Progress in Qualitative Reasoning and Analysis, Essay Example

Introduction

At the end of undertaking any course, it is important for a student to be able to discern precisely what are the things that he or she would be taking out of the course and bringing with him or her in her the succeeding courses that he/she would undertake as well as in her professional life. This is the main goal of this reflective assessment paper. In this paper, I seek to assess my progress in qualitative reasoning and analysis after having gone through a course in qualitative research design that featured the five traditions in qualitative research. In the following sections, I compare my knowledge and skills in qualitative research prior to undertaking the study with the same variables at the end of the course. Within this section, I also indicate the current weaknesses in qualitative analysis that I still have and how I intend to address such weaknesses. Following this, I discuss how the course was able to help me discern a suitable topic for my dissertation. In particular, I consider how I changed my original topic in developing a research proposal as part of the requirements of this course and if that would come to be the proposal that I would actually utilize for my dissertation. Then, I consider the value of being exposed to the qualitative research software; NVivo is to me in this course, both in gaining a better understanding of qualitative studies and in selecting between a quantitative or a qualitative research design. Finally, I consider the value of this course to my residency requirements.

Progress of skills in qualitative reasoning and analysis

At the start of this course, I practically had no idea about what qualitative research was all about. If someone had asked me what qualitative research was, I would have answered something similar to a library research, where the researcher simply goes through available content and synthesizes such content. Of course, this answer would have been very wrong, and I am glad to be able to write that I now know much better. It is not possible to progress in qualitative reasoning and analysis without first knowing what qualitative reasoning and analysis is all about, and this was one of the first things that this course was able to teach me. I am now aware that qualitative research is a research paradigm that deviates from the statistics-heavy perspective of quantitative research, and delves more into the depth of understanding human behavior by considering people’s perspectives and the reasons behind such perspectives through intensive, subjective data gathering. This course was able to introduce me to the five different traditions of qualitative research, and I have found each tradition quite interesting. I am now aware of why it is not necessary in qualitative research to draw out a statistically representative sample of the population, and why it is better to aim for data gathering saturation than this.

In this course, I was able to gain hands on experience in gathering data, both through observation and through interviewing. In observation, I was able to gain the skill of separating an objective input from an interpretive input, and realize that while both may be useful in qualitative research, it is important for researchers to be able to differentiate between one and the other. In interviewing, I learned about the importance of minimizing interviewer bias by ensuring that the questions are not loaded, by not leading the interviewee into answering the way that the researcher wants him or her to answer, and by ensuring that the interviewee is interviewed at a time and place that he or she is comfortable with.

I also learned much about the role of theory and of when to use a theoretical or a conceptual framework in a qualitative study. I learned that theories were powerful elements in qualitative research that can direct how a study should be undertaken, but that in some cases, such as in the grounded theory approach that I concentrated on, a conceptual framework is more beneficial than a theoretical framework since conceptual frameworks do not force the researcher to work with a pre-formulated theory, making the research free to generate its own theory without influence from existing ones.

Finally, this course has helped me develop qualitative analysis skills, specifically in coding data, classifying them into categories, merging categories into themes, finding the patterns that connect the themes and finally drawing out inferences. However, I believe that I have only scratched the surface of this last part that the course was able to teach me. While there were hands-on experiences in coding and theme development, I believe that the topic and circumstances in which the activity was performed was too controlled. That is, in actual situations, interview questions would not be as simple as just describing a person that one looks up to, and that the data gathering process in itself would yield more complex data for analysis. Also, real experience in qualitative research would likely require the analysis of more than just two interviews. There would be more interviews and the interviews would definitely be longer. I believe that in order for me to actually become confident with my qualitative research skills, I have to actually engage in qualitative research, perhaps using the proposal that I developed in this course.

Role of this course in determining dissertation topic

This course has given me much to think about in determining my dissertation topic. In the proposal that I prepared for this course, I decided to develop a different research problem than the one that I used in the course on quantitative research that I took because I felt that a qualitative paradigm was not the best fit for that previous problem. I must admit that when I entered this course, I was skeptical about learning qualitative methods of inquiry because I was largely set on adopting a quantitative methodology for my dissertation. Yet as the lessons progressed and I became more aware of what qualitative research was really all about, I began to question my resolve of sticking with a quantitative methodology and became more interested in learning more about qualitative research. At the moment, I have not yet finalized what I would do in my dissertation. Most assuredly, this course has helped me consider a qualitative paradigm in my selection. I believe that my next course of action would be to deeply think about what topic it is that I truly wish to do for my dissertation and start gathering literature on that topic. Only after these activities can I say for certain if I will adopt a quantitative or a qualitative research paradigm, or even if I would venture towards trying to apply both in one study.

Usefulness of NVivo

One of the main elements that shifted my preference from doing using a quantitative research design for my dissertation to being undecided on whether to use quantitative or qualitative research is my experience with NVivo. In the course on quantitative research, I was exposed to the use of SPSS, which was such a memorable experience for me because it helped me utilize different statistical instruments without needing to learn how to do them by hand. After taking that course, I genuinely felt that I can carry out a solid quantitative analysis with the help of the software. At the start of this course, while I was learning about the different data gathering and analysis methods particularly for grounded theory, the one thing that first struck me was that grounded theory and qualitative analysis in general seems to consist of both too much work and too much guesswork. NVivo changed that perception. It showed me that while in the qualitative research design, the researcher must assume the main role of being the data gathering and analysis instrument, there is a piece of software that exists which can help the researcher carry out that role more efficiently and effectively. Through hands-on experience with NVivo, I became more aware of how people actually come up with themes and theories from other grounded theory studies that I have read. I realized that with the help of software such as NVivo, it is possible for qualitative researchers to be able to cover data from several interviews and identify all of the possible themes that can be drawn from that data. It was all a matter of having software that organizes, searches, and arranges large volumes of data while leaving the heart of the analysis which is making sense of the data up to the researcher.

Impact on Residency

Having completed this course, I believe that I have reached another milestone in my residency requirements. This course was able to equip me with important knowledge and tools for me to add to my arsenal of research competencies. As I move forward to my next residency, I am confident that what I have learned from this course will see much use, and that I will be able to undertake many of the research tasks that I would be faced with more effectively both in this program and beyond it because of the time and effort that I have spent learning about how to conduct qualitative research. As such, I believe that I am clearly on track and am prepared to undertake the next level of the program.

Conclusion

Clearly, I was able to gain much from undertaking this course on qualitative research designs. I learned about the fundamentals of a qualitative research paradigm, and about the five different traditions that I can use in selecting a qualitative design. I learned about how to gather data using observation and interviews, how to code gathered data and how to analyze them for themes and patterns. Specifically, I was able to explore the use of the grounded theory approach in developing a working proposal that I am now considering to execute. I was able to learn about the NVivo software, a tool that enables qualitative researchers to go about exploring gathered data more extensively in order to come up with more comprehensive analysis. Finally, I have emerged from the course with a more holistic perception of research, and have been empowered with having knowledge and skills in both quantitative and qualitative research to select the most appropriate paradigm for my dissertation.