This paper presents a personal account of how a PhD supervisor came to an understanding of an approach to research that was unfamiliar to him. Additionally it addresses the question of what makes the approach, in this case bricolage, an acceptable format for academic work and in particular PhD study. Bricolage is a relatively little used approach…

In this article, we outline a course wherein the instructors teach students how to conduct rigorous qualitative research. We discuss the four major distinct, but overlapping, phases of the course: conceptual/theoretical, technical, applied, and emergent scholar. Students write several qualitative reports, called qualitative notebooks, which…

Often, research projects are presented as final products with the methodologies cleanly outlined and little attention paid to the decision-making processes that led to the chosen approach. Limited attention paid to these decision-making processes perpetuates a sense of mystery about qualitative approaches, particularly for new researchers who will…

Qualitative interviewing is a flexible and powerful tool to capture the voices and the ways people make meaning of their experience Learning to conduct semi-structure interviews requires the following six stages: (a) selecting the type of interview; (b) establishing ethical guidelines, (c) crafting the interview protocol; (d) conducting and…

Mixed-Method studies have emerged from the paradigm wars between qualitative and quantitative research approaches to become a widely used mode of inquiry. Depending on choices made across four dimensions, mixed-methods can provide an investigator with many design choices which involve a range of sequential and concurrent strategies. Defining…

It is crucial for social researchers to clarify their researchers' roles, especially for those utilizing qualitative methodology to make their research credible. The purpose of this paper is to examine the advantages and disadvantages of the researcher's insider role, an instructor, occupied within case study research on the integration of…

In a world of methodological pluralism and mixed-methods, qualitative researchers can take a pathway of pragmatic curiosity by exploring their research interests and the possible design and methodology choices to create studies that not only allow them to pursue their investigative curiosities, but also result in coherent and effective systems of…

Increasingly, qualitative researchers are combining methods, processes, and principles from two or more methodologies over the course of a research study. Critics charge that researchers adopting combined approaches place too little attention on the historical, epistemological, and theoretical aspects of the research design. Rather than…

The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of conducting ethnographic research. Methodology definition and key characteristics are given. The stages of the research process are described including preparation, data gathering and recording, and analysis. Important issues such as reliability and validity are also discussed.

Qualitative research is an inherent part of the human services profession, since it emphasizes the great and multifaceted complexity characterizing human experience and the sociocultural context in which humans act. In the department of human services at Emek Yezreel College, Israel, we have developed a three-phase model to ensure a relatively…

The critical and interpretive phenomenological approach is underutilized in the study of crime. This commentary describes this approach, guided by the question, "Why are interpretive phenomenological methods appropriate for qualitative research in criminology?" Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to describe a model of the interpretive…

In this study the researcher uses a qualitative research design to discover what makes hotel expatriates remain in their overseas assignments. In-depth interviews, participant observations, and personal documents are used as data collection methods. Four hotel expatriates are recruited as participants of the study. The collected interview…

This article describes a mixed methods approach used to explore the experiences of adult family care home (AFCH) residents and informal caregivers (IC). A rationale is presented for using a mixed methods approach employing the sequential exploratory design with this poorly researched population. The unique challenges attendant to the sampling…

The purpose of this paper is to describe pedagogical approaches to qualitative methodology by an instructor of educational psychology at a large research university. The essay begins with an overview of how my graduate training influenced my orientation to empirical study. Next, I will focus on the obstacles encountered when instructing graduate…

This case study explored the promise and possibility of doing action research both for aspiring principals engaged in such research and for professors using it as pedagogy for teaching educational leadership. The study of a class of graduate students aspiring to be principals had a constructivist theoretical framework. The research design…