RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

172 NATURALISTIC AND ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH
develop to explain the behaviour of the people we
study should also, where relevant, be applied to our
own activities as researchers.
(Hammersley and Atkinson 1983: 18–19)
Highly reflexive researchers will be acutely
aware of the ways in which their selectivity,
perception, background and inductive processes
and paradigms shape the research. They are
research instruments. McCormick and James
(1988: 191) argue that combating reactivity
through reflexivity requires researchers to monitor
closely and continually their own interactions with
participants, their own reaction, roles, biases, and
any other matters that might affect the research.
This is addressed more fully in Chapter 5 on
validity, encompassing issues of triangulation and
respondent validity.
Lincoln and Guba (1985: 226–47) set out ten
elements in research design for naturalistic studies:
1 Determining afocus forthe inquiry.
2 Determining thefit of paradigmto focus.
3 Determining the fit of the inquiry paradigm
to the substantive theory selected to guide the
inquiry.
4 Determining where and from whom data will
be collected.
5 Determining successivephasesoftheinquiry.
6 Determining instrumentation.
7 Planning data collection and recording
modes.
8 Planning dataanalysis procedures.
9 Planning the logistics:
prior logistical considerations for the
project as a whole
the logistics of field excursions prior to
going into the field
the logistics of field excursions while in the
field
the logistics of activities following field
excursions
the logistics of closure and termination
10 Planning for trustworthiness.
These elements can be set out into a sequential,
staged approach to planning naturalistic research
(see, for example, Schatzman and Strauss 1973;
Delamont 1992). Spradley (1979) sets out the
stages of: selecting a problem; collecting cultural
data; analysing cultural data; formulating ethnographic
hypotheses; writing the ethnography. We
offer a fuller, eleven-stage model later in the
chapter.
Like other styles of research, naturalistic
and qualitative methods will need to formulate
research questions which should be clear and
unambiguous but open to change as the research
develops. Strauss (1987) terms these ‘generative
questions’: they stimulate the line of investigation,
suggest initial hypotheses and areas for data
collection, yet they do not foreclose the possibility
of modification as the research develops. A balance
has to be struck between having research questions
that are so broad that they do not steer the research
in any particular direction, and so narrow that they
block new avenues of inquiry (Flick 2004: 150).
Miles and Huberman (1994) identify two types
of qualitative research design: loose and tight.
Loose research designs have broadly defined
concepts and areas of study, and, indeed, are open
to changes of methodology. These are suitable,
they suggest, when the researchers are experienced
and when the research is investigating new fields or
developing new constructs, akin to the flexibility
and openness of theoretical sampling of Glaser and
Strauss (1967). By contrast, a tight research design
has narrowly restricted research questions and
predetermined procedures, with limited flexibility.
These, the authors suggest, are useful when the
researchers are inexperienced, when the research
is intended to look at particular specified issues,
constructs, groups or individuals, or when the
research brief is explicit.
Even though, in naturalistic research, issues
and theories emerge from the data, this does
not preclude the value of having research
questions. Flick (1998: 51) suggests three types of
research questions in qualitative research, namely
those that are concerned, first, with describing
states, their causes and how these states are
sustained; second, with describing processes of
change and consequences of those states; third,
with how suitable they are for supporting or not
supporting hypotheses and assumptions or for