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Introduction to Qualitative Research: Online
This is an introductory unit for individuals with limited or no previous experience with qualitative traditions or techniques of inquiry.
Instructor
Dr Emma Mitchell is a Macquarie University Research Fellow in the Macquarie School of Communications, Society and Culture. She is an experienced teacher and has taught undergraduate, postgraduate, and intensive Bloc mode courses at the University of Sydney and Macquarie University. Emma has designed and convened undergraduate and specialist courses on qualitative inquiry in the social sciences and conducted qualitative research across multiple ARC and partner-funded projects. Emma's research has used inclusive methodologies to explore culturally and linguistically diverse contexts of poverty, welfare, and housing precarity, with a focus on the everyday forms of care that enable survival and make life liveable in hardship. Her current research uses child-focused, creative methods to investigate how children’s care activities help sustain low-income families.
Course Level
In this course you will learn about the foundational elements of qualitative research and how they are interrelated. We will unpack the key components of qualitative research design, including the stances and theories that underpin qualitative methodologies, as well as techniques of data collection and analysis. We pay particular attention to what’s involved in ethically employing popular methods such as interviewing and observation. We also address the practical and ethical considerations of online methods, given the growing uptake of remote research during the coronavirus pandemic.
The course combines short lectures covering foundational issues with practical workshops that give you a chance to practice qualitative techniques first-hand.
The target audience for this course is those who would like to become more familiar with qualitative research techniques, from postgraduate university students and staff, to researchers in government and private organisations.
This course will run over the following zoom sessions each day:
- 10.00 am to 11.30pm
- 12.00pm to 1.30pm
- 2.30pm to 4.00pm
Preparation will be required before each Zoom session, which will involve reading, watching, or listening to short sources.
One-on-one consultations will be available at the end of course upon request.
Day 1
- Situating qualitative inquiry in the social sciences.
- Designing qualitative methodologies: frames, methods, and issues.
- The politics and ethics of qualitative research.
Day 2
- Situating the researcher in the field: the researcher as instrument.
- Planning and conducting in-depth interviews: forms of interview, rapport, phrasing questions, probing.
- Group interviews: composition, structure, facilitation.
Day 3
- Observational practices: forms of observation, what to look for, writing field notes.
- Unobtrusive methods: access, interpretation, online data.
- Online research methods: doing research in a pandemic, tools, engaing participants
Day 4
- Handling data: an iterative approach, preliminary data analysis, data storage.
- Data analysis: inductive logic, generating meaning.
- Using computer software in qualitative analysis.
- Coding systems and cycles. Thematic analysis.
Day 5
- Analysis continued: Discourse analysis
- Writing up: The purpose of qualitative writing.
- Presenting data: audience and purpose/ voice and style.
- Criteria for assessing good qualitative research.
There are no prerequisites for this course.
Other reading that may be useful:
- Creswell, J. (2016) 30 Essential Skills for the Qualitative Researcher, Sage: Thousand Oaks.
- Tracy, S.J. (2013) Qualitative Research Methods: Collecting evidence, crafting analysis and communicating impact, Wiley-Blackwell: West Sussex.
The instructor's course notes will serve as the course text.
These will be posted to your nominated 'shipping address' in advance.
Best course I've been to in a longtime. Emma was an excellent teacher, clearly knowledgeable and passionate. Teaching was well paced. Very open & responsive to questions.
I can highly recommend. It was very useful, the presenter was highly knowledgeable and able to create a good grounding in qualitative research. We did realise that this is a huge topic however, so just the start.
It was such a useful course for me - it was well paced and laid out, full of useful knowledge but also practical exercises that were instructive and you facilitated it over Zoom so well!
Definitely, a nice mix of listening, discussion and solo activities.
Thank you for a really great week – definitely one of the best online courses I’ve done!
I was happy with the experience - the timing of the sessions was well considered in terms of length and timing during the day. The teacher's use of short videos as lectures and additional reading as a supplementary tool was also well considered and I thought it worked well. The use of online resources to facilitate interactive sessions also worked well. The only thing I miss from the online is the casual conversations over breaks and lunches etc but you need to weigh that up against the benefits of not having to travel and the flexibility provided by online course. Overall I thought online worked very well for me.
I may recommend this course (to) all the postgrad students at the beginning state of their commitment in research, for the realisation what kind of skills will be required to develop later. This course is excellent to a student to be introduced to the coming difficulties.
New to Qual Research, so coming with a clean state. Leaving feeling that I am competent to commence projects to offer knowledge within a team structure.
Applied learning, individually and in group setting. Allowed sharing of ideas, encouraged group participation. Theory supported by practical exercises, include different learning studies.
Excellent practice combined with theory & awesome teacher!
Consolidated prior knowledge, allowed for discussions regarding research projects, allowed an understanding to develop beyond what had been read in texts.
We had equal balanced of lectures discussions group activity, individual activity, interactions
The course gave me great understanding of qualitative aspect of my research how to do interviews, how to do analysis.