Kathryn Roulston

Standards of Evidence in Qualitative Research: An Incitement to Discourse

In a climate of increased accountability, standardization, federal control, and politicization of education research and scholarship, this article briefly reviews various positions outlined by qualitative researchers about quality in qualitative inquiry, showing how these are implicated in the acquisition, conceptualization, and use of qualitative evidence. It concludes by identifying issues in and challenges to setting standards of evidence for qualitative researchers in education.

Considering quality in qualitative interviewing

Within the field of qualitative inquiry, there has been considerable discussion of how ‘quality’ might be demonstrated by researchers in reports of studies. With the growth in the application of qualitative methods in social research, along with the proliferation of texts available to qualitative researchers over the last four decades, there has been increasing diversity in how quality has been demonstrated in reports. In this article, I focus on the use of qualitative interviews in research studies, arguing that with a growing array of theorizations of the qualitative interview, researchers must demonstrate the quality of their work in ways that are commensurate with their assumptions about their use of interviews. I sketch a number of possibilities for how qualitative interviews might be theorized, and show the different ways in which quality might be demonstrated from each perspective. I propose this typology as one means by which novice researchers might begin to work through design decisions involved in the process of proposal writing, the conduct of interview studies, and the writing up and representation of findings.

Data analysis and ‘theorizing as ideology’:

In this article the author reviews a segment from a report of a research project that she undertook in 1991. In this initial entry into the research world, the research process used aimed to make audible one part of the ‘personal practical knowledge’ of a group of music teachers. By critiquing one segment of the report and contrasting this with a re-analysis of the original data upon which this segment relies, an alternative view of the research process and the research findings may be gained. The research process used in the first report aimed to allow teachers’ voices and knowledge to become explicit. In fact, it may be seen to gloss over underlying discourses and in doing so, romanticize those voices. Concomitantly, a re-analysis of the original data using methods drawn from conversation analysis reveals the ways in which the researcher’s voice is indelibly inscribed in the research process. The critique presented here elucidates the ways in which ‘theorizing as ideology’ may be accomplished by a novice researcher in the writing of a research report. Further, the utilization of conversation analysis to investigate interview transcripts of teacher talk demonstrates an approach to data analysis which might be further explored by researchers employing interviews as a method of data generation.

Close encounters of the ‘CA’ kind: a review of literature analysing talk in research interviews

Findings from ethnonmethodological (EM) and conversation analytic (CA) studies have contributed significantly to an understanding of how social order is produced on a moment-by-moment basis. Recently, researchers have examined a wide variety of talk drawn from research interviews using EM and CA methods, including standardized survey interviews, focus groups, and open-ended conversational interviews. The purpose of these kinds of analyses has been to explicate how descriptions and accounts are produced and co-constructed by researchers and participants of research projects. This article reviews studies that have used ethnomethodological methods, including membership categorization analysis (MCA) and CA, to investigate interview data. The diversity of work conducted and approaches taken by EM, MCA, and CA researchers in their analyses of data generated in research interviews is outlined, and the implications of findings for qualitative researchers with respect to the teaching of qualitative research methodology and qualitative data analysis are provided.

Beginning music teachers’ perceptions of the transition from university to teaching in schools

Much research addresses pre-service music teacher education, yet relatively few studies have investigated the work of graduates as they make the transition into careers as music educators. This study using qualitative interview data was conducted in 2003 and examined nine music teachers’ perceptions and experiences of their transition from being a student teacher to teaching full-time. Data analysis showed that teachers: (i) valued pre-service preparation that was ‘hands-on’, although some reported missing learning about crucial aspects relevant to their work; (ii) had been assisted by formal and informal mentors; (iii) described their first-year experiences as difficult yet rewarding; and (iv) described professional needs as largely contextually driven. Findings from this study inform pre-service and in-service teacher educators, and administrators who supervise beginning teachers’ development, as they plan for professional development and mentoring opportunities for beginning music teachers. Given the complexity of the settings in which music teachers work, effective pre-service teacher education programs must be accompanied by appropriate mentoring and professional development experiences if high teacher attrition rates in music education are to be addressed.

Reconceptualizing Bias in Teaching Qualitative Research Methods

Researchers who have been prepared in positivist traditions to social research frequently equate “subjectivity” with “bias,” which is viewed as both a problem to be managed and a threat to the credibility of a study. Teachers of qualitative research methods are familiar with questions about “subjectivity” that invoke “bias” from newcomers to qualitative research. This article revisits the methodological literature to examine how bias has been understood in qualitative inquiry. We argue for an approach to teaching qualitative research methods that assists students to make sense of long-standing and new debates related to “bias” and reconceptualize it in relation to their work. We provide recommendations for how teachers of qualitative inquiry might do this and illustrate these strategies with examples drawn from methodological reflections completed by a graduate student taking qualitative coursework.

Interactional problems in research interviews

This article examines how speakers orient to interactional problems in research interviews. These are marked by disfluencies in talk, with interviewees asking questions of the interviewer, declining invitations to elaborate on questions posed, or providing minimal responses. The article argues that interactions in which interviewees choose not to elaborate or challenge interviewers by asking questions provide valuable insights into research topics that complement the ‘rich’ descriptions that are usually sought by researchers in qualitative studies and evaluation projects. By examining how speakers manage interactional problems, researchers can identify trouble sources and important issues for further exploration. This examination of interviewers’ and interviewees’ talk shows that the accomplishment of both intersubjective understanding and generation of data for topical analysis is sensitive work to which speakers keenly attune on a turn-by-turn basis, underscoring the collaborative work that is necessary to do research interviews.

Analyzing the researcher's work in generating data: The case of complaints

This article investigates the researchers work in the coproduction (or not) of complaint sequences in research interviews. Using a conversation analytic approach, we show how the interviewers management of complaint sequences in a research setting is consequential for subsequent talk and thus directly affects the data generated. In the examples shown here, researchers sharing cocategorial incumbency with respondents may well provide spaces for research participants to formulate complaints. This article examines sequences of talk surrounding complaints to show how researchers generate complaints (or not) and handle unsafe complaints. Researchers are able to provoke specific types of accounts from respondents, whereas their respondents may actively resist the researchers’ direction. For researchers using the interview as a method of data generation, examination of complaint sequences and how these appear in interview data provides insight into how interview talk is coproduced and managed within a socially situated setting.

Working through Challenges in Doing Interview Research

Recent methodological work that draws on a ‘constructionist’ approach to interviewing - conceptualizes the interview as a socially-situated encounter in which both interviewer and interviewee play active roles. This approach takes the construction of interview data as a topic of examination. This article adopts the view that close examination of how particular interactions are accomplished provides additional insights into not only the topics discussed, but also how research design and methods might be modified to meet the needs of projects. Focus is specifically given to investigation of sequences observed as puzzling or challenging during interviews, or via interview data that emerged as problematic in the analysis process. How might close analyses of these sorts of sequences be used to inform research design and interview methods? The article explores (1) how problematic interactions identified in the analysis of focus group data can lead to modifications in research design, (2) an approach to dealing with reported data in representations of findings, and (3) how data analysis can inform question formulation in successive rounds of data generation. Findings from these types of examinations of interview data generation and analysis are valuable for informing both interview practice as well as research design in further research.

Mapping the possibilities of qualitative research in music education: a primer

Increasing numbers of music education researchers have begun to use qualitative methods to examine research topics using interviews, observations, documents, and archival data. In this article, I review qualitative research methodology and its origins and methods, discuss topics that have been studied by music education researchers using qualitative research methods, and show possible ways that qualitative research methods might be used to investigate topics in music education. The purpose of this paper is to provide guidance to researchers in music education exploring qualitative methodology, music educators who supervise students conducting qualitative research projects; and classroom practitioners who would like to explore the possibilities of qualitative research design and methods to study research problems in school settings. This mapping of possibilities for qualitative research provides a broad palette of options from which music education researchers might choose to examine significant issues of interest.