JUSTIFICATIONS AND LIMITATIONS Essay

Social research methods can be defined as “academic research on topics relating to questions relevant to the social scientific fields” (Bryman, 2015, p.3). The theoretical perspective relating to the nature of the social world, also known as their ontological position, and how they may find out about the social world, known as their epistemological position will influence the methods they use, and the conclusions drawn from these methods. In this essay, the first section explains the theoretical perspectives, ethics and methodological discussion surrounding social research methods. The second section draws on my own experiences of undertaking a qualitative interview, and aims to critically analyse the strengths and weaknesses and how these would be overcome in the future.

This qualitative study is based on the Grounded Theory methodology, a design of inquiry from a sociological perspective in which a researcher derives a general abstract theory of a process or interaction grounded in the views of participants in a study to analyze the data. This theory has two unique concepts: the constant comparison of data with emerging categories and a theoretical sampling of different groups to maximize the similarities and differences of information (Creswell, 2009, p. 13). The basic concept of this research method is to choose research participants who have lived through the phenomenon that you want to study. This meant that participants are experts of the phenomenon that the researcher sought to understand (Auerbach and Silverstein, 2003). These techniques involve a): filtering texts, which means explicitly stating your research concerns and theoretical concerns and selecting the relevant text from your interviews, which is done by reading through the transcripts one-by-one with step one in mind and highlighting relevant codes; b): listening to the transcripts for relevant information, which involves recording repeating ideas by grouping together related passages of your

The article titled learning to interview in the social sciences makes a valid point that as interviewers we can never ensure what will happen during an interview. To some degree interviewing for the social sciences and the purpose of research resembles clinical intake interviews. Both processes are in fact “reality constructing, meaning-making occasions”. In my opinion the qualitative interview while it may develop a different ebb and flow than research specific qualitative interview, as they tend to have more targeted overall research questions, they both have the same aim in mind; to collect, interpret, and analysis “data” on some level. The findings obtained by the researchers in this study while valid they are not necessarily inclusive

Qualitative interviewing can be semi-structured and unstructured. However both forms of interviews have three certain features in common. Firstly, qualitative interviewing is an exchange of dialogue between the interviewee and the interviewer (Edwards & Holland, 2013). Secondly, the researcher will have specific topics and issues that they wish to cover in the interview, however, how this information is collected is flexible (Edwards & Holland, 2013). Lastly, “a perspective regarding knowledge as situated and contextual, requiring the researcher to ensure that relevant contexts are brought into focus so that

The proposed methodology is a primary qualitative approach of semi-structured interviews. This method has been chosen as the focus of this

There are many different types of interviews and one way of viewing them may be to plot them on a continuum from highly structured and more prescriptive at one end to unstructured and highly flexible at the other. It is important not to confuse flexibility with a lack of rigour. On the contrary, the researcher must engage with a number of principles and must wrestle with key understandings in order to generate data and provide

One advantage of qualitative methods in exploratory research is that use of open-ended questions and probing gives participants the opportunity to respond in their own words, rather than forcing them to choose from fixed responses, as quantitative methods do. Open-ended questions have the ability to evoke responses that are: • • • meaningful and culturally salient to the participant unanticipated by the researcher rich and explanatory in nature

Moreover, open-ended questions were used because they provide in-depth information and give participants the opportunity to express themselves freely, thus acquiring greater variety of information (Kumar, 2011). Questions were planned carefully prior to the interviews, whereby an interview protocol was established in which questions or topics that needed to be addressed during the interview were added. This guides the interviewer in collecting the data in a systematic and focused manner (Lodico, Spaulding & Voegtle, 2010).

We have chosen to conduct interviews with a set of questionnaire questions as our primary research method. The advantages of gathering information using a questionnaire is that the responses are gathered in a standardized way, making it more objective, it is also easy to analyse and understand, the data collected

Focusing on interviews as a qualitative method, it comprises of structured, semi structured as well as unstructured interviews. The structured interviews are largely verbally administered questionnaires. Usually predetermined questions are asked, the questions have no variation, and they have no scope especially for follow up questions

In accordance with the research topic, qualitative research method is selected to fulfil the deployment of semi-structured interviews with the participants who would have been identified from the study (Bryman & Bell, 2003). The author felt that,

Qualitative Research is a generic term for investigative methodologies described as ethnographic, naturalistic or participant observer research. It emphasizes the importance of looking at variables in the natural setting where they are found. Interaction between variables is important. Detailed data is gathered through open ended question that provide direct quotations. The interviewer is an integral part of the investigation (Jacob, 1988).

The advantages of using a qualitative research approach in conducting a primary research is the data gathered will be rich. The amount of details needed for the research is contained in the information gathered – may it be from text,

The method of data collection I’ve chosen to proceed in this investigation is interview. The reason for choosing this method is because of the features of a semi-structured interview, it includes a list of predetermined questions that will be use to refine the topic of the interview for which it will also helps to provide the interviewee with some guidance of what to talk about, enabling the interviewers and the respondent to diverge and elaborate in order to pursue an idea or response in greater depth and details beside of answering directly to what they are required to answer by the predetermined questions.(Britten N, 1999)

This research is carried out when we want to describe and understand experience, ideas, beliefs and values. Researchers aim to gather a deep understanding of human behaviour and the reasons that govern such behaviour. The qualitative method investigates the reasons behind the decision making process, not just what, where and when. Therefore, smaller but more focused samples are often used rather than large samples.