Читать книгу Qualitative Dissertation Methodology - Nathan Durdella - Страница 47

One of the first and primary characteristics of dissertations is an original approach. As the Council of Graduate Schools (1991) described, the dissertation requires original work, a requirement that “implies some novel twist, fresh perspective, new hypothesis, or innovative method that makes the dissertation project a distinctive contribution” (p. 8). Here, the inclusion of multiple descriptive terms associated with original—novel, fresh, new, innovative, and distinctive—illustrates the nature of original research in the dissertation context. What do the terms novel, fresh, new, innovative, and distinctive mean to you? They are seemingly but deceptively simple adjectives that require us to use a mix of creativity, ingenuity, and a sense of inquiry to the research process. In a dissertation study, novel, new, and fresh may relate to the problem in knowledge and/or practice that you identify, the research design or data collection procedures that you use, or the analytical techniques and interpretive approach that you apply. The innovative and distinctive character of a dissertation study may be seen in the results, findings, and recommendations for future research and practice that you make. How will you distinguish your study from previous studies related to the same or similar topics and/or methods?

The broader context of science can explain, in part, the need to make an original contribution and use a rigorous approach in dissertation research. The thrust of work in scientific inquiry is to produce new knowledge and create new systems in work and society. What is unique to doctoral research in graduate education is the emphasis of training researchers to conduct their work in a manner that is consistent with expectations in the field—rigorous and systematic conventions to create knowledge. A final outcome of research work is to change the ways in which we think and act. Whether this is an incremental adjustment or a substantial change in what we know or do, the idea in dissertation research is to extend discussions about a topic of interest and phenomenon of focus and move people and communities in new directions. In most cases, this approach means that you disseminate findings from dissertation work and apply recommendations to local contexts of practice and broader communities of researchers.

At the conceptualization phase of a dissertation study, the use of existing literature to identify a gap in knowledge and/or practice moves us toward originality and independence in an investigation. That is, you examine what we do not yet know empirically or do in practice. In reviewing both empirical and conceptual literature to inform the development of your research problem, purpose, and questions, you commit to an evaluation and synthesis of research studies to understand what will form the focus of your look at the phenomenon. In empirical studies, you incorporate rigor into your research framework by grounding the problem in examinations that used standard research practices and withstood scrutiny in the peer-review process. Similarly, the conceptual literature, which generally joins empirical studies in a literature review, tends to enhance the explanatory power of results in a study and allows for a more robust application of an interpretative lens in evaluating the research questions of a study.

As you execute the study that you have conceptualized and designed, originality may mean that you use standard data collection or analysis procedures in new ways. You may think, How can this be possible? With all of the studies that have been published and presented, how can what I propose in my dissertation study be innovative? Just as culinary recipes can be prepared in new ways, so too can research studies. Consider apple pie. Requiring a seemingly simple and easy recipe to make, apple pie can be made in many imaginative and creative ways. A few clicks and a Google search later, you can find hundreds of apple pie recipes! And that is not the end of it—you can make your own unique pie with a new ingredient or ingredients, a different mix of apples, a slight twist on existing ingredients, a change in baking temperature (or an alternative approach to baking), and so on. You get the idea here. In your discipline or interdisciplinary field, how many studies have used the same research design or tradition and procedures in the same research contexts or sites with the same participant groups to examine the specific phenomenon in your study at this time in human history? The replication of an existing study in a different research context is new, and the use of an existing instrument with new participants is fresh. You have done, are doing, or will do the literature review—and you have seen, are seeing, or will see endless combinations of topical areas of interest, empirical and conceptual studies, and research design and methods that result in unique sets of results, findings, and recommendations. This is the essence of innovation in empirical research.

Another characteristic that dissertations tend to exhibit is the use of standards in the field to gather and make sense of information. Culturally, faculty advisors, academic researchers, graduate student researchers, evaluators, and so on reproduce these standards in the field—reifying them in practice, publishing results of research work in journals, codifying them in academic texts, discussing them in graduate classrooms, and using them to advise dissertation advisees. While not static or linear, they tend to dictate steps in the research process—from conceptualizing research problems and questions to designing data collection and analysis procedures. In the dissertation research process, students generally use these standards as a “sustained set of acts through which rigorous habits of mind are practiced and internalized” (Smith, 2010b). Indeed, the practice of these standard practices support rigor in the research process and distinguish empirical from anecdotal sources of information, establishing credibility, dependability, transferability, and confirmability—the hallmarks of what counts—in studies.

In a qualitative methodological framework alone, general research practices and specific practices in qualitative inquiry guide decisions about a range of steps. The lens of a research tradition—ethnography, phenomenology, grounded theory, narrative inquiry, case study, and so on—generally informs how researchers proceed. Using a set of assumptions, principles, and techniques, a tradition’s lens helps researchers decide on the types and sources of information; settings and sites to access participants; the approaches to sample, recruit, and select participants; collect data and interact with participants; and make sense of patterns that emerge from an analysis of data. The practices generally establish a common language and an explicit set of expectations for behavior in the field—and research texts tend to be interpreted through them.

A final characteristic that tends to be associated with dissertation research is a problem-solving orientation. Granted, we articulate research problems in our research work, and research problems form the bedrock of most empirical studies—signifying ties to what others have found using standard approaches—but a problem-solving orientation means more than the use of the existing literature to guide a study. Here, problem solving relates to a study rooted in a persistent problem or problems in a local context—particularly among a group or segments of society who have been challenged by or struggled with social inequities or injustices at the community or family levels. This orientation presents a compelling interest to more than just researchers and the academic community—it sustains interest among local and regional stakeholders (and beyond) and holds implications for meaningful change and improvements in the lives and communities where people live and work.