Hello Maria,

If you successfully categorized certain experiences into patterns, that indicates that they should be treated as such. I think, in you case, the best way to determine the status of those "patterns" would be trying to formulate a question for a questionnaire study to which the answer would be "yes" or "no" (e.g. Have you experienced X [object of your pattern]?) and thereby you could measure if your respondent has had a given experience or not--that would involve a quantitative aspect. In other words, if there are some experiences shared by your interviewees, that means they are patterns. 

I think finding regularities through qualitative research is something that makes this research no less important than quantitative research.

Best regards, 

Michał

In qualitative research also you have methodologies available which can improve the objectivity of your research. One of them is inter-rater reliability, where researchers classify the respondents' responses in some mutually agreed upon categories and different raters independently rate those categories and then try to calculate inter-rater reliability. Higher the inter-rater reliability, higher the scientific objectivity. For example if in your study on a sample of say 100 respondents, say you categorize their responses as per the already agreed categories and then give the same responses to 2 to 3 other independent raters and they also generally put those responses in the same category & inter-rater reliability coefficient among three raters is high then your research results of qualitative research are as reliable as the results of any quantitative research.

Best wishes for your research,

Satish Kumar Kalra 

I think I understand, thank you very much. Both answers are suirable...I think that the findings are important as in a qualitative research I could identify some patterns...now I need to operativized them...so, more ideas are welcomed, of course!!!

Dear Maria,

"Typologies" and "patterns" are serious approaches to empirical phenomena. No problem!

For movement culture, we also like to use the concept of "configuration", see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Configurational_analysis

Maybe, this can give you some idea.

Good luck!

Hola!

Desde mi punto de vista, los patrones o las tipologías no están sujetas a una aproximación, cuali o cuanti. Sin embargo, las segundas constituyen una herramienta metodológica que tiene ciertos requisitos que la definen como tal y lo que la distinguen de una mera taxonomía.

Más bien, es importante que leas sobre los requisitos para construir un "tipo". La biobliografía que te sugirió Critsina Blanco es muy buena opción. También te recomiendo que veas:

McKinney, John (1962), Tipología constructiva y teoría social, Buenos Aires, Amorrortu.

McKinney, John (1954), “Constructive Typology and Social Research”, en John T. Doby (ed.) An Introduction to Social Research, Harrisburg, Penn. The Stackpole Company, pp. 139-198.

Heyman, Josiah (2012), “Constructing and using typologies: unequal geography mobility in the México-US. Border Lands”, en Ariza, Marina y Laura Velasco (Coords.), Por los caminos de la investigación. Migración internacional y métodos cualitativos, UNAM, ISBN: 978-607-02-3211-4, México.

Velasco Ortiz, M Laura (2004) “Un acercamiento al método tipológico en sociología” en María Luisa Tarrés (coord.) Observar, Escuchar y Comprender: Sobre La Tradicion Cualitativa en la Investigación Social, México, El Colegio de México/Flacso-México/Miguel Ángel Porrúa librero-editor, pp 289-32.

Saludos,

Luciana

Muchas gracias a todas y todos, son muy buenas referencias/contribuciones todas las que me habéis dado. Confío ciegamente en todo lo que me comentáis. 

Espero poder encajar con la manera esperada de la construcción de estos patrones y tipologías, para poder justificar de forma oportuna lo que estoy encontrando. 

Thank you very much for the great suggestions and comments, I have really appreciated your help, and I hope to put them in practice asap concerning my recent findings!

Best wishes,

Saludos cordiales,

Marisa

I particularly like the word trajectory, which has been used in a variety of previous qualitative studies. If that is too specific, then patterns is certainly a good alternative.

I agree, trajectories seems fitting. If you have a more narrative approach "a limited set of trajectories" can be useful. Or, how these "personal narratives" relate to culturally shared narrative and present "archetypal storylines" in the findings. Furhermore, maybe address the issue of small vs. big stories (see e.g. Bamberg, Freeman or De Fina).

Best wishes,

Magnus

There is a broad methodology on ideal type formation based on the concept of "ideal type" by Max Weber, so stemming from sociooeconomics, which is fruther developed by Uta Gerhardt (Medical Sociology) and Ulrich Stuhr (qualitative psychotherapy research). An ideal type has, following Weber ‘the importance of a pure borderline term … against which reality can be tested to clarify certain significant parts of its empiric content, with which it can be compared’ (Weber 1904: 194). It has a hinge position, between

exemplifying single case causality and operationalized ‘measurement’ of large

collectives. Maybe this view on types helps you to contruct your typology.

Article Forming Ideal Types by Understanding: The Psychoanalytic Tre...

Article Suicidality in men in psychodynamic psychotherapy

Dear,

you already have great answers. Contributing, in Brazil the terms  "typologi and patterns are also widely used, in the investigation of the social sciences.  Therefore, in my opinion, it is correct to use them. Regards!

Maria Luisa,

I have found the term 'themes' very useful in qualitative research.

Clare

You are on track in using thematic pattern analysis. Miles and Hubberman support this stand as relevant for qualitative research

Dear Marisa,

You are right, you can group these patterns under typologies or positions as long as you provide a critical discussion around the transferability of your findings to the population outside your study participants. When it comes to qualitative research, our aim is to achieve theoretical saturation which is the point at which no new insights can be drawn from exiting or further data collection according to the researcher. This gives your findings density and richness rather than statistical representativeness or external validity. I believe a discussion of these methodological debates should come some where in your methodology section or study rigor and also recognizing any potential missing typologies in your theorized findings is considered good practice because it gives you the chance to acknowledges the limitation of your study design or recruitment strategy or interview guide and identifies future research questions. I think you should not worry about external validity because it is not one of the aims of qualitative research.

Also, I think you can benefit from reading the article I attached which used situational analysis to identify the information-coping trajectory of young people coping with long term illness. Situational analysis is a type of grounded theory developed by Adel Clarke that provides maps/diagrams to augment any form of qualitative data analysis. One of the maps is called positional maps (example present in attached article). Positional maps are excellent for grouping together certain typologies as well as plotting non existent typologies that you did not meet while analysing your data.

I hope this helps and please let me know if I can be of more assistance.

Best of luck,

Nancy

Typologies are characterized by categorization, but not by hierarchical arrangement; the categories in a typology are related to one another. Typological analysis is a strategy for descriptive qualitative (or quantitative) data analysis whose goal is the development of a set of related but distinct categories within a phenomenon that discriminate across the phenomenon. The typological  analysis has a predominantly heuristic character and is not based on complex statistic tools, being much different than those. As a working method, the typological analysis aims the similitude reports between objects and is used when there isn’t any a priori assumption and we are in the stage of  the exploratory analysis of research. 

The term "typology" has a long standing historical tradition, connected with the work of Max Weber on ideal type, who has ′the importance of a pure borderline term….against which reality can be tested to clarify certain significant parts of its empiric content, with which it can be compared′ (Weber 1904: 194). Maybe it would be of interest for you to work with the method of forming types by understanding, a qualitative method used in psychotherapy research.

Very interesting. thank you!