心理学研究中定性研究与定量研究的定位问题

在心理学研究中,有定性研究和定量研究之分,或者有质化研究和量化研究之分。定性或质化研究通常被认为是一种人文社会科学的主观研究范式,定量研究或量化研究通常被认为是一种实证自然科学的客观研究范式。在心理学的历史中,有过定性研究占主导的时期,也有过定量研究占主导的时期。出现过定性研究对定量研究的排斥,也出现过定量研究对定性研究的排斥。在心理学的理论中,重要的是寻求定性或质化研究与定量或量化研究的关系定位。在心理学的方法中,重要的是寻求定性或质化研究与定量或量化研究的研究定位。     

The twilight years? Educational ethnography and the five moments model

The growth and variety of qualitative research in education is used as a test case to challenge the narrative of ethnography proposed by Denzin and Lincoln. Their characterization of qualitative methods in terms of five (subsequently six) ''moments'' is not reflected in research on education. Ironically, their model is shown to be a modernist narrative that does not do justice do the diversity of qualitative research in the past. It is suggested that qualitative research has always been marked by greater diversity than is captured in unilinear developmental histories.     

Marking time,making methods: temporality and untimely dilemmas in the sociology of youth and educational change

Abstract

This article explores how temporality and temporal regimes might be engaged in qualitative research in the sociology of education, proposing that such questions matter in relation to how research is done, not only to the topics and themes researched. The article shows how temporality enters into research designs, practices and imaginaries, arguing that research methodologies mobilise intersecting temporalities. Debates in the philosophy of history regarding the collision of temporalities are canvassed, and approaches are outlined for conceptualising temporality in reference to qualitative studies. To illustrate these arguments, an account is offered of theoretical and methodological approaches framing a new qualitative longitudinal study of young people and secondary schooling in Australia; to highlight the historicity of methodologies, comparisons are also drawn between this study and an earlier related longitudinal study undertaken in the 1990s. The article concludes by inviting a re-consideration of the possibilities for a renewal of historical sociology of education.     

Feminist Epistemology and Qualitative Research

Abstract

This paper presents and evaluates an approach to teaching practicing social workers in Hong Kong qualitative research from a feminist perspective. Using a problem-based format, graduate social workers in Hong Kong were taught critical appraisal skills while learning to do qualitative interview research in their practices. While the problem-based design supports models of adult learning and is a successful method for teaching new research skills to a diverse student body, linking epistemology with methodology and practice was a challenge in the cross-cultural context for both students and instructor.     

Researching the bridge called our backs: the invisibility of ‘us’ in qualitative communities

Abstract

The article and the following discussion were prompted after the authors’ participation in a recent qualitative research conference. In the article, a Black woman and Latina scholar share their experiences and reflections as scholar researchers. As a point of entry, they discuss how even qualitative research communities can be marginalizing spaces for scholars of color. Using theoretical perspectives of feminists of color, the authors provide snapshots into their personal dialogue around issues of research, theory, and practice. By examining their own personal and professional shared stories of coming to their scholarly identities, qualitative researchers will be able to better understand how women scholars of color grapple with and embrace a multiple consciousness to navigate academia and research communities. Based on these intellectual struggles and forms of resistance, the authors put forth suggestions for qualitative research theory and practice. The article has implications for qualitative research, higher education, and feminist theory.     

Qualitative Research in Distance Education: An Analysis of Journal Literature 2005–2012

This review study examines the current research literature in distance education for the years 2005 to 2012. The author found 382 research articles published during that time in four prominent peer-reviewed research journals. The articles were classified and coded as quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods. Further analysis found another category of articles in which qualitative data were obtained but results were reported as quantitative. The analysis shows that the publication of purely qualitative research occurs least often in The American Journal of Distance Education than in the other journals. The analysis also shows that, on average, prominent journals are publishing less qualitative research now than they were 2005. This study shows the need for further research and analysis of the methodologies currently utilized in distance education.     

Heidegger's Theory of Truth and its Importance for the Quality of Qualitative Research

When reliability and validity were introduced as validation criteria for empirical research in the human sciences, quantitative research methods prevailed, and theory of science relied on neopositivism (Vienna Circle) or postpositivism (scientific realism). Within this worldview, notions of reliability and validity as criteria of scientific goodness were introduced. Reliability and validity were associated with the correspondence theory of truth, which is mostly ill-suited to the needs of qualitative research. For that reason, qualitative research must look for other kinds of validation criteria. The article elaborates the problems arising when the correspondence theory of truth is used as an ultimate criterion in evaluating qualitative research and proposes Heidegger's hermeneutical or alethetical idea of truth as a more suitable approach.     

Narrative analysis as philosophical research: Bridging the gap between the empirical and the conceptual

There is a longstanding debate about what can be expected from philosophy of education and what its place can be in educational theory. A remarkable resemblance can be found between the debate about the usefulness of qualitative research methods and the kinds of insights they produce. The debate between proponents of empirical (quantitative) research and of qualitative research can be traced to the opposition between the need for understanding and the desire to manipulate. We argue that empirical qualitative research is of a similar nature to philosophical research, its aim being mainly to understand a human practice. We offer a framework that allows the clarification of what may be expected from an educational science and consequently from qualitative research methods: taking as one?s starting point human experience, providing comments, and thus trying to open the eyes of others to particular human realities.     

Institutional Researcher Reflexivity: How IR Professionals Can Utilize Researcher Reflexivity in Qualitative Studies of Community College Students

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I argue that researcher reflexivity, a common qualitative practice, is a specific tool that institutional research professionals endeavoring to conduct qualitative research studies involving Students of Color can use to unpack issues of power and privilege that exist between the researcher and the researched. This may be particularly useful among institutional researchers working within community colleges that serve a disproportionate number of racially minoritized populations and other vulnerable student groups. I offer a reflexive account of various experiences related to race, gender, and social class that I encountered in a qualitative research study of Black and Latino males I conducted as an institutional researcher. The purpose of this reflexive account from the field is to support the argument for more qualitative approaches to institutional research, while also advancing the argument that critical qualitative research be leveraged with the explicit purpose of advancing racial equity from the context of IR not traditionally associated with equity, advocacy, and qualitative inquiry involving race.     

质的研究与远程教育研究

本文在分析远程教育研究和质的研究特点之上,从关注弱势群体、远程研究者与被研究者间的关系、对远程学习者行为意义的深层理解及远程教育自我论证和自身发展的需要等四个方面举证了将质的研究方法应用于远程教育研究的重要性,并对质的研究者提出了建议。     

The mis/uses of ‘voice’ in (post)qualitative research with children and young people: Histories,politics and ethics

Abstract

This article extends recent attempts to think (post)qualitative research together with decolonial, postcolonial and other critiques – as a frictional, fraught encounter. I review how the concept of voice has been used in past and present research with children and young people: from research speaking about children and young people, dialogical speaking with the ‘agentic’ young person, poststructural refusals of ‘raw voices’ speaking for themselves, and (post)qualitative onto-epistemological experiments with utterances spoken in research assemblages. Reading one of my research practices – the mis/use of cloth puppets with high school students – through recent critiques of (post)qualitative work, two particular concerns materialize: accounting for relations between past and present research, and accounting for what comes to matter during and after research encounters.     

The Quantitative/Qualitative Divide Revisited: A Study of Published Research,Doctoral Program Curricula,and Journal Editor Perceptions

This article explores the quantitative/qualitative divide in the fields of criminology and criminal justice. The article reports findings from a study of: (1) quantitative and qualitative methods used in a sample of journal articles published in top‐tier and lower‐tier academic journals; (2) doctoral methods and statistics curricula; and (3) journal editor perceptions about the quantitative/qualitative divide. The study found a large gap between the use of quantitative and qualitative methods in published research that reported empirical findings. The content analysis of Ph.D. curricula suggests that the qualitative/quantitative divide in published research is a logical extension of a similar divide in the teaching of methods in doctoral programs. The interviews with journal editors suggest that they are generally receptive to qualitatively oriented research; however, these journal editors also identified several important barriers that contribute to the ongoing divide in published criminology and criminal justice research. Implications are discussed.     

The place of qualitative research in science education

This article develops a way to conceptualize the complementarity of quantitative and qualitative research in science education. The differing sets of metaphysical presuppositions that give rise to the two approaches are systematically examined by using Stephen Pepper's “world hypotheses”: it is argued and demonstrated that quantitative research is formist/ mechanist in its metaphysical preoccupation, while qualitative research is contextualist/organicist. The vehicle for demonstrating how these metaphysical systems actually influence science education research is Stephen Toulmin's “argument pattern.” It is demonstrated through analysis of examples that quantitative and qualitatitive research reports follow the same pattern of argument, even though the metaphysical roots behind the approaches, which control their differing methodologies and other features, are obviously different. Given the emergence of qualitative research styles, implications are explored for the development of science education research as a total enterprise. Special attention is paid to the problems of appraising the quality of qualitative research reports and to the need for a comprehensive view of what constitutes legitimate research in science education.     

Strength,Sharing and Service: Restorying and the legitimation of research texts

This article uses data from a longitudinal qualitative research project exploring the experiences of elementary teachers as they both learnt and taught science in the transition from a pre‐service to an in‐service situation. Interviews, journal entries and observations were the original data sources from which case studies were derived by narrative analysis. The material used in this article concerns a single participant. The purpose is to examine a narrative device, restorying, and explore its usefulness as a way of enhancing legitimation in narrative inquiry. Three sets of criteria for legitimation of qualitative studies are suggested; a set that requires research to be conducted in ways that provide evidence of thoroughness and fairness; a set that allows the reader to experience vicariously the world of the participants; and a set concerned with the ways in which education is enhanced for researcher, participants and reader. The authors suggest that a single text cannot fully satisfy all of these criteria sets but that by using multiple tellings or restorying, the legitimation of findings in qualitative research can be enhanced.     

Becoming researchers: doctoral students' developmental processes

A key step in the development of skills to conduct independent research is the ability to develop topics of interest into research studies that examine problems of significance in a field of study. This qualitative interview study conducted in the USA examined how seven novice qualitative researchers who had taken course work in qualitative research methods selected topics for research and developed these into studies for dissertation research. Findings identify processes contributing to novice researchers' abilities to conceptualize their topics as significant. These processes include recognizing the need to integrate their interests in existing disciplinary fields, learning that occurred through the practice of fieldwork, applying guidance from advisors and committee members, and developing a deeper understanding of the relationship of their studies to existing research. The paper suggests points of tension for new scholars in the development of research topics, exploring how doctoral supervisors and instructors might assist students in learning how to design and conduct qualitative studies for doctoral research.     

Learning to ‘site-see’: place-reflexivity as a methodological tool for qualitative researchers

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to further examine ‘place-reflexivity’ as a methodological tool for engaging in site-seeing in qualitative research. Qualitative research often involves a site or field. Yet, the ‘where’ of qualitative research has often been overlooked in methodological discussions. This approach is akin to sightseeing where sites are a backdrop rather than foregrounded. We draw on scholarship that conceptualizes site, place, field, and context from sociological, geographical and anthropological disciplines, as well as on concepts of third space as they apply to qualitative inquiry. We offer an argument for the fuller inclusion, and expanded treatment of sites including tools to assist qualitative researchers with this type of thinking.     

Steady and delayed: explaining the different development of meta-ethnography in health care and education

ABSTRACT

Since its inception in the 1980s, the meta-ethnography approach for synthesising qualitative study accounts has been used extensively in health and social care research and to a lesser extent in educational research. The aim of this article is to reflect on the evolution of the method in both fields. It starts by describing the meta-ethnography approach, charts the rise of evidence-based research in health-related research, and explores the growth in the rate of published health-related meta-ethnographies. It proceeds by offering some explanation for the slower growth in the use of meta-ethnography in educational research. It explains this using the history of the early developments of qualitative approaches in Education and their underpinning paradigms. It then discusses key meta-ethnographies conducted in education, comparing those to more recent ones, in terms of methodological development. The article concludes by drawing lessons about how the conduct of meta-ethnography may be improved in any discipline.     

Using blogs in qualitative educational research: an exploration of method

When compared with wider social research, qualitative educational research has been relatively slow to take up online research methods (ORMs). There is some very notable research in the area but, in general, ORMs have not achieved wide applicability in qualitative educational contexts apart from research that is inherently linked to the Internet, for example, research on educational technologies or students' online behaviour. This paper demonstrates how ORMs can be useful in qualitative research projects. It describes how on-going, reflective, qualitative data were collected using a popular, community-based online tool – blogs. The research project that utilized this approach aimed to trace how a group of international students in the United Kingdom responded to their new environment over six months. This article attempts to provide a new understanding on the use of blogs as a tool for data collection.