This week's theme has been centered around qualitative research as well as case studies, it consisted of just reading and a seminar since the lecture unfurtunately got canceled. Overall I have found this theme interesting but perhaps not groundbreaking to me personally.
The reading consisted of choosing two papers, one using qualitative methods and one case study, as well as reading a paper on the nature of case studies. I put in quite a lot of time on trying to find interesting papers and found the reading very interesting! My qualitative study used focus group interviews as its only method, this is not a method I have used myself and it was interesting to read up on the limitations and strengths of it. I studied a bit pf psychology during high school and learnt about case studies during that course, during this course it was interesting to read about case studies from the perspective of natural science as well.
During the seminar the discussion was mostly centered around case studies, mostly since we already discussed qualitative research to some extent during week 4 when the theme was quantitative research. In the smaller groups we mainly discussed the studies we all had chosen to read and the methods used, it was interesting to hear about other qualitative methods such as individual interviews and free text surveys. We also discussed in my group why one would choose to perform a qualitative study in our area of study and brought up things such as getting a wider perspective and doing an exploratory study. In the larger group we also discussed wether the amount of participants is a deciding factor whether a study is qualitative or qualitative and concluded that it is more common to have fewer participants in a qualitative than a quantitative study but it is the methods which decide the method not the number of participants.
When discussing case studies we talked about the studies we had chosen and why we think the researchers had decided to perform a case study. We talked about natural disasters and such which are not extremely commonly occurring and can therefore be interesting to look at as single events as well as certain disease and accidents which could be interesting to observe as single events. We also talked about doing exploratory studies here and how a case study can serve as something which produces new theory and not just prove existing ones. It also became clearer during the seminar how a case study is not defined by its methods, which can be both qualitative and quantitative, but rather the approach had when deciding what to study.
Overall I have found this theme okay, it was a pity that the lecture got cancelled but I did learn a few new things through both the reading and the seminar.
Hi,
SvaraRaderathanks for interesting reflection. You wrote very important and explicable sentence: that "case study is not defined by its methods which can be both qualitative and quantitative, but rather the approach had when deciding what to study." I will keep this in mind. I also pointed out that case studies establish new theories but now I am wondering that the same could be said about qualitative researches that kind of studies also might lead to new theories or at least refinement of the theory. Would you agree with me? By the way, you mentioned that the object of case studies can be disasters, in my chosen research paper Haiti earthquake was chosen as circumstances to explore communication during the crisis. I think that disasters are the favourable conditions to analyze particular phenomena in that unique moment.
Dear Josefine,
SvaraRaderaA well written reflection, indeed! It would have interesting to hear some of your thoughts about the differences in perspective of case studies researched between psychology and natural science, as you call it. During Theme 4, me and my group discussed, during the seminar, the point of having qualitative methods in our field of study. One reason to include qualitative methods, that we concluded, was that, if you look at peoples' behavior in conjunction with technology, you can measure the perceived behavior with qualitative methods and then compare this data with the actual behavior using quantitative methods! Good luck with the final blog post!
Hello Josefine!
SvaraRaderaAs you write in you reflection I agree on the fact that it is not the number of participants that decide if a study is qualitative or quantitative but rather the data and the analyzation of it. It would be interesting to read more about your own reflections on the topics of qualitative and case study research and how your thoughts upon them changed during the theme and not just what the seminar group thought about it. It has been a pleasure reading and commenting on your posts!
Hi,
SvaraRaderaI like that you referred to your previous course that is connected to this one. Maybe it would be nice if you had expanded a little bit on that and your selected paper about focus group interviews. I like your reflections. I agree with you that the number of the participants doesn’t define the type of the method, but the type data that we want to gather do. However, the number of the participants/subjects defines if a case study is a case study. A case study is about examining a single thing that is interesting and different from the other. If a case study applies to more than one, is not a case study any more.
Hi! You wrote great reflection. I find your point about the amount of participants is a deciding factor in case study very interesting. I think that case study is quite subjective anyway no matter what methods are used whether qualitative or quantitative since the subject is quite narrow and just particular case is investigated. So bigger amount of participants can help to get more data for building theory.
SvaraRaderaYou did great job! Thank you for interesting reflection.
Hej,
SvaraRaderaI think I can’t find better words to describe the theme as you did with “interesting but perhaps not ground-breaking”. Finding a paper using the respective methods with an interesting topic took me also a quite considerable amount of time, but I think it was worth it as you can focus more on the methods once a topic is of real interest for you. When it comes to the number of participants used in a study I think it is more likely to have a lower number for qualitative studies as it is quite time consuming and often not realistic to do a qualitative study with the same amount of people as a quantitative study would do. Furthermore, I think that the lecture really would have helped to get an even deeper insight into this topic, but we can’t change the past.
A good reflection with several interesting parallells and comparisons. It's great that you happened to have experience of case studies from before, since for many of us, that concept was new. Natural disasters was an interesting example that expands on what case studies can be. I had mainly considered studies of specific groups people and other social concepts as bases for case studies.
SvaraRaderaEspecially the idea that a case study can produce new theory rather than merely proving existing ones resonated with me. This was particularly because it was an option that I hadn't considered before - to my mind at the time, in order to find a suitable case, one should already have a theory to base themselves on. Now, after the seminar, I understood that there might be other ways to reason that a case might be an interesting subject, even if the exact type of research is not yet clear from the beginning.
SvaraRaderaHello Josefine !
SvaraRaderaI really enjoyed reading your blog post, it was clear, concise yet detailed ! Especially the last paragraph was full of interesting things, I like the example of natural disasters that you've extrapolated to case studies and single events. It makes it much easier to understand a concept perhaps not that easy to decipher !
The fact that we explored the possibilities of using case studies to create new theories was one I really enjoyed, and learned from the most. Indeed, having practical insights is one thing I find most other courses about theory lack, and I'm glad we have this opportunity to talk about it between us here !
Thanks a lot for this interesting post :-)