Читать книгу Qualitative Dissertation Methodology - Nathan Durdella - Страница 75

In addition to program coursework, the connections between current and future career directions tend to lead methodology work. Indeed, professional positions—in full- or-part-time capacity—held prior to or during doctoral programs of study generally serve as immediately available and efficiently reached research settings. If you work in a field closely aligned with your program of study, your professional and organizational networks, office and professional colleagues, and partners with whom you work will likely be in positions to serve as gatekeepers or informants—supporting recruitment, data collection, and analytical interpretation. Here, the most supportive of and sympathetic colleagues in your network may best meet your dissertation research needs.

But what about considerations for backyard research, where you perform fieldwork in a familiar setting where you work now or used to work? This is a common question from advisees when I suggest their current or former work sites for their dissertations. Additional questions from students include the following: Isn’t this just a convenience sample? Doesn’t this weaken my study? These are valid questions that generally reflect critical engagement in the research process, but they also tend to originate from an epistemological understanding of social science research where empirical investigations need to follow from an arm’s-length, so-called objective position. For doctoral students who use a qualitative approach in their dissertation studies, situating their studies in a setting with which they are familiar and where they have strong professional connections makes sense. Indeed, with the use of systematic sampling strategies to select participants (discussed in Chapter 5) and a range of procedures to mitigate the effects of the site on you as the researcher and your researcher effects on participants (discussed in Chapter 8), you have the tools you need to credibly conduct dissertation research where you work (discussed as backyard research in Chapter 4). With strong ties to practice and support from colleagues where you work or worked, you will be in a position to submit to your chair specific research sites, sampling and recruitment strategies, and approaches to mitigate researcher effects.