Monday, September 25, 2017

Chapter 3: Role of the Researcher (qual, mixed methods)

In qualitative and mixed methods you need to discuss your role as the researcher. Why? Because you are going to be doing the interviews, therefore, who you are and how you know and interact with the participant is essential to understanding the study.

You will want to first define and explain your role as an observer of the behaviors, a participant in the interview, and or an observer-participant. Next, you will discuss any relationships that you have with the participants, particularly if you have a supervisory relation (this will be a big issue for the IRB, so think if there is a way around using your supervisees).

Next, you will discuss how your own biases will be managed. Every researcher comes into a study with biases, if you didn’t have ideas as to what you thought would happen, you would not do the study! You may have been (or are) a member of the population group, how will you keep that from influencing your interview? You will need to be impartial and unbiased, how can you do that? One common way is to approach subjects/ participants neutrally and keep a journal where you relate your feelings that come up for you. It is common for new interviewers to want to engage in a social conversation with the participants and share their own experiences. Do not do this! Your story may influence how they respond to questions; you want to approach the topic as someone new to the topic. Do not assume that you know what they are going to say, let them explain the details.

Finally, you need to think through any other ethical issues, such as, doing a study within one’s own work environment, conflict of interest or power differentials, and justification for use of incentives. Then lay out a plan for addressing any issues that are present. 

Next time we will look at Chapter 3: Participant Selection. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu

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