing to capture complexity, and positioning oneself in writing
• Updated citations and content throughout to reflect the newest thinking and scholarship
• New end-of-chapter discussion questions and activities to bolster accessibility of theory and help instructors support students' work on their course research projects.

1 Situating the Research

First Steps

DOI: 10.4324/9781003090694-1

Many beginnings are precarious, “The problem of the beginning is, in fact, the problem of the end. For it is with respect to an end that a beginning is defined” (Gadamer, 1960/1992, p. 472). How does a researcher negotiate the precariousness of beginning a study? How does a researcher arrive at a completed, excellent qualitative study? Addressing these questions requires qualitative researchers to consider both the essential and complex defining features of qualitative research. Essential features include situating the research within a compelling interest and purpose; the researcher’s worldview; the nature of knowledge, reality, and values; a conceptual framework; and expectations for excellence. Essential features also include a thoughtful design, methodological guidance, considerations of sampling, and making appropriate choices about collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data. Maintaining procedural, situational, relational, and anti-colonial ethics and meeting qualitative criteria for goodness are also essential features. Importantly, aligning these essential features requires complex skills because qualitative inquiry remains in the “shadow” of quantitative assumptions (Arminio & Hultgren, 2002, p. 449), meaning that unfortunately, complexities of qualitative inquiry described throughout this book continue to be overlooked by some researchers because of the omnipresent assumptions of quantitative research

In this first chapter, we begin exploring the complexities of the essential features of qualitative inquiry by discussing the process of situating qualitative inquiry in grounding perspectives. But first, we want to be clear about what qualitative work is and is not. In teaching courses in qualitative research, we often heard students refer to qualitative inquiry as merely interviewing. As the reader will realize, qualitative inquiry is far more complicated than that (hence, the title of our book). Qualitative inquiry is a set of aligned human-centered justice assumptions about knowledge, reality and existence, and values used to increase in-depth understanding about a compelling interest in which people’s perceptions and their stories are amplified.

To situate a study means to “anchor” it (Jones, 2002, p. 463). Anchoring is a decision-making process that involves a series of choices which include selecting and aligning a compelling interest and researcher’s worldview with a conceptual framework (i.e., methodological theory and theory that describes the focus of the study, Hatch, 2002) and research question. Typically, a researcher begins by identifying a compelling interest that drives other subsequent decision-making choices that situate the inquiry. Studies that are not situated or anchored risk running adrift, rambling without direction, or even doing harm to participants or communities. In this chapter we explore the immediate considerations for negotiating how to situate a study, offer corresponding examples from published research, and chronicle the decision-making process of a fictitious researcher “Drew,” as they situate a study. In subsequent chapters, however, we move on from Drew and solely utilize examples from published research to illustrate the concepts presented. By highlighting these various examples, we want to stress that there is more than one appropriate way to approach the features of qualitative inquiry; the point is that studies must be anchored. The immediate considerations introduced in this chapter are as follows:

• One: Situating the study within a compelling interest and purpose.
• Two: Situating the study within the researcher’s worldview.
• Three: Contemplating the nature of knowledge, reality and existence, and values.
• Four: Situating a study within a conceptual framework.
• Five: Choosing a pressing question.
• Six: Preparing for ethical obligations and expectations for excellent research.

Consideration One: Situating the Study Within a Compelling Interest and Purpose

Researchers must reflect upon what issue or topic is sufficiently compelling to investigate and if this investigation will take the form of a research study, evaluation, or assessment. Reflections should include answering questions such as, “What is it that presses upon me in a way that necessitates I understand it more? What unknown questions or issues deter my practice, institution, community, society?”

In general, there are several overarching purposes of qualitative research. These include illuminating and understanding in depth the richness in the lives of human beings and in the world. Typically this new understanding seeks to prompt emancipating practices. Hence, a researcher’s compelling interest should embrace these. Yet, this purpose should be balanced with what Marshall and Rossman (2016) called the “do-ability” of a study, or the feasibility that a study can be completed considering resources available, access to data, and researcher competence (p. 4).

Compelling interests that lead to unsettled questions are typically related to one’s own life experiences. This is not to be avoided. Marshall and Rossman (2016) referred to this as the “want-to-do-ability” of a study (p. 5), and is directly related to one of the central features of qualitative research, the researcher-as-instrument (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Patton, 2015). This means that in qualitative inquiry the researcher “elects to use [the self] as well as other humans as the primary data gathering instruments” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p. 39), rather than a survey, for example. There often is, and should be, a relationship between the researcher and the researched. This reflects the passion that later becomes the research question. Critics of qualitative research often refer to this relationship as bias; however, this bias should be considered as a strength of qualitative inquiry. We address this criticism in Consideration Two and later in this book, but we comment here that bias usually denotes prejudice (pre-judging), preference, and emotionality. Yet Patton (2015) posited that emotions, particularly empathy, should be a source of data for increased understanding because “emotion is not opposed to reason … How much human experience you miss by staying doggedly and dogmatically in your head” (p. 62). The concept of bias is a quantitative perspective that should not be confused with the qualitative characteristic of human-as-research-instrument, meaning fully human-as-instrument.

Let’s look at an example of situating a study within a compelling interest. In a graduate class on campus environments, Drew reads assignments that offer insights into Drew’s own experiences of being physically threatened, their privacy compromised, and in general feeling unwelcomed on campus. Drew reads literature that supports and validates their feelings and experiences that safety is a broader notion than physical safety. Hence, Drew feels compelled to study the notion of safety for their comprehensive final requirement. Another decision Drew must make is whether the inquiry will be a research study, assessment, or evaluation.

Research, Assessment, or Evaluation?

Qualitative methodologies can be used in assessments and evaluations, as well as for research purposes. Patton (2015) stressed that qualitative methods “are often used in evaluations because they tell the program’s story by capturing and communicating the participants’ stories” (p. 18). Although many institutions have had institutional research offices for decades, assessment offices have now become common, with specialized staff and faculty to conduct outcome assessments and evaluations (Henning & Roberts, 2016). Yet, individual faculty and staff in higher education and student affairs remain responsible for evaluating programs and learning. Note that here there is some inconsistency about terms and definitions. For example, though Patton (2015) is a strong proponent of using qualitative inquiry for program evaluation, he rarely uses the term assessment, whereas assessment is a term frequently used in student affairs. We define these terms below according to how we believe they are used in higher education and student affairs.

Briefly, research is the work of scholars and practitioners for the benefit of scholars and practitioners. Research explains phenomena through theory building to improve practice and understanding. Research assumes broader implications than one institution or program. Assessment, on the other hand, is more focused on the outcomes of specific participant programs, but can include institution-wide programs. Students are the beneficiaries of assessment through the goal of improved specific practices. The term assessment does not infer individual student outcomes. The purpose of assessment is to guide practice rather than relate practice to theory. Assessment includes “collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and disseminating data applied for accountability and program and learning improvement,” whereas evaluation is concerned with program administrators making judgments about individual programs (Henning & Roberts, 2016, p. 38; see also Suskie, 2018). Note that the audience for research is typically other researchers, policy makers, and disciplines, while audiences of assessment and evaluation studies tend to be more internal to institutions or organizations sponsoring the programs being reviewed. Importantly, as Figure 1.1 indicates, there is some overlap and the three are related.

For example, a program for adult students should be based on adult development or learning theory that was created through research. Outcomes of the theory-based program are assessed to determine if ...