Part I. A "lesson plan" in which you teach your fellow group mates about qualitative research, this time focusing on qualitative analysis.
Lesson Tittle: QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS.
Objective: By the end of this lesson the students will:
- Have an appreciation of principles of qualitative data analysis.
- Discriminate between various qualitative analysis methods.
- Apply data collection methods to a certain research or professional interest.
- Analyze and discuss qualitative analysis appropriateness for evaluation and research purposes.
Purpose: To introduce the students to analysis of the qualitative data.
Activities: (Include any activities to teach the lesson)
- Discuss lesson objective.
- Thorough discussion of various methods of qualitative data analysis.
- Demonstrate these methods using charts and pictures.
- Involve all the students in active discussion.
- Go through various published researches together with the students.
- Asking questions.
Evaluation: (How I am going to evaluate the lesson)
- Ask oral questions related to the topic.
- Ask the students to seek clarification when they do not understand.
- Administer a quick test in the last ten minutes of the lesson.
- Give them an assignment at the end of the lesson.
Part II. In crafting your lesson/presentation for your group mates, you must outline the core components of the study, data collection, and analytical methods by addressing all of the following questions:
1. What was the overall qualitative design?
Answer: The overall qualitative design in. “Young people's perceptions and experiences of leaving high school early: An exploration” qualitative research by Lee, T., & Breen, L. is grounded theory. This is because this research tries to discover or investigate a problem that exists in a given social scene and essentially how individual handle it. In addition, we understand that the methodology that was employed in data analysis was constructionist grounded theory methodology hence this further proves the design.
2. What was the problem statement?
Answer: The problem statement for this research was “Students who do not belong at school often attempt to satisfy their sense of belonging need through membership in antisocial groups, or they drop out from school altogether.” By examining this problem statement, it is obvious that it addresses all the 6 questions that is, what, where, how, who, and why that a valid problem statement should address.
3. What was the purpose of the study and what were the research questions (if stated)?
Answer: The purpose of this study was to explore school context perceptions and experiences as held by the young people who leave school early, which is essentially relevant given the insufficiency of empirical research, which privileges student voice. The research questions in this study were:
- “What was the experience of school for young people who left school early?”
- “How did the school context impact on their wellbeing?”
- “How has their decision to leave school early impacted on their wellbeing?”
4. What was the sample and sampling technique used?
Answer: The sample in the study comprised 12 young participants where males were 4 and females were 8. In addition, the research used snowball sampling technique.
5. What data collection techniques were employed? Were these appropriate to the design? Why or why not?
Answer: Interviews were used in the study to collect the data. This technique was appropriate because in it is required to be used in grounded theory qualitative design which was the overall design in the study.
6. How was data analysis employed? Was this an analytical approach different from thematic analysis? If so, how?
Answer: The researchers employed data analysis by constant comparison across the participants, categories, codes and others. They began with comparison of first 2 interviews and this facilitated an idiographic approach. This analytical approach was not different from the thematic approach.
7. Was the analytical approach appropriate for the study? Why?
Answer: The analytical approach employed in the data analysis was appropriate because the context of the research was to study the personalities of the participants, and this analytical approach is efficient in studying the behaviors of the participants.
8. What ethical issues might exist with this study? Why?
Answer: The ethical issues that might exist within the study are consent, privacy, and deception. Informed consent may exist because most of the participants were younger people hence it is necessary to gather it from their parents. Privacy ethical issue is also necessary because the research was investigating the characters of the participants and some characters were not that good. Last but not least, deception ethical issue might exist in the study because the participants may be biased hence present false information.
9. How were the issues of validity addressed?
Answer: This research can essentially be described as a sound research. This is because there was validity in the data collection and this means that the study findings truly represented what was being measured. These findings were both internally and externally valid since all the factors that affect these two were met. For instance, the size of the sample was okay and it was also a representative sample, data collection time was efficient, data collection methodology was correct, among others.
10. Consider the logic of the data analysis.
a. Was it inductive, deductive, or mixed? Answer: Data analysis was inductive
b. How do you know this? Answer: This is because a constant comparative method was used in the study for theory building and it is much appropriate in inductive data analysis.
c. What are the implications of the analysis? Answer: Inductive data analysis proved that the study findings corresponded to the literature. Moreover, it led to emergency of new themes from raw data by repeated examination and also comparison.
d. Did the data collection sufficiently cover the topic and exhaust the sources? Answer: Yes
