Qualitative research has been strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the possibilities that Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies such as Skype, WhatsApp, and Zoom offer to qualitative scholars. Based on the experience of using such technologies to collect qualitative data for our PhD studies, we present how we dealt…

In this essay, Gerardo R. López, a non-undocumented immigrant scholar, who has done extensive research with undocumented immigrant communities, has a conversation with Alonso R. Reyna Rivarola, an undocumented immigrant scholar with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), who writes and researches issues of how undocumented immigrant…

Snowball sampling is generally seen as a highly effective sampling technique that allows for the study of difficult to reach or 'hidden' populations. It is also seen as a valuable tool for the study of particularly sensitive or private matters. As a result, it was chosen as the sampling method for a research study into illegal drug users over the…

This article presents an overview of internet-based research, highlighting the absence of a standard terminology to define and classify such research. The label internet-based research or online research can cover a diverse range of research designs and methods, involving different degrees of ethical concern regarding privacy, transparency,…

Ethnographic research is an emerging research technique in the field of education. Ethnographic research was a procedure usually used in anthropology but now it is getting popular in educational field. This kind of research relies on qualitative data, its perspective is holistic and its procedures of data analysis involve contextualization. Data…

Research supervisors' different ways of experiencing their supervision of doctoral students are analysed in terms of the students' questions and problems as they relate to the supervisor's research, and what consequences this connection, or non-connection, to the supervisor's research has for supervision and the role of supervisor. Thirty…

Elicitation techniques are a category of research tasks that use visual, verbal, or written stimuli to encourage participants to talk about their ideas. These tasks are particularly useful for exploring topics that may be difficult to discuss in formal interviews, such as those that involve sensitive issues or rely on tacit knowledge. Elicitation…

Instrumentation rigor and bias management are major challenges for qualitative researchers employing interviewing as a data generation method in their studies. A usual procedure for testing the quality of an interview protocol and for identifying potential researcher biases is the pilot study in which investigators try out their proposed methods…

The purpose of this article is to contribute to methodological discussions on elite interviewing. The point of departure is that elite interviewing constitutes/represents continuous challenges for researchers. This may be due to several reasons; one of these concerns the possible critical incidents that may occur in the course of the interview.…

In this article, the author discusses how researchers can use mixed-methods approaches and intersectional analyses to understand college access among first-generation Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs). First, he discusses the utility of mixed-methods approaches and intersectionality research in studying college access. Then, he…

While much has been written on the problems that can arise when interviewing respondents from a different social group, less attention has been paid to its potential benefits for the research process. In this paper we argue that, by being conscious of one's outsider status, an interviewer can use it as a tool through which to elicit detailed and…

A lack of good information about what youth are doing with new media stimulates fears and hopes about the relationship between young people and digital technologies. This article focuses on new modes of inquiry into youth new media use, highlighting the challenges, complexities, and opportunities inherent in studying young people's digital…

In this paper, I map important "messy" elements that I learned from my five-month small-scale research project, one that was designed around pivotal works on online social research. I used computers and the Internet with Minan, a young man living in Guinea, West Africa, in order to examine his perceptions surrounding the value of these…

This highly readable text demystifies the qualitative research process--and helps readers conceptualize their own studies--by organizing the different research paradigms and traditions into coherent clusters. Real-world examples and firsthand perspectives illustrate the research process; instructive exercises and activities build on each other so…

The agonistic approach--aimed at embracing opposing perspectives as part of a qualitative research process and acknowledging that process as fundamentally political--sheds light on both the construction of and the resistance to research identities. This approach involves reflexively embedding interview situations into the ethnographic context as a…