Dear colleagues and authors
As I have mentioned earlier in the past, I'm doing a qualitative study. The more I proceed in my work, the more hidden and important things are revealed to me. And I think that's the nature of qualitative research.
I'm investigating the conflict between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law through Grounded theory study. My main question is:
1. what is the process of conflict between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law?
And the subsequent questions are:
2. what conditions contribute to this conflict?
3. What strategies are used by both sides to deal with this conflict?
4. What are the consequences of this conflict?
So I'm going to interview both daughter-in-law and mother-in-law (Not a relative, of course.)
Because of my training in quantitative research and objections that one of the reviewers in my research committee made, I have big and important questions and I hope your valuable comments help me.
The followings are the main criticism of my work:
1. I must first screen the participants in terms of a significant psychological disorder arguing that, the presence of a bipolar disorder, for example, can compromise the validity of the obtained findings and therefore must be excluded from the research process.
2. Who should participate in the study? How much of conflict should be experienced by participants for meeting the inclusion criteria? High conflict? Any portion of conflict?
Your contribution can be very helpful and valuable to me
Thank you in advance ...
I don't think you need to pre-screen your participants for psychiatric disorders, but it certainly is a good idea not to try and conduct interviews with people who have poorly managed bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. On the rare chance that you do encounter somewhat who is psychotic, you should have a simple protocol for thanking them and discontinuing the interview.
With regard to doing grounded theory, one of the key principles is theoretical sampling. This means starting out with some clear inclusion guidelines, but then letting those guidelines evolve as you learn more about your topic. The terminology theoretical sampling means that as your theory develops during the ongoing analysis process, your choice of who to interview should also change, so that the people you are talking to are the most relevant for advancing your theory.
If you are new to qualitative interviewing, I suggest starting with participants who have a relatively typical or "normal" level of conflict, and learning what that is like, before you start interviewing people who are seriously angry or unhappy about their lives.
1. What if it is actually the psychological disorders that cause the conflict? And what if there are cases when psychological factors are present but do not affect the conflict? In grounded theory you should consider being guided by the participants and the data, as they are the carriers of the research problem, and that's the only way to understand the process from within. So, if you exclude any group on a certain criterion that might be causally related to the research problem, it's not a grounded theory anymore.
I do agree though that you should consider the possibility of psychological factors, but there can be other factors as well (e.g. housing conditions, financial conditions etc.). So, to address this issue, I would recommend reflecting these possible factors in your interview guide/questionnaire, and asking the respondents' thoughts on possible causes. One might say herself that she thinks the other side of the conflict is psychotic and that's what causes conflicts. Or they might not.
2. I would say grounded theory is not the best methodology to study this problem, unless you are convinced both theoretically and practically that there is a particular conflict process between them, different from other interpersonal conflicts. I feel like this research problem could be explored better within the phenomenological tradition, trying to understand the deeper meanings and interpretations of the conflict rather than aiming at finding local generalizations.
Whichever methodology you end up focusing on, it'd be better if you would let them define what is conflict to them and how harsh it should be for them to consider it as a conflict. This is because if you go into the field with an already pre-defined understanding of conflict, you might end up missing important data, something that does not fall under your definition of conflict but is surely considered so by the respondents.
Regarding the sampling:
If you end up doing a phenomenological research, I would suggest considering the quota sampling, and grouping the cases based on two criteria that I think are important - family type (refer to existing research and theories) and maybe the duration of living together. Then combine the criteria and take 3 cases from each subgroups (read more on qualitative sampling).
In case of grounded theory, I really don't know, as I cannot imagine this research in grounded theory. Maybe other opinions in this regard could be helpful.
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