Purpose: The lack of a definite standard for determining the sample size in qualitative research leaves the research process to the initiative of the researcher, and this situation overshadows the scientificity of the research. The primary purpose of this research is to propose a model by questioning the problem of determining the sample size,…

This article examines an important and thorny problem in interview research: How to assess whether what people say motivated their actions actually did so? We ask three questions: What specific challenges are at play? How have researchers addressed them? And how should those strategies be evaluated? We argue that such research faces at least five…

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the use of the exemplar methodology (ExM) as a method for selecting exemplars in education research. ExM is a systematic approach to selecting outliers that can be used to education researchers who investigate outliers to better understand phenomena among students, teachers, schools, and communities. While…

Constant changes to COVID-19 restrictions have required adaptability from social scientists including responding to new challenges such as infiltration by bots. This research note presents unexpected encounters of bot infiltration and recruitment during survey data collection under pandemic conditions. The note draws from a household survey on a…

Urban planning research usually requires researchers to undertake fieldwork. This fieldwork is frustrated or enabled by gatekeepers who can influence effective data collection. Traditionally, gatekeepers are perceived as monolithic, neutral, and static individuals, yet they are complex individuals with varying needs and expectations from the…

As wider social and societal changes have led to moves towards equality as a response to a better understanding of inequalities, ethical considerations in research are now more consciously focussed on power dynamics. As a consequence, participatory research methods have gained traction. Simultaneously, artistic and creative methods are used within…

This article is developed from the contents from one of the chapters the researcher has written as part of her PhD thesis. It discusses various methodological challenges the researcher had to face during the phase of data collection in the prisons of Kerala, India, and the strategies adopted to overcome these challenges. This article is intended…

The ubiquitous use of social platforms across the globe makes them attractive options for investigating social phenomena including migration. However, the use of social media data raises several crucial ethical issues around the areas of informed consent, anonymity and profiling of individuals, which are particularly sensitive when looking at a…

This article focuses on an investigation of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher (de)motivation in Spain which underwent a methodological transformation from mixed methods to a qualitative approach. Unexpected statistical results from the questionnaire in the piloting phase led to the creation of interview prompts, a dynamic data collection…

In undergraduate research settings, students are likely to encounter anomalous data, that is, data that do not meet their expectations. Most of the research that directly or indirectly captures the role of anomalous data in research settings uses post-hoc reflective interviews or surveys. These data collection approaches focus on recall of past…

This paper investigates the impact of publication pressure on the ethics and the scientific integrity in the domain of mathematics and of the arts. Both research fields are specific in their methodology, being that they do not start from a classical hypothesis and researchers in these areas are not knowing what the outcome will be. The research…

This case study describes a Q methodology study which captured and analyzed the viewpoints of 45 UK teachers online. The teachers might liken their participation in the study to a "card sort" activity: their relative placement of statement cards revealed their opinions of mastery in mathematics. Factor analysis of the completed sorts…

The application of new methods and measures in domains with few methodological traditions of that kind often presents researchers with a challenge; they may have to take up the task of developing their understanding of the phenomenon while, at the same time, creating the practices for its study. For us, the method was eye tracking, and the topic,…

This paper examines the experiences of educational researchers undertaking fieldwork within three Central Asian countries -- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Drawing on interviews with educational researchers from within and outside the region, the findings show that researchers encounter numerous ethical and methodological challenges in the…

Indigenous students, a subgroup of the Australian student population, produce poorer educational outcomes and continue to produce persistently lower attendance rates than non-Indigenous peers. Currently, governments collect and monitor student attendance as an indicator of students' educational achievement and a key performance measure of schools…