This course is designed for participants who have undertaken a qualitative study in their work or study and would like to build their theoretical knowledge and applied skill base in qualitative research.
This course will be run over 5 days in two sessions per day:
- 10.00am - 11.30pm - Session 1.
- 12.00pm - 1.30pm - Session 2
- 2.30pm - 4.00pm - Session 3
Individual consultations will be offered after the course, or in the day following.
This course is being run on Australian Eastern Daylight Time (UTC +11)
(Canberra, Sydney Melbourne Daylight Savings time)
Dr Delwyn Goodrick is a psychologist who undertakes program evaluation and social research with a wide range of government and private sector clients. She is an experienced trainer having conducted a range of specialist workshops in research and program evaluation in Australia, Singapore, the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand. Most of Delwyn's work relates to health and education contexts. She maintains her own private consultancy practice and is currently working from New Zealand.
The focus of this course is on issues of design and positioning, analysis and representation of qualitative research. This course only provides a generic overview of data collection methods, as it is assumed that participants will have experience with methods.
Many of the examples will make reference to research in business, psychology and health.
The target audience for this course are researchers, practitioners and academics who have conducted at least one qualitative study, and are familiar with the process and context of qualitative research.
Day 1
- Epistemological and Methodological foundations.
- The importance of epistemology and methodology in qualitative research.
- Identification of research, values, stance, and voice.
- Designing qualitative research – common frameworks (life history, ethnography)
Day 2
- Design frameworks continued.
- Grounded Theory and Ethnography.
- An overview of methods and methods tips.
- Linking stance, design and methods.
Day 3
- Case study and narrative research design frameworks will be presented.
- Making sense of qualitative data: How to make reasoned decisions about the appropriateness of analytic strategies Data management and analysis.
Day 4
- Data Analysis and representation continued.
- Matrix displays,
- thematic analysis (grounded and theory driven),
- constant comparative method,
- phenomenological approaches.
Day 5
- Issues in the representation of qualitative research.
- How to assess the quality of qualitative research, enhancing the validity and trustworthiness of qualitative research (including technical, reflexive and critical criteria and standards).
- Post structural forms of legitimation.
- Constructing effective arguments.
NB: There will be pre-reading and expectations for reading / activities in breaks
This course will take place via Zoom. No particular software is required other than the Zoom download. Participants will be asked to complete exercises in word and send to the instructor for review. Pre-reading is required before each session block. Participants can expect to be required to read/review three to four articles for each day.
Participants will be expected to have experience with at least one qualitative research project or have undertaken an introductory level course in qualitative research methods. While some discussion of the technical elements of methods is presented during the course of the workshop, participants should have a basic familiarity with data collection methods such as interviews, observation and document analysis.
The instructor's bound, book length course notes will serve as the course text. These will be sent to you in advance.
Other reading that may be useful:
- Bazeley, P. (2013). Qualitative data analysis: Practical Strategies. London: Sage
- Miles, M. Huberman, M., & Saldana, J. (2014). Qualitative data analysis: A methods sourcebook. (3rd ed). Los Angeles: Sage.
- Patton, MQ. (2017). Qualitative research and evaluation methods. 5th ed, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Q: Do I have to have had any qualitative research experience to do this course?
A: Yes, you will have been expected to have experience with at least one qualitative research project or have undertaken an introductory level course in qualitative research methods.
The course was incredibly helpful at a relatively early stage of my PhD, where I am currently trying to determine what epistemology will frame my research and what research design, methods, and data analysis techniques would be most appropriate.
The course exceeded all my expectations because it not only helped me strengthen my research skills, which are useful for my job, but also enabled me to structure my own narrative regarding my personal and professional values and objectives and my ability to think more critically about a range of topics.
Great balance of presentations and group work! Kept things interesting over five days of Zoom class.
The course content was delivered in a fashion that allowed for good exploration of the content, group review, and excellent facilitated discussion. Del is a fantastic teacher and facilitator.
Feel like I am much more thoroughly grounded in QRM and QDA and able to make more significant, theoretically rigorous contributions to the research design and output of my team.
Having discussions with others was of great benefit, and there was a great mix of listening and talking. Del was very responsive and supportive of questions, and always willing to discuss things with the broader group. The breakout rooms were a great chance to get to know the other attendees, and share our questions and research during activities.
This course has been invaluable for me as a PhD student with limited experience with qualitative research. It gave a really solid and cohesive background to theoretical underpinnings of qual research and how these influenced and informed choice of design framework, method and analysis.
Covered a huge range of material, most of which was relevant to my needs. Loads of resources in the course and suggested reading and resources to follow up post course.
Extremely useful for gaining further clarity regarding Qual methods/design & applying this to my own research project.
I found the course had a very practical element to it. The way it was taught provided a good sense of how the theories/methodologies could be implemented in practice in a number of content.
Delwyn is an excellent presenter. Very useful for me to get a theoretical grounding in qualitative research design at this point in my PhD.
Del has an amazing wealth of knowledge can explain complex concepts in a straight forward way, and is highly engaging - one of the best instructors I’ve had.
The course was a great mix of theory, practice and practical, It was also well facilitated and participatory & engaging all students and tailoring research to our individual experiences.
Del helped me situate myself in the compendium of ontological and epistemological traditions.
The instructor's bound, book length course notes will serve as the course text.