Modes of Qualitative Research

Qual or Quant? What is you?

I'm here sitting in my second-to-last Research Methods class. The end is not coming soon enough. Tonight is the night where each student has paired up with another to present one of the following:

1. Grounded-Theory Research - theory that emerges from observation of a group (this was us)
2. Ethnographic Research - study an ethnography
3. Narrative Research - tell a story
4. Action Research -specific solutions to a specific problem

It's going fine. Lauren and I intelligently had a beer before class. Definitely softened the edges. We were the only pair who didn't use handouts (people throw them out anyway...). But I'd say this has been the most interesting class yet, mostly because it's discussion and not lecture. Also, Qualitative methods are more attractive to me than the Quantitative methods. More humanistic, I suppose.

Elisabeth gave us her opinion of contextual inquiries, saying that it was basically "pop" techniques, and could stand the influence of the methods from books by the authors below:

Corbin and Strauss
Spradley

Okay, more beer...