Hi
Please help! I'm planning to conduct qualitative semi-structured interviews to evaluate my research contribution. Using Saunders' Research Onion (2016), I'm trying to identify what "research strategy" the interviews will fall under? I'm sure that the interviews will not fall under an experiment, case study, grounded theory, ethnography or action research strategy. But I do not know which strategy to say the interviews fall under? Survey? A survey research strategy is usually for quantitative data and my sample will only be about 30 semi-structured interviews (snowball sampling technique) with a lot of open-ended questions, so survey doesn't make sense.
I'm really confused. I've been trying to figure this out for weeks and really don't know which research strategy interviews fall under?
Someone please help :(
Thank you.
I think you are asking the wrong question. Interviews are not a research strategy, they are a research or data collection method. Research methods are the tools used to implement the research strategy. Semi structured interviews can be part of a grounded theory strategy, a case study, an ethnographic study or indeed part of an experimental strategy. They are a tool to implement the strategy, not the strategy itself.
Antje Cockrill Thank you. That is my question though. I know it's a data collection method, but I'm trying to figure out which research strategy it falls under for my study. I'm not doing grounded theory, case study or ethnographic research, so it's neither of those strategies. I'm trying to figure out which one it is. It is possible for qualitative interviews to fall under a survey strategy?
Have a look at this version of the research onion (also by Saunders). It's slightly different from other versions, you may find this more useful. https://www.academia.edu/4107831/The_Layers_of_Research_Design
Otherwise, I would put interviews under the heading of an explanatory strategy which some of Saunders research onion versions include.
Antje Cockrill Thank you very much. I really appreciate your helping out.
Step #1 Ignore the onion -- it is too arbitrary and incomplete to be of much use.
Step #2 Emphasize the connection between your research goals and your methods, and use that to argue for your choice of method.
David L Morgan thank you for your suggestion - will take it on board.
Callie - it sounds like your methodology falls into qualitative descriptive/exploratory. Some call it 'free form'. If you explore the work of Sally Thorne and Margaret Sandelowski - they will allow you to explore 'competing' methodology around qualitative descriptive approaches. The attached chapter may assist - especially pages 95-96.
Dean Whitehead Thank you so much for your response and for sharing a text that may assist. Will take a look at it now.
Semi-structured interviews are a data collection METHOD. They can be used with a variety of research STRATEGIES, usually associated with Ethnography, Grounded Theory, Survey, or Phenomenology.
The real problem here is that the onion level of "strategies" is just not workable. In this case, semi-structured qualitative interviews are not a form of surveys and the onion does not contain a strategy for Phenomenology -- although it is obvious that it is elastic enough to be expanded to contain that or Narrative or Discourse, etc.
But it would be just as easy to assign the Surveys or Experiments to the methods categories as means for data collection. And it is incomprehensible to me how either Surveys or Experiments could be considered parallel to Grounded Theory or Phenomenology.
The ongoing difficulty is that the onion tries to create an equivalence between how quantitative research is organized (Surveys and Experiments) versus how qualitative research is organized (Grounded Theory, Ethnography, etc.) That makes for a clean diagram, but a confusing distortion of how the two fields actually operate.
Callie Thomson You don't need to be confused. The research design you described fits that of a case study. Do more research on case studies. If you are using more than one organization as participating organizations, it is a multiple case study.
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