Design for Learning- Principles, Processes, and Praxis, 2021a

General Steps to Qualitative Research
Identify Your Bias
The first step in qualitative research is to identify your biases via
reflective means. Reflexivity activities help a person go through a
meta-cognitive process of identifying their preconceived notions,
judgements, and values that may influence the research project. This
can be as simple as journaling your thoughts about a research topic.
This video clip explains some qualitative research methods with a few
examples. There is a great description of reflexivity about eight
minutes into the clip.
Plan the Research
The second step begins by writing a problem statement and research
question. Once these and variables of interest are identified, an
important part of the research plan is to design interview or
observation guides. This may involve designing interview
or observation guides. Guides take various forms such as a checklist,
a standardized open-ended interview guide, or an informal guide. A
few tips in designing the guide are to a) have colleagues review
questions or guide, b) pilot test your questions or guide, c) check for
leading questions or leading interviewers or observation bias, and d)
be open to scrutiny.
During this phase, plan reliability and validity measures are
1.
2.
Credibility (internal validity). Credibility of the research can be
established via triangulation, prolonged contact, member
checks of data or analysis, saturation, reflexivity, and peer
review.
Transferability (external validity). The generalizability of the
research can be enhanced by using thick descriptions and
variation in participant selection.
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