“Stretching” Exercises for Qualitative Researchers, Essay Example

Janesick (2010) discussed the importance of using journals to document research endeavors. According to Janesick, journaling helps qualitative researchers to “evaluate (their) experiences, improve and clarify (their) thinking, and (enable them to) become better writers and scholars” (p. 161). In preparation for this assignment, I wrote journal entries on a daily basis for three days. I wrote each entry around night time, before I went to bed. I render an account of this experience of journaling in this assignment and present an analysis on how the experience helped me make considerations on how journal writing can help in the development of a qualitative researcher.

In the first journal entry, I began by writing about this course that I am currently taking and how I wanted to develop a real, qualitative research proposal that would be useful to me in my field. I was able to specify that I wanted to work on something that involved workplace retention, as I thought that this was a very important subject in management which is my professional field. I reflected on how I’ve witnessed many times when employees leave companies for different reasons, and believe that while some people may think that there is a simple formula to this phenomenon, particularly that an employee simply shifts from one job to another job that pays better, I think that the phenomenon is actually very complex. In this first entry, I found that I was able to think about a possible topic simply by writing. At first, I was not writing anything related to the topic but as I proceeded to writing, I entertained many ideas that I once had but have since forgotten about. I think that this shows how journaling can enable the qualitative researcher to recall and evaluate past experiences. Through this first entry, I was able to look back to my experiences and draw out an interesting idea for qualitative research.

In my second journal entry, I narrated how I was able to have a conversation with a colleague during a coffee break, in which we discussed some interesting ideas about my research. He brought up an article on the internet that he read about the best places to work in such as Google Inc. In the entry, I was able to formulate a possible methodology of getting in touch with some people in the companies that my colleague pointed out and interview them about what are the things about these companies that make them like it so much. I thought that I may also ask them questions about whether or not they would be willing to leave their position in the company for another company which offers a higher salary. It was also in this entry that I considered comparing multiple perspectives, such as those of employees, employers, and HR managers. In this second entry, I believe that I was able to experience how journaling can help a qualitative researcher incorporate what he experiences in his daily life into his research efforts. It also helped me clarify my thinking. Initially, I just wrote about what I and my colleague talked about. Yet as I went on, I was able to determine the usefulness of my interaction in my research and develop it further.

In my third journal entry, I discussed how I was able to think about my research multiple times in the day, and in so doing identified some potential problems that I would have to deal with. For example, I thought, how would I be able to get in touch with someone who works for Google? I thought that I can try to email people I find on the internet who claim to work for Google but I considered that I would have no way of finding out whether or not they did work for the company. This led me to thinking about localizing my research to companies that I can actually visit. I was also able to consider in this third entry that people in different fields have different ideas about what a high-retention workplace ought to be and it would be a bad idea to take on several fields at the same time. This showed how journaling enabled me to further clarify and improve my thinking. Whereas in the first entry I was able to generate a base idea and in the second entry, I was able to provide some details to this idea, in the third entry I was able to consider what would work and what would probably not work with respect to the study that I want to develop.

Overall, the experience of journaling was very enriching for me as a novice qualitative researcher. I was able to feel the benefits of journaling that were described by Janesick (2010), and this has encouraged me to keep on writing in the journal as I proceed throughout this course and in future research endeavors.

Reference

Janesick, V. (2010). “Stretching” Exercises for Qualitative Researchers. Sage Publications, Inc.