This paper analyzes the power relation between the interviewer and the interviewee in the qualitative research interview methodology. The paper sets out to grapple with the extent to which the dynamisms in power shifts influence data collection and analysis in the interview methodology. The exploration of power shifts in the qualitative research…

In the second of a series of "how-to" essays on conducting qualitative data analysis, Ron Chenail argues the process can best be understood as a metaphoric process. From this orientation he suggests researchers follow Kenneth Burke's notion of metaphor and see qualitative data analysis as the analyst systematically considering the "this-ness" of…

In the third of a series of "how-to" essays on conducting qualitative data analysis, Ron Chenail examines the dynamic tensions within the process of qualitative data analysis that qualitative researchers must manage in order to produce credible and creative results. These tensions include (a) the qualities of the data and the qualitative data…

Focused ethnographies can have meaningful and useful application in primary care, community, or hospital healthcare practice, and are often used to determine ways to improve care and care processes. They can be pragmatic and efficient ways to capture data on a specific topic of importance to individual clinicians or clinical specialties. While…

In the first of a series of "how-to" essays on conducting qualitative data analysis, Ron Chenail points out the challenges of determining units to analyze qualitatively when dealing with text. He acknowledges that although we may read a document word-by-word or line-by-line, we need to adjust our focus when processing the text for purposes of…

In this paper, I discuss how I came to call into question the way in which I interpreted interview data in my dissertation, which investigated the migration and settlement experience of Japanese women who are married to Australian men and reside in Australia. Through critical reflections, I realized the way in which the positionality of…

Conducting qualitative research can be seen as a developing communication act through which researchers engage in a variety of conversations. Articulating the results of qualitative data analysis results can be an especially challenging part of this scholarly discussion for qualitative researchers. To help guide investigators through this…

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…

In this article, we provide a framework for analyzing and interpreting sources that inform a literature review or, as it is more aptly called, a research synthesis. Specifically, using Leech and Onwuegbuzie's (2007, 2008) frameworks, we delineate how the following four major source types inform research syntheses: talk, observations,…

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…

This paper outlines the theoretical reasoning and technical implementation of a particular approach to creating multi-layered chronological charts in qualitative biographical studies. The discussed method elucidates the interpretation of traditional life chronologies where the individual's "objective" life facts are reconstructed free from…

Although the number of multilingual qualitative research studies appears to be growing, investigations concerned with methodological issues arising from the use of several languages within a single research are still very scarce. Most of these seem to deal exclusively with issues related to the use of interpreters and translators in qualitative…

In the 21st century, meaning making is a multimodal act; we communicate what we know and how we know it using much more than printed text on a blank page. As a result, qualitative researchers need new methodologies, methods, and tools for working with the complex artifacts that our research subjects produce. In this article we describe the…

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…