We conducted a research aimed at identifying patterns in the selection of images used by Digital News Media specifically in the political beat and the subsequent impact it has on the news consumers perception. We used content analysis to understand the images used in these news pieces and tried decoding a pattern and establishing themes for articles from each of the selected media houses. Further audience interviews were taken to understand the impact of these images on their perception of these news articles. Can someone throw light as to what qualitative design does this fall under amongst Ethnography, Narrative, Phenomenological, Grounded Theory and Case Study?
Hi, really interesting topic.
As my director of studies and phD supervisor Say, you have to decide which of the qualitative genre (ethnography, etc) is best for your purpose to anwer your research questions, and provide rationalisation for using the approach.
As per your description above, and based upon your chosen instruments for data collection, any of the qualitative genres stated above would do, however, you should Ask your self, what am I trying to discover, explore or interrogate? The answer to these will direct you to the most appropriate design for your study.
I hope this helps?
Obviously you have read Creswell as the source of those five categories, but his list is by no means exhaustive. For example, he does not include content analysis, but that is one of the primary methods you have used. In addition, you have what would be known as a multi-method qualitative study, where you used the individual interviews to follow-up on and interpret the initial content analysis, which would also fall outside the set of possibilities that Creswell described -- even though it is a coherent and highly desirable design.
So, I suggest you stop worrying about someone else's rather arbitrary typology of approaches to qualitative research and concentrate on justifying why you did what you did. In other words, what were your research goals and how did you design your research to meet those goals?
I think David Morgan's answer is spot on. The research categories are not distinct anyway. The term 'case study', for instance, can be applied to an individual, a group, or an organisation. Within a case study you can use grounded theory , quantitative methods such as personality inventories or any other method of gathering and analysing data.
Grounded Theory simply means that you identify categories in use by the participants themselves, then aggregate their instances into more inclusive categories through the creation of resemblance classes, possibly recognisable by participants but not necessarily in use by them, and finally that you articulate the classes by defining the relationships among them at a level beyond participant's usual awareness.
Content analysis can automatically give you the identification of categories unless you inject too much theory into your content categories to begin with. If you stay with the participant's own words/labels for objects/situations or sorting behavior (e.g. of similarity classes of pictures) then you have the lowest level of content categories. Then following the grounded theory approach (there are a number of different versions of this) you generate higher order categories which in turn allow differentiation of participants.
What I am saying is that these methodology labels are overlapping and/or are not mutually exclusive. You need to look in common-sensical ways at what you are doing rather than at the methodological labels: you are identifying meanings and differentiating categories/groups of people who are associated with them. You can compare and contrast the groups on the basis of the meanings and the meanings on the basis of the groups, and you can look at that against other characteristics of the people that may be relevant to your problem area.(male/female, old/young, education, function etc) Similarly, you can compare the meanings on the basis of the groups.
Keep your thinking at this common-sense level and you will not get caught up in a spurious level of apparent 'objectivity' that some methodological labels imply.
I agree with the above meticulous and insightful answers. I see that you are also interested in "consumers perception" that can be highlighted by applying emic approach which focuses on people's point of view.
Optimal answer is ground theory. although ground theory is not literally considered as qualitative research method as the case. else it will remain a case study.
The best qualitative design is creative and fit for purpose. You don't need to get hung up on labelling it. Rather, consider carefully the appropriateness of the method (as technique), in relation to its methodological framework (which is at the heart of qualitative design).
The research needs to follow a narrative design. I think it is not viable to use content analysis blatantly/obviously but, use a construct analysis and also use the same (construct) to check validity of your instruments. The themes which are likely to be created may not be measured by any known means but serve towards some objective fit.
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