Chap7.ppt

Narrative research has many forms, uses a variety of analytic practices and is rooted in different social and humanities disciplines. "Narrative" might be the phenomenon being studied, such as narrative of illness, or it might be the method used in a study such as the procedures of analyzing stories being told. Narrative research is a specific type of qualitative design in which a narrative is understood as a spoken or written text giving an account of an event/action or series of events/ actions, chronologically connected. The procedures for implementing this research consist of focusing on studying one or two individuals, gathering data through the collection of their stories, reporting individual experiences, and chronologically ordering the meaning of those experiences.

All research is based on some underlying philosophical assumptions about what constitutes 'valid' research and which research method(s) is/are appropriate for the development of knowledge in a given study. In order to conduct and evaluate any research, it is therefore important to know what these assumptions are. This chapter discusses the philosophical assumptions and also the design strategies underpinning this research study. Common philosophical assumptions were reviewed and presented; the interpretive paradigm was identified for the framework of the study. In addition, the chapter discusses the research methodologies, and design used in the study including strategies, instruments, and data collection and analysis methods, while explaining the stages and processes involved in the study.

○ Research follows a step-by-step process of investigation that uses a standardized ○ approach in answering questions or solving problems (Polit & Beck, 2004). ○ Research plays an important role in tertiary education (Palispis, 2004). ○ Research is a continuous undertaking of making known the unknown (Sanchez, 2002). • RESEARCH TITLE ○ It prefaces the study by providing a summary of the main idea and its usually concise.

Qualitative case-study research has experienced an upsurge in business management fields of inquiry in the recent past. A methodology is selection, justification and sequential arranging of activities, procedures and tasks in a research project. Research methodology can no longer be confined to a set of universally applicable rules, conventions and traditions. A research paradigm is a set of propositions that explains how the world is perceived. There are three basic paradigms: positivist, interpretive and critical. Qualitative " approaches to research " , " strategies of inquiry " and " varieties of methodologies " classified into five " types " or " traditions " namely; biography, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography and case study. The major criticism made of qualitative methods is that they are impressionistic and non-verifiable, post-positivists who reject this charge claiming that qualitative data is auditable and therefore dependable. The less structured qualitative methodologies reject many of the positivists " constructions over what constitutes rigour, favouring instead the flexibility, creativity and otherwise inaccessible insights afforded by alternative routes of inquiry that embrace storytelling, recollection, and dialogue. Case study research is not really a " methodology " or a method, rather an approach to research. Case studies can be ethnographic or not and some scholars identified it as a strategy of social inquiry. It is argued that, case studies are more appropriate to investigate causal relationships prevailing both in the business field as well as in wider society in general.

The purpose of this chapter is to build your case as to why grounded theory is best methodology to inquire into your research purpose. It has a number of features to cover:

Qualitative research attempts to broaden and/or deepen our understanding of how things came to be the way they are in our social world. If the research question involves exploring how people experience something, or what their views are, exploring a new area where issues are not yet understood or properly identified. A qualitative research design is probably the most flexible of the various experimental techniques, encompassing a variety of accepted methods and structures. Here, five of the major qualitative research designs namely ethnography, phenomenology, case study, grounded theory, and narrative research has introduced. Descriptionsof all five qualitative research designs are given separately. The design of qualitative research provides for the learner to understand the difference between phenomenology and grounded theory or between ethnography and case study and also narrative research and it gives the knowledge about itself. Common sense and research both involve an attempt to understand various aspects of the world. However research, but arguably not common sense, involves an explicit, systematic approach to finding things out, often through a process of testing out preconceptions and researchers working in the social sciences: psychology, sociology, anthropology etc., interested in studying human behaviour and the social world inhabited by human beings, found increasing difficulty in trying to explain human behaviour in quantifiable, measurable terms. Qualitative research attempts to broaden and/or deepen our understanding of how things came to be the way they are in our social world. If the research question involves exploring how people experience something, or what their views are, exploring a new area where issues are not yet understood or properly identified (e.g. before developing questionnaire items), assessing whether a new service is implementable, looking at "real-life" context, or a sensitive topic where you need the flexibility to avoid causing distress, your team probably needs to discuss using qualitative methodology.

Qualitative research is one of the two types of methodologies used in research. The characteristics of qualitative research studies and qualitative research are the delivery of data.