Assignment: Qualitative Methods Practice

Assignment: Qualitative Methods Practice

Question Description
Consider This activity is based upon a qualitative methods dissertation. In this task, you will read and analyze the research methodology employed by the researcher. You will not read the entire dissertation.

Read Chapter 3. of the dissertation attached below
Pay particular attention to the elements of qualitative research that are presented in Creswell Chapter 10. You will find that this study is very nicely designed and very thoroughly reported and is a good example of a qualitative study.
Respond to the following: Creswell provides a number of characteristics of qualitative research. Locate evidence that this dissertation contains these characteristics. Provide a brief summary/description (1 – 3 sentences) demonstrating how each item is reflected in the dissertation. Indicate page number(s) where these are found. Note: You many not find each and every one of these. Respond to any 8 of these 13 items.

Natural setting
Researcher as instrument
Multiple sources of data
Inductive and deductive data analysis
Participants’ meanings
Emergent design
Reflexivity
Holistic account
Gatekeepers
Purposeful selection of research site and participants
Data collection: observation, interview, documents, audio/visual materials
Data analysis: organizing, coding, describing, interpreting
Validity and reliability: triangulation, member checking, rich/thick description

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.