research chapter 1

Dissertation Structure & Layout 101: How to structure your dissertation, thesis or research project.

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) Reviewed By: David Phair (PhD) | July 2019

So, you’ve got a decent understanding of what a dissertation is , you’ve chosen your topic and hopefully you’ve received approval for your research proposal . Awesome! Now its time to start the actual dissertation or thesis writing journey.

To craft a high-quality document, the very first thing you need to understand is dissertation structure . In this post, we’ll walk you through the generic dissertation structure and layout, step by step. We’ll start with the big picture, and then zoom into each chapter to briefly discuss the core contents. If you’re just starting out on your research journey, you should start with this post, which covers the big-picture process of how to write a dissertation or thesis .

*The Caveat *

In this post, we’ll be discussing a traditional dissertation/thesis structure and layout, which is generally used for social science research across universities, whether in the US, UK, Europe or Australia. However, some universities may have small variations on this structure (extra chapters, merged chapters, slightly different ordering, etc).

So, always check with your university if they have a prescribed structure or layout that they expect you to work with. If not, it’s safe to assume the structure we’ll discuss here is suitable. And even if they do have a prescribed structure, you’ll still get value from this post as we’ll explain the core contents of each section.  

Overview: S tructuring a dissertation or thesis

• Acknowledgements page
• Abstract (or executive summary)
• Table of contents , list of figures and tables
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Literature review
• Chapter 3: Methodology
• Chapter 4: Results
• Chapter 5: Discussion
• Chapter 6: Conclusion
• Reference list

As I mentioned, some universities will have slight variations on this structure. For example, they want an additional “personal reflection chapter”, or they might prefer the results and discussion chapter to be merged into one. Regardless, the overarching flow will always be the same, as this flow reflects the research process , which we discussed here – i.e.:

• The introduction chapter presents the core research question and aims .
• The literature review chapter assesses what the current research says about this question.
• The methodology, results and discussion chapters go about undertaking new research about this question.
• The conclusion chapter (attempts to) answer the core research question .

In other words, the dissertation structure and layout reflect the research process of asking a well-defined question(s), investigating, and then answering the question – see below.

To restate that – the structure and layout of a dissertation reflect the flow of the overall research process . This is essential to understand, as each chapter will make a lot more sense if you “get” this concept. If you’re not familiar with the research process, read this post before going further.

Right. Now that we’ve covered the big picture, let’s dive a little deeper into the details of each section and chapter. Oh and by the way, you can also grab our free dissertation/thesis template here to help speed things up.

The title page of your dissertation is the very first impression the marker will get of your work, so it pays to invest some time thinking about your title. But what makes for a good title? A strong title needs to be 3 things:

• Succinct (not overly lengthy or verbose)
• Specific (not vague or ambiguous)
• Representative of the research you’re undertaking (clearly linked to your research questions)

Typically, a good title includes mention of the following:

• The broader area of the research (i.e. the overarching topic)
• The specific focus of your research (i.e. your specific context)
• Indication of research design (e.g. quantitative , qualitative , or  mixed methods ).

For example:

A quantitative investigation [research design] into the antecedents of organisational trust [broader area] in the UK retail forex trading market [specific context/area of focus].

Again, some universities may have specific requirements regarding the format and structure of the title, so it’s worth double-checking expectations with your institution (if there’s no mention in the brief or study material).

Acknowledgements

This page provides you with an opportunity to say thank you to those who helped you along your research journey. Generally, it’s optional (and won’t count towards your marks), but it is academic best practice to include this.

So, who do you say thanks to? Well, there’s no prescribed requirements, but it’s common to mention the following people:

• Your dissertation supervisor or committee.
• Any professors, lecturers or academics that helped you understand the topic or methodologies.
• Any tutors, mentors or advisors.
• Your family and friends, especially spouse (for adult learners studying part-time).

There’s no need for lengthy rambling. Just state who you’re thankful to and for what (e.g. thank you to my supervisor, John Doe, for his endless patience and attentiveness) – be sincere. In terms of length, you should keep this to a page or less.

Abstract or executive summary

The dissertation abstract (or executive summary for some degrees) serves to provide the first-time reader (and marker or moderator) with a big-picture view of your research project. It should give them an understanding of the key insights and findings from the research, without them needing to read the rest of the report – in other words, it should be able to stand alone .

For it to stand alone, your abstract should cover the following key points (at a minimum):

• Your research questions and aims – what key question(s) did your research aim to answer?
• Your methodology – how did you go about investigating the topic and finding answers to your research question(s)?
• Your findings – following your own research, what did do you discover?
• Your conclusions – based on your findings, what conclusions did you draw? What answers did you find to your research question(s)?

So, in much the same way the dissertation structure mimics the research process, your abstract or executive summary should reflect the research process, from the initial stage of asking the original question to the final stage of answering that question.

In practical terms, it’s a good idea to write this section up last , once all your core chapters are complete. Otherwise, you’ll end up writing and rewriting this section multiple times (just wasting time). For a step by step guide on how to write a strong executive summary, check out this post .

Need a helping hand?

Table of contents

This section is straightforward. You’ll typically present your table of contents (TOC) first, followed by the two lists – figures and tables. I recommend that you use Microsoft Word’s automatic table of contents generator to generate your TOC. If you’re not familiar with this functionality, the video below explains it simply:

If you find that your table of contents is overly lengthy, consider removing one level of depth. Oftentimes, this can be done without detracting from the usefulness of the TOC.

Right, now that the “admin” sections are out of the way, its time to move on to your core chapters. These chapters are the heart of your dissertation and are where you’ll earn the marks. The first chapter is the introduction chapter – as you would expect, this is the time to introduce your research…

It’s important to understand that even though you’ve provided an overview of your research in your abstract, your introduction needs to be written as if the reader has not read that (remember, the abstract is essentially a standalone document). So, your introduction chapter needs to start from the very beginning, and should address the following questions:

• What will you be investigating (in plain-language, big picture-level)?
• Why is that worth investigating? How is it important to academia or business? How is it sufficiently original?
• What are your research aims and research question(s)? Note that the research questions can sometimes be presented at the end of the literature review (next chapter).
• What is the scope of your study? In other words, what will and won’t you cover ?
• How will you approach your research? In other words, what methodology will you adopt?
• How will you structure your dissertation? What are the core chapters and what will you do in each of them?

These are just the bare basic requirements for your intro chapter. Some universities will want additional bells and whistles in the intro chapter, so be sure to carefully read your brief or consult your research supervisor.

If done right, your introduction chapter will set a clear direction for the rest of your dissertation. Specifically, it will make it clear to the reader (and marker) exactly what you’ll be investigating, why that’s important, and how you’ll be going about the investigation. Conversely, if your introduction chapter leaves a first-time reader wondering what exactly you’ll be researching, you’ve still got some work to do.

Now that you’ve set a clear direction with your introduction chapter, the next step is the literature review . In this section, you will analyse the existing research (typically academic journal articles and high-quality industry publications), with a view to understanding the following questions:

• What does the literature currently say about the topic you’re investigating?
• Is the literature lacking or well established? Is it divided or in disagreement?
• How does your research fit into the bigger picture?
• How does your research contribute something original?
• How does the methodology of previous studies help you develop your own?

Depending on the nature of your study, you may also present a conceptual framework towards the end of your literature review, which you will then test in your actual research.

Again, some universities will want you to focus on some of these areas more than others, some will have additional or fewer requirements, and so on. Therefore, as always, its important to review your brief and/or discuss with your supervisor, so that you know exactly what’s expected of your literature review chapter.

Now that you’ve investigated the current state of knowledge in your literature review chapter and are familiar with the existing key theories, models and frameworks, its time to design your own research. Enter the methodology chapter – the most “science-ey” of the chapters…

In this chapter, you need to address two critical questions:

• Exactly HOW will you carry out your research (i.e. what is your intended research design)?
• Exactly WHY have you chosen to do things this way (i.e. how do you justify your design)?

Remember, the dissertation part of your degree is first and foremost about developing and demonstrating research skills . Therefore, the markers want to see that you know which methods to use, can clearly articulate why you’ve chosen then, and know how to deploy them effectively.

Importantly, this chapter requires detail – don’t hold back on the specifics. State exactly what you’ll be doing, with who, when, for how long, etc. Moreover, for every design choice you make, make sure you justify it.

In practice, you will likely end up coming back to this chapter once you’ve undertaken all your data collection and analysis, and revise it based on changes you made during the analysis phase. This is perfectly fine. Its natural for you to add an additional analysis technique, scrap an old one, etc based on where your data lead you. Of course, I’m talking about small changes here – not a fundamental switch from qualitative to quantitative, which will likely send your supervisor in a spin!

You’ve now collected your data and undertaken your analysis, whether qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods. In this chapter, you’ll present the raw results of your analysis . For example, in the case of a quant study, you’ll present the demographic data, descriptive statistics, inferential statistics , etc.

Typically, Chapter 4 is simply a presentation and description of the data, not a discussion of the meaning of the data. In other words, it’s descriptive, rather than analytical – the meaning is discussed in Chapter 5. However, some universities will want you to combine chapters 4 and 5, so that you both present and interpret the meaning of the data at the same time. Check with your institution what their preference is.

Now that you’ve presented the data analysis results, its time to interpret and analyse them. In other words, its time to discuss what they mean, especially in relation to your research question(s).

What you discuss here will depend largely on your chosen methodology. For example, if you’ve gone the quantitative route, you might discuss the relationships between variables . If you’ve gone the qualitative route, you might discuss key themes and the meanings thereof. It all depends on what your research design choices were.

Most importantly, you need to discuss your results in relation to your research questions and aims, as well as the existing literature. What do the results tell you about your research questions? Are they aligned with the existing research or at odds? If so, why might this be? Dig deep into your findings and explain what the findings suggest, in plain English.

The final chapter – you’ve made it! Now that you’ve discussed your interpretation of the results, its time to bring it back to the beginning with the conclusion chapter . In other words, its time to (attempt to) answer your original research question s (from way back in chapter 1). Clearly state what your conclusions are in terms of your research questions. This might feel a bit repetitive, as you would have touched on this in the previous chapter, but its important to bring the discussion full circle and explicitly state your answer(s) to the research question(s).

Next, you’ll typically discuss the implications of your findings . In other words, you’ve answered your research questions – but what does this mean for the real world (or even for academia)? What should now be done differently, given the new insight you’ve generated?

Lastly, you should discuss the limitations of your research, as well as what this means for future research in the area. No study is perfect, especially not a Masters-level. Discuss the shortcomings of your research. Perhaps your methodology was limited, perhaps your sample size was small or not representative, etc, etc. Don’t be afraid to critique your work – the markers want to see that you can identify the limitations of your work. This is a strength, not a weakness. Be brutal!

This marks the end of your core chapters – woohoo! From here on out, it’s pretty smooth sailing.

The reference list is straightforward. It should contain a list of all resources cited in your dissertation, in the required format, e.g. APA , Harvard, etc.

It’s essential that you use reference management software for your dissertation. Do NOT try handle your referencing manually – its far too error prone. On a reference list of multiple pages, you’re going to make mistake. To this end, I suggest considering either Mendeley or Zotero. Both are free and provide a very straightforward interface to ensure that your referencing is 100% on point. I’ve included a simple how-to video for the Mendeley software (my personal favourite) below:

Some universities may ask you to include a bibliography, as opposed to a reference list. These two things are not the same . A bibliography is similar to a reference list, except that it also includes resources which informed your thinking but were not directly cited in your dissertation. So, double-check your brief and make sure you use the right one.

The very last piece of the puzzle is the appendix or set of appendices. This is where you’ll include any supporting data and evidence. Importantly, supporting is the keyword here.

Your appendices should provide additional “nice to know”, depth-adding information, which is not critical to the core analysis. Appendices should not be used as a way to cut down word count (see this post which covers how to reduce word count ). In other words, don’t place content that is critical to the core analysis here, just to save word count. You will not earn marks on any content in the appendices, so don’t try to play the system!

Time to recap…

And there you have it – the traditional dissertation structure and layout, from A-Z. To recap, the core structure for a dissertation or thesis is (typically) as follows:

• Acknowledgments page

Most importantly, the core chapters should reflect the research process (asking, investigating and answering your research question). Moreover, the research question(s) should form the golden thread throughout your dissertation structure. Everything should revolve around the research questions, and as you’ve seen, they should form both the start point (i.e. introduction chapter) and the endpoint (i.e. conclusion chapter).

I hope this post has provided you with clarity about the traditional dissertation/thesis structure and layout. If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment below, or feel free to get in touch with us. Also, be sure to check out the rest of the  Grad Coach Blog .

Psst... there’s more!

This post was based on one of our popular Research Bootcamps . If you're working on a research project, you'll definitely want to check this out ...

36 Comments

many thanks i found it very useful

Glad to hear that, Arun. Good luck writing your dissertation.

Such clear practical logical advice. I very much needed to read this to keep me focused in stead of fretting.. Perfect now ready to start my research!

what about scientific fields like computer or engineering thesis what is the difference in the structure? thank you very much

Thanks so much this helped me a lot!

Very helpful and accessible. What I like most is how practical the advice is along with helpful tools/ links.

Thanks Ade!

Thank you so much sir.. It was really helpful..

You’re welcome!

Hi! How many words maximum should contain the abstract?

Thank you so much 😊 Find this at the right moment

You’re most welcome. Good luck with your dissertation.

best ever benefit i got on right time thank you

Many times Clarity and vision of destination of dissertation is what makes the difference between good ,average and great researchers the same way a great automobile driver is fast with clarity of address and Clear weather conditions .

I guess Great researcher = great ideas + knowledge + great and fast data collection and modeling + great writing + high clarity on all these

You have given immense clarity from start to end.

Morning. Where will I write the definitions of what I’m referring to in my report?

Thank you so much Derek, I was almost lost! Thanks a tonnnn! Have a great day!

Thanks ! so concise and valuable

This was very helpful. Clear and concise. I know exactly what to do now.

Thank you for allowing me to go through briefly. I hope to find time to continue.

Really useful to me. Thanks a thousand times

Very interesting! It will definitely set me and many more for success. highly recommended.

Thank you soo much sir, for the opportunity to express my skills

Usefull, thanks a lot. Really clear

Very nice and easy to understand. Thank you .

That was incredibly useful. Thanks Grad Coach Crew!

My stress level just dropped at least 15 points after watching this. Just starting my thesis for my grad program and I feel a lot more capable now! Thanks for such a clear and helpful video, Emma and the GradCoach team!

Do we need to mention the number of words the dissertation contains in the main document?

It depends on your university’s requirements, so it would be best to check with them 🙂

Such a helpful post to help me get started with structuring my masters dissertation, thank you!

Great video; I appreciate that helpful information

It is so necessary or avital course

This blog is very informative for my research. Thank you

Doctoral students are required to fill out the National Research Council’s Survey of Earned Doctorates

wow this is an amazing gain in my life

This is so good

How can i arrange my specific objectives in my dissertation?

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Home » Research Paper – Structure, Examples and Writing Guide

Research Paper – Structure, Examples and Writing Guide

Table of Contents

Research Paper

Definition:

Research Paper is a written document that presents the author’s original research, analysis, and interpretation of a specific topic or issue.

It is typically based on Empirical Evidence, and may involve qualitative or quantitative research methods, or a combination of both. The purpose of a research paper is to contribute new knowledge or insights to a particular field of study, and to demonstrate the author’s understanding of the existing literature and theories related to the topic.

Structure of Research Paper

The structure of a research paper typically follows a standard format, consisting of several sections that convey specific information about the research study. The following is a detailed explanation of the structure of a research paper:

The title page contains the title of the paper, the name(s) of the author(s), and the affiliation(s) of the author(s). It also includes the date of submission and possibly, the name of the journal or conference where the paper is to be published.

The abstract is a brief summary of the research paper, typically ranging from 100 to 250 words. It should include the research question, the methods used, the key findings, and the implications of the results. The abstract should be written in a concise and clear manner to allow readers to quickly grasp the essence of the research.

Introduction

The introduction section of a research paper provides background information about the research problem, the research question, and the research objectives. It also outlines the significance of the research, the research gap that it aims to fill, and the approach taken to address the research question. Finally, the introduction section ends with a clear statement of the research hypothesis or research question.

Literature Review

The literature review section of a research paper provides an overview of the existing literature on the topic of study. It includes a critical analysis and synthesis of the literature, highlighting the key concepts, themes, and debates. The literature review should also demonstrate the research gap and how the current study seeks to address it.

The methods section of a research paper describes the research design, the sample selection, the data collection and analysis procedures, and the statistical methods used to analyze the data. This section should provide sufficient detail for other researchers to replicate the study.

The results section presents the findings of the research, using tables, graphs, and figures to illustrate the data. The findings should be presented in a clear and concise manner, with reference to the research question and hypothesis.

The discussion section of a research paper interprets the findings and discusses their implications for the research question, the literature review, and the field of study. It should also address the limitations of the study and suggest future research directions.

The conclusion section summarizes the main findings of the study, restates the research question and hypothesis, and provides a final reflection on the significance of the research.

The references section provides a list of all the sources cited in the paper, following a specific citation style such as APA, MLA or Chicago.

How to Write Research Paper

You can write Research Paper by the following guide:

• Choose a Topic: The first step is to select a topic that interests you and is relevant to your field of study. Brainstorm ideas and narrow down to a research question that is specific and researchable.
• Conduct a Literature Review: The literature review helps you identify the gap in the existing research and provides a basis for your research question. It also helps you to develop a theoretical framework and research hypothesis.
• Develop a Thesis Statement : The thesis statement is the main argument of your research paper. It should be clear, concise and specific to your research question.
• Plan your Research: Develop a research plan that outlines the methods, data sources, and data analysis procedures. This will help you to collect and analyze data effectively.
• Collect and Analyze Data: Collect data using various methods such as surveys, interviews, observations, or experiments. Analyze data using statistical tools or other qualitative methods.
• Organize your Paper : Organize your paper into sections such as Introduction, Literature Review, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. Ensure that each section is coherent and follows a logical flow.
• Write your Paper : Start by writing the introduction, followed by the literature review, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. Ensure that your writing is clear, concise, and follows the required formatting and citation styles.
• Edit and Proofread your Paper: Review your paper for grammar and spelling errors, and ensure that it is well-structured and easy to read. Ask someone else to review your paper to get feedback and suggestions for improvement.
• Cite your Sources: Ensure that you properly cite all sources used in your research paper. This is essential for giving credit to the original authors and avoiding plagiarism.

Research Paper Example

Note : The below example research paper is for illustrative purposes only and is not an actual research paper. Actual research papers may have different structures, contents, and formats depending on the field of study, research question, data collection and analysis methods, and other factors. Students should always consult with their professors or supervisors for specific guidelines and expectations for their research papers.

Research Paper Example sample for Students:

Title: The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health among Young Adults

Abstract: This study aims to investigate the impact of social media use on the mental health of young adults. A literature review was conducted to examine the existing research on the topic. A survey was then administered to 200 university students to collect data on their social media use, mental health status, and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. The results showed that social media use is positively associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. The study also found that social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) are significant predictors of mental health problems among young adults.

Introduction: Social media has become an integral part of modern life, particularly among young adults. While social media has many benefits, including increased communication and social connectivity, it has also been associated with negative outcomes, such as addiction, cyberbullying, and mental health problems. This study aims to investigate the impact of social media use on the mental health of young adults.

Literature Review: The literature review highlights the existing research on the impact of social media use on mental health. The review shows that social media use is associated with depression, anxiety, stress, and other mental health problems. The review also identifies the factors that contribute to the negative impact of social media, including social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO.

Methods : A survey was administered to 200 university students to collect data on their social media use, mental health status, and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. The survey included questions on social media use, mental health status (measured using the DASS-21), and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and regression analysis.

Results : The results showed that social media use is positively associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. The study also found that social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO are significant predictors of mental health problems among young adults.

Discussion : The study’s findings suggest that social media use has a negative impact on the mental health of young adults. The study highlights the need for interventions that address the factors contributing to the negative impact of social media, such as social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO.

Conclusion : In conclusion, social media use has a significant impact on the mental health of young adults. The study’s findings underscore the need for interventions that promote healthy social media use and address the negative outcomes associated with social media use. Future research can explore the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing the negative impact of social media on mental health. Additionally, longitudinal studies can investigate the long-term effects of social media use on mental health.

Limitations : The study has some limitations, including the use of self-report measures and a cross-sectional design. The use of self-report measures may result in biased responses, and a cross-sectional design limits the ability to establish causality.

Implications: The study’s findings have implications for mental health professionals, educators, and policymakers. Mental health professionals can use the findings to develop interventions that address the negative impact of social media use on mental health. Educators can incorporate social media literacy into their curriculum to promote healthy social media use among young adults. Policymakers can use the findings to develop policies that protect young adults from the negative outcomes associated with social media use.

References :

• Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2019). Associations between screen time and lower psychological well-being among children and adolescents: Evidence from a population-based study. Preventive medicine reports, 15, 100918.
• Primack, B. A., Shensa, A., Escobar-Viera, C. G., Barrett, E. L., Sidani, J. E., Colditz, J. B., … & James, A. E. (2017). Use of multiple social media platforms and symptoms of depression and anxiety: A nationally-representative study among US young adults. Computers in Human Behavior, 69, 1-9.
• Van der Meer, T. G., & Verhoeven, J. W. (2017). Social media and its impact on academic performance of students. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 16, 383-398.

Appendix : The survey used in this study is provided below.

Social Media and Mental Health Survey

• How often do you use social media per day?
• Less than 30 minutes
• 30 minutes to 1 hour
• 1 to 2 hours
• 2 to 4 hours
• More than 4 hours
• Which social media platforms do you use?
• Others (Please specify)
• How often do you experience the following on social media?
• Social comparison (comparing yourself to others)
• Cyberbullying
• Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
• Have you ever experienced any of the following mental health problems in the past month?
• Do you think social media use has a positive or negative impact on your mental health?
• Very positive
• Somewhat positive
• Somewhat negative
• Very negative
• In your opinion, which factors contribute to the negative impact of social media on mental health?
• Social comparison
• In your opinion, what interventions could be effective in reducing the negative impact of social media on mental health?
• Education on healthy social media use
• Counseling for mental health problems caused by social media
• Social media detox programs
• Regulation of social media use

Thank you for your participation!

Applications of Research Paper

Research papers have several applications in various fields, including:

• Advancing knowledge: Research papers contribute to the advancement of knowledge by generating new insights, theories, and findings that can inform future research and practice. They help to answer important questions, clarify existing knowledge, and identify areas that require further investigation.
• Informing policy: Research papers can inform policy decisions by providing evidence-based recommendations for policymakers. They can help to identify gaps in current policies, evaluate the effectiveness of interventions, and inform the development of new policies and regulations.
• Improving practice: Research papers can improve practice by providing evidence-based guidance for professionals in various fields, including medicine, education, business, and psychology. They can inform the development of best practices, guidelines, and standards of care that can improve outcomes for individuals and organizations.
• Educating students : Research papers are often used as teaching tools in universities and colleges to educate students about research methods, data analysis, and academic writing. They help students to develop critical thinking skills, research skills, and communication skills that are essential for success in many careers.
• Fostering collaboration: Research papers can foster collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers by providing a platform for sharing knowledge and ideas. They can facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations and partnerships that can lead to innovative solutions to complex problems.

When to Write Research Paper

Research papers are typically written when a person has completed a research project or when they have conducted a study and have obtained data or findings that they want to share with the academic or professional community. Research papers are usually written in academic settings, such as universities, but they can also be written in professional settings, such as research organizations, government agencies, or private companies.

Here are some common situations where a person might need to write a research paper:

• For academic purposes: Students in universities and colleges are often required to write research papers as part of their coursework, particularly in the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities. Writing research papers helps students to develop research skills, critical thinking skills, and academic writing skills.
• For publication: Researchers often write research papers to publish their findings in academic journals or to present their work at academic conferences. Publishing research papers is an important way to disseminate research findings to the academic community and to establish oneself as an expert in a particular field.
• To inform policy or practice : Researchers may write research papers to inform policy decisions or to improve practice in various fields. Research findings can be used to inform the development of policies, guidelines, and best practices that can improve outcomes for individuals and organizations.
• To share new insights or ideas: Researchers may write research papers to share new insights or ideas with the academic or professional community. They may present new theories, propose new research methods, or challenge existing paradigms in their field.

Purpose of Research Paper

The purpose of a research paper is to present the results of a study or investigation in a clear, concise, and structured manner. Research papers are written to communicate new knowledge, ideas, or findings to a specific audience, such as researchers, scholars, practitioners, or policymakers. The primary purposes of a research paper are:

• To contribute to the body of knowledge : Research papers aim to add new knowledge or insights to a particular field or discipline. They do this by reporting the results of empirical studies, reviewing and synthesizing existing literature, proposing new theories, or providing new perspectives on a topic.
• To inform or persuade: Research papers are written to inform or persuade the reader about a particular issue, topic, or phenomenon. They present evidence and arguments to support their claims and seek to persuade the reader of the validity of their findings or recommendations.
• To advance the field: Research papers seek to advance the field or discipline by identifying gaps in knowledge, proposing new research questions or approaches, or challenging existing assumptions or paradigms. They aim to contribute to ongoing debates and discussions within a field and to stimulate further research and inquiry.
• To demonstrate research skills: Research papers demonstrate the author’s research skills, including their ability to design and conduct a study, collect and analyze data, and interpret and communicate findings. They also demonstrate the author’s ability to critically evaluate existing literature, synthesize information from multiple sources, and write in a clear and structured manner.

Characteristics of Research Paper

Research papers have several characteristics that distinguish them from other forms of academic or professional writing. Here are some common characteristics of research papers:

• Evidence-based: Research papers are based on empirical evidence, which is collected through rigorous research methods such as experiments, surveys, observations, or interviews. They rely on objective data and facts to support their claims and conclusions.
• Structured and organized: Research papers have a clear and logical structure, with sections such as introduction, literature review, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. They are organized in a way that helps the reader to follow the argument and understand the findings.
• Formal and objective: Research papers are written in a formal and objective tone, with an emphasis on clarity, precision, and accuracy. They avoid subjective language or personal opinions and instead rely on objective data and analysis to support their arguments.
• Citations and references: Research papers include citations and references to acknowledge the sources of information and ideas used in the paper. They use a specific citation style, such as APA, MLA, or Chicago, to ensure consistency and accuracy.
• Peer-reviewed: Research papers are often peer-reviewed, which means they are evaluated by other experts in the field before they are published. Peer-review ensures that the research is of high quality, meets ethical standards, and contributes to the advancement of knowledge in the field.
• Objective and unbiased: Research papers strive to be objective and unbiased in their presentation of the findings. They avoid personal biases or preconceptions and instead rely on the data and analysis to draw conclusions.

Advantages of Research Paper

Research papers have many advantages, both for the individual researcher and for the broader academic and professional community. Here are some advantages of research papers:

• Contribution to knowledge: Research papers contribute to the body of knowledge in a particular field or discipline. They add new information, insights, and perspectives to existing literature and help advance the understanding of a particular phenomenon or issue.
• Opportunity for intellectual growth: Research papers provide an opportunity for intellectual growth for the researcher. They require critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity, which can help develop the researcher’s skills and knowledge.
• Career advancement: Research papers can help advance the researcher’s career by demonstrating their expertise and contributions to the field. They can also lead to new research opportunities, collaborations, and funding.
• Academic recognition: Research papers can lead to academic recognition in the form of awards, grants, or invitations to speak at conferences or events. They can also contribute to the researcher’s reputation and standing in the field.
• Impact on policy and practice: Research papers can have a significant impact on policy and practice. They can inform policy decisions, guide practice, and lead to changes in laws, regulations, or procedures.
• Advancement of society: Research papers can contribute to the advancement of society by addressing important issues, identifying solutions to problems, and promoting social justice and equality.

Limitations of Research Paper

Research papers also have some limitations that should be considered when interpreting their findings or implications. Here are some common limitations of research papers:

• Limited generalizability: Research findings may not be generalizable to other populations, settings, or contexts. Studies often use specific samples or conditions that may not reflect the broader population or real-world situations.
• Potential for bias : Research papers may be biased due to factors such as sample selection, measurement errors, or researcher biases. It is important to evaluate the quality of the research design and methods used to ensure that the findings are valid and reliable.
• Ethical concerns: Research papers may raise ethical concerns, such as the use of vulnerable populations or invasive procedures. Researchers must adhere to ethical guidelines and obtain informed consent from participants to ensure that the research is conducted in a responsible and respectful manner.
• Limitations of methodology: Research papers may be limited by the methodology used to collect and analyze data. For example, certain research methods may not capture the complexity or nuance of a particular phenomenon, or may not be appropriate for certain research questions.
• Publication bias: Research papers may be subject to publication bias, where positive or significant findings are more likely to be published than negative or non-significant findings. This can skew the overall findings of a particular area of research.
• Time and resource constraints: Research papers may be limited by time and resource constraints, which can affect the quality and scope of the research. Researchers may not have access to certain data or resources, or may be unable to conduct long-term studies due to practical limitations.

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How to Write a Research Paper | A Beginner's Guide

A research paper is a piece of academic writing that provides analysis, interpretation, and argument based on in-depth independent research.

Research papers are similar to academic essays , but they are usually longer and more detailed assignments, designed to assess not only your writing skills but also your skills in scholarly research. Writing a research paper requires you to demonstrate a strong knowledge of your topic, engage with a variety of sources, and make an original contribution to the debate.

This step-by-step guide takes you through the entire writing process, from understanding your assignment to proofreading your final draft.

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Table of contents

Understand the assignment, choose a research paper topic, conduct preliminary research, develop a thesis statement, create a research paper outline, write a first draft of the research paper, write the introduction, write a compelling body of text, write the conclusion, the second draft, the revision process, research paper checklist, free lecture slides.

Completing a research paper successfully means accomplishing the specific tasks set out for you. Before you start, make sure you thoroughly understanding the assignment task sheet:

• Read it carefully, looking for anything confusing you might need to clarify with your professor.
• Identify the assignment goal, deadline, length specifications, formatting, and submission method.
• Make a bulleted list of the key points, then go back and cross completed items off as you’re writing.

Carefully consider your timeframe and word limit: be realistic, and plan enough time to research, write, and edit.

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There are many ways to generate an idea for a research paper, from brainstorming with pen and paper to talking it through with a fellow student or professor.

You can try free writing, which involves taking a broad topic and writing continuously for two or three minutes to identify absolutely anything relevant that could be interesting.

You can also gain inspiration from other research. The discussion or recommendations sections of research papers often include ideas for other specific topics that require further examination.

Once you have a broad subject area, narrow it down to choose a topic that interests you, m eets the criteria of your assignment, and i s possible to research. Aim for ideas that are both original and specific:

• A paper following the chronology of World War II would not be original or specific enough.
• A paper on the experience of Danish citizens living close to the German border during World War II would be specific and could be original enough.

Note any discussions that seem important to the topic, and try to find an issue that you can focus your paper around. Use a variety of sources , including journals, books, and reliable websites, to ensure you do not miss anything glaring.

Do not only verify the ideas you have in mind, but look for sources that contradict your point of view.

• Is there anything people seem to overlook in the sources you research?
• Are there any heated debates you can address?
• Do you have a unique take on your topic?
• Have there been some recent developments that build on the extant research?

In this stage, you might find it helpful to formulate some research questions to help guide you. To write research questions, try to finish the following sentence: “I want to know how/what/why…”

A thesis statement is a statement of your central argument — it establishes the purpose and position of your paper. If you started with a research question, the thesis statement should answer it. It should also show what evidence and reasoning you’ll use to support that answer.

The thesis statement should be concise, contentious, and coherent. That means it should briefly summarize your argument in a sentence or two, make a claim that requires further evidence or analysis, and make a coherent point that relates to every part of the paper.

You will probably revise and refine the thesis statement as you do more research, but it can serve as a guide throughout the writing process. Every paragraph should aim to support and develop this central claim.

A research paper outline is essentially a list of the key topics, arguments, and evidence you want to include, divided into sections with headings so that you know roughly what the paper will look like before you start writing.

A structure outline can help make the writing process much more efficient, so it’s worth dedicating some time to create one.

Your first draft won’t be perfect — you can polish later on. Your priorities at this stage are as follows:

• Maintaining forward momentum — write now, perfect later.
• Paying attention to clear organization and logical ordering of paragraphs and sentences, which will help when you come to the second draft.
• Expressing your ideas as clearly as possible, so you know what you were trying to say when you come back to the text.

You do not need to start by writing the introduction. Begin where it feels most natural for you — some prefer to finish the most difficult sections first, while others choose to start with the easiest part. If you created an outline, use it as a map while you work.

Do not delete large sections of text. If you begin to dislike something you have written or find it doesn’t quite fit, move it to a different document, but don’t lose it completely — you never know if it might come in useful later.

Paragraph structure

Paragraphs are the basic building blocks of research papers. Each one should focus on a single claim or idea that helps to establish the overall argument or purpose of the paper.

Example paragraph

George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” has had an enduring impact on thought about the relationship between politics and language. This impact is particularly obvious in light of the various critical review articles that have recently referenced the essay. For example, consider Mark Falcoff’s 2009 article in The National Review Online, “The Perversion of Language; or, Orwell Revisited,” in which he analyzes several common words (“activist,” “civil-rights leader,” “diversity,” and more). Falcoff’s close analysis of the ambiguity built into political language intentionally mirrors Orwell’s own point-by-point analysis of the political language of his day. Even 63 years after its publication, Orwell’s essay is emulated by contemporary thinkers.

Citing sources

It’s also important to keep track of citations at this stage to avoid accidental plagiarism . Each time you use a source, make sure to take note of where the information came from.

You can use our free citation generators to automatically create citations and save your reference list as you go.

APA Citation Generator MLA Citation Generator

The research paper introduction should address three questions: What, why, and how? After finishing the introduction, the reader should know what the paper is about, why it is worth reading, and how you’ll build your arguments.

What? Be specific about the topic of the paper, introduce the background, and define key terms or concepts.

Why? This is the most important, but also the most difficult, part of the introduction. Try to provide brief answers to the following questions: What new material or insight are you offering? What important issues does your essay help define or answer?

How? To let the reader know what to expect from the rest of the paper, the introduction should include a “map” of what will be discussed, briefly presenting the key elements of the paper in chronological order.

The major struggle faced by most writers is how to organize the information presented in the paper, which is one reason an outline is so useful. However, remember that the outline is only a guide and, when writing, you can be flexible with the order in which the information and arguments are presented.

One way to stay on track is to use your thesis statement and topic sentences . Check:

• topic sentences against the thesis statement;
• topic sentences against each other, for similarities and logical ordering;
• and each sentence against the topic sentence of that paragraph.

Be aware of paragraphs that seem to cover the same things. If two paragraphs discuss something similar, they must approach that topic in different ways. Aim to create smooth transitions between sentences, paragraphs, and sections.

The research paper conclusion is designed to help your reader out of the paper’s argument, giving them a sense of finality.

Trace the course of the paper, emphasizing how it all comes together to prove your thesis statement. Give the paper a sense of finality by making sure the reader understands how you’ve settled the issues raised in the introduction.

You might also discuss the more general consequences of the argument, outline what the paper offers to future students of the topic, and suggest any questions the paper’s argument raises but cannot or does not try to answer.

You should not :

• Offer new arguments or essential information
• Take up any more space than necessary
• Begin with stock phrases that signal you are ending the paper (e.g. “In conclusion”)

There are four main considerations when it comes to the second draft.

• Check how your vision of the paper lines up with the first draft and, more importantly, that your paper still answers the assignment.
• Identify any assumptions that might require (more substantial) justification, keeping your reader’s perspective foremost in mind. Remove these points if you cannot substantiate them further.
• Be open to rearranging your ideas. Check whether any sections feel out of place and whether your ideas could be better organized.
• If you find that old ideas do not fit as well as you anticipated, you should cut them out or condense them. You might also find that new and well-suited ideas occurred to you during the writing of the first draft — now is the time to make them part of the paper.

The goal during the revision and proofreading process is to ensure you have completed all the necessary tasks and that the paper is as well-articulated as possible. You can speed up the proofreading process by using the AI proofreader .

Global concerns

• Confirm that your paper completes every task specified in your assignment sheet.
• Check for logical organization and flow of paragraphs.
• Check paragraphs against the introduction and thesis statement.

Fine-grained details

Check the content of each paragraph, making sure that:

• each sentence helps support the topic sentence.
• no unnecessary or irrelevant information is present.
• all technical terms your audience might not know are identified.

Next, think about sentence structure , grammatical errors, and formatting . Check that you have correctly used transition words and phrases to show the connections between your ideas. Look for typos, cut unnecessary words, and check for consistency in aspects such as heading formatting and spellings .

Finally, you need to make sure your paper is correctly formatted according to the rules of the citation style you are using. For example, you might need to include an MLA heading  or create an APA title page .

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Checklist: Research paper

I have followed all instructions in the assignment sheet.

My introduction presents my topic in an engaging way and provides necessary background information.

My introduction presents a clear, focused research problem and/or thesis statement .

My paper is logically organized using paragraphs and (if relevant) section headings .

Each paragraph is clearly focused on one central idea, expressed in a clear topic sentence .

Each paragraph is relevant to my research problem or thesis statement.

I have used appropriate transitions  to clarify the connections between sections, paragraphs, and sentences.

My conclusion provides a concise answer to the research question or emphasizes how the thesis has been supported.

My conclusion shows how my research has contributed to knowledge or understanding of my topic.

My conclusion does not present any new points or information essential to my argument.

I have provided an in-text citation every time I refer to ideas or information from a source.

I have included a reference list at the end of my paper, consistently formatted according to a specific citation style .

I have thoroughly revised my paper and addressed any feedback from my professor or supervisor.

I have followed all formatting guidelines (page numbers, headers, spacing, etc.).

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HOW TO WRITE CHAPTER ONE OF RESEARCH PROJECTS

A practical guide to research writing – chapter one.

The outline of a well written Chapter One is supposed to include all or some of the following:

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

1.2 Statement of the Problem

1.3 Objectives or Purpose of the Study

1.4 Research Questions and /or Hypotheses

1.5 Significance of the Study

1.6 Scope and Limitation of the Study

1.7 Basic Assumptions

1.8 Operational Definition of Terms

As can be seen above, the project outline constitutes a huge part of the project proposal and the student researcher just needs to perfect the approved research proposal with the view of using it as the Chapter One. The fact remains that all the other parts that as had been written for the project proposal would still stand, with the inclusion of Operational Definition of Terms. At this stage, it is important to understand and know what is contained under each of the subheadings in the first chapter and these are described thoroughly in this article: –

1.1     Background to the Study

Just as the name means, this section outlines the history of the subject matter under investigation; the evolution of the research problem; how the researcher became fascinated with the problem. He goes on to describe the specific situation surrounding the research problem, using facts from the literature to support various arguments. In this section also, the student researcher tries to ascertain the suitability and feasibility of the study, concluding from the sufficient evidences drawn from the previous literature.

In a nutshell, this is where the student researcher initiates the subject of his investigation using all obtainable evidences and figures to establish its groundwork. Note that even if there is no standard number of pages that this should take, the lengthier and well focused the Background to the Study, the better for a good and solid groundwork for that research being conducted.

1.2     Statement of the Problem

The Problem Statement, as it is otherwise described, is the reasonable conclusion of the problems/issues raised in the Background to the Study. The idea is that while the Background to the Study offers a wider or global perspective/standpoint to the subject matter of the research, the Problem Statement makes assumptions from there and concludes on the specifics as they relate to the specific investigation being conducted.

That is the reason Problem Statement is expected to flow, rather logically, from the Background to the Study; and it is not a good Problem Statement, one that deviates from this; given that they are not expected to be two unconnected entities, as it were. It is nevertheless different from Background to the Study in that it must be stated reasonably briefly and very clearly. All the descriptive components of the Background to the Study would have assisted to allow one go straight for the specifics under the Problem Statement.

This is why experienced project supervisors would maintain that the Problem Statement should be in the range of one to three paragraphs only. The idea is that the shorter, the clearer; and the clearer the better for the whole process of investigation. In a nutshell, one cannot overstate the need to state the research problem very clearly and accurately, since the entire course of the investigation depends on it.

Therefore, there is no doubt that a satisfactory statement of the research problem is the most important component of a research process. The plain reason for this claim is that the whole process of investigation centers on it and it is typically related to some of the following issues:

• A missing link
• One-sidedness
• An unanswered question.
• An unsatisfactory state of arrangements

Consequently, the Problem Statement offers direction to the rest of the project; signifying and highlighting the major variables of concern to the researcher as well as the exact relationship that exist between them.

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1.3     Objectives {Purpose} of the Study

Simply similar to every other component in a research project, the Objectives of the Study is strongly connected to the Research Problem. The former is derived directly from the latter. The Objectives of the Study, which is sometimes described as Purpose, stand for the aims of carrying out the investigation and could be categorized into general and specific.

The general objective describes the overall aim of a research project whereas the specific objective is concerned with the comprehensive list of intentions concerning what the research stands to accomplish at the end of the project. Typically, the specific objectives are stated in the form of declarative statements for example, the statement should start with “to examine”, “to analyze”, “to determine”, “to assess”, “to find out” etc. The Research Questions usually take the form of interrogative statement, the Objectives present the same thing, but in the statement form.

1.4. Research Questions and/or Hypotheses

Typically, these come immediately after the Research objectives because of their strong relationship. They do not just seek to convert the declarative statement of the objectives into interrogative form, but further break down the major problems compressed in the research objectives. As its name implies, Research Questions is presented just like interrogations seeking to create specific relations among the main variables of investigation.

As well, the Research Questions usually serve as the foundation from where the questionnaire items/questions would ultimately be derived. The difference between the two is that the items in the questionnaire offer a further breakdown of each of the research questions to a greater specification. This is to the level that a single research question can turn out the range of between three to five questionnaire items/questions. But the Research Questions are wide in nature, the questionnaire items are typically directed towards the details thereby getting down to more specifics.

In the case of Hypotheses, they are not the same as Research Questions even though they are sometimes used to substitute each other. In other words, it is not unusual to find projects which have both as well as others which have only one of them. Since they are not the same, they are not expected to replace each other. If they stand to do that, then one should be retained and the other disposed of. By this piece of information, one can easily know that it is not necessary that a project should have both; particularly at the elementary level, where in most of the times, the research questions would be okay.

By meaning, a Research Hypothesis is a clear, specific statement whose validity and workability can be tested by means of scientific method. Being a declarative statement of prediction, it tries to determine the relationship or difference that exists between one variable and the other; and to what degree. It is a form of clever guess or supposition regularly derived from the results of previous studies and/or theories originating from the literature. Hypotheses are formulated on the core of any of the areas and objectives listed below:

• To merely describe a occurrence or a statement of fact
• To compare two or more concepts, individuals and places
• To reveal the relationship between variable
• To reveal a cause/ effect situation between variables.

Usually, there are two kinds of hypotheses; basically referring to the way they are stated. They are the Null and the Alternative. While the former is frequently stated in the negative form of “No Significant Relationship” or “No Significant Difference” etc., the latter takes the positive form of statement; such as “There is a Significant Relationship”, “There is a Significant Difference” etc.

The Research Hypotheses specify the fundamental issues relating to the data to be gathered in the process of conducting the study. They serve as a theoretical conceptualization of what the researcher anticipated with respect to his research outcomes. These help him to test and verify his concepts on the basis of which he makes very tangible and reliable conclusions and generalizations. They also assist in sharpening researcher’s focus on the research problem with a view to determining the direction where to find the solution.

Therefore, some of the qualities of a good hypothesis must include that:

• It should be sensible {i.e. clever guesses}.
• It should be in line with known facts or theories.
• It should be constructed in such a manner that it is testable and found to be probably true or false.
• It should be in very simple, unambiguous terms.
• It should be directly connected to the problem of research.
• It should involve very few variables at a time.
• It should be quantifiable {i.e. operationally formulated}.

1.5.    Significance of the Study

It is anticipated that every research project must have something new to contribute to knowledge in that research field, no matter how small. In point of fact, no research should take place if it will not contribute anything to knowledge; as this represents the major feature of all research endeavors.

Consequently, this section is expected to clarify the possible benefits of the research and to whom such anticipated benefits would be meant. All these should be clearly stated. In any way, there is no standard detail as to the number of benefits that a research project should have or its length. It can be arranged sequentially or itemized or paraphrased depending on the person’s method of writing.

1.6.    Scope and Limitation of the Study

The scope of the study basically refers to the level of coverage of the research subject being investigated and the good statement of the problem will act as a helpful guide to doing this. That means, if the problem had been properly stated at the beginning, it helps, certainly, in defining the scope of the research. That is why the scope of the study is partially dependent on the title of the research project. If well formulated, the phrase of the title only does define the scope of the study and possibly, needs a little rider to make it clearer. The limitation of the study represents the things and issues that constituted challenges in the process of investigations.

Consequently, if the scope was concerned with the level of the research’s coverage, then, limitation implies building a fence around the subject of research. This is with a view to creating a foundation for the non-inclusion of certain things in the study for understandable reasons.

1.7.    Basic Assumptions

Even though many student researchers tend to mistake Assumptions with Hypotheses, it is important to state very clearly that they are not the same. We have already discussed about hypotheses; its meaning and significance in a research project. However, Assumptions are only mere statements, which are frequently, not subjected to any testing. They are, more or less, ordinary statements that are taken for granted. They cannot replace the Hypotheses; yet, they tend to duplicate the Hypotheses, because they are fairly similar.

It is because of these reasons that a lot of research experts have suggested that if the study has hypotheses, then assumptions would no longer be needed. For a study with Research Questions only nevertheless, it is suitable to have assumptions, to act as a guide towards the achievement of the research objectives.

Assumptions are typically itemized while the number varies.

1.9     Operational Definition of Terms

This section of the Chapter one (introduction) is used to offer a kind of working definition to all the concepts, which would be operationally used in the course of the research. The notion is that there are some terminologies, which have been “adapted” and so utilized restrictively for the purpose of the research project.

This implies that such terminologies would mean something somewhat different from the one adapted under a different circumstances; therefore the name Operational Definition of Terms. In defining terms operationally, individual concepts/words to be so defined are recognized and then itemized. Thus, operational definitions are typically given in such a manner that will imply that they are not the usually accepted as standard definitions but those peculiar to the study in specifically. This section typically comes last in the introductory chapter.

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>>>>> HOW TO WRITE CHAPTER TWO OF RESEARCH PROJECTS

23 comments.

excellent write up, this should help me in writing my chapter one

Excellent write up. Great job, really helped me with my chapter one in my MBA project write up.

However I would like to know if I can add justification of study to my chapter one since you didn’t mention it in your post?

Great write up nevertheless!

Well thank you for the special guardian for my first chapter write up, however I wish if you break up background of the study into theoretical background, conceptual background and contextual background to make me have better analysis on how they are framed

Thanks a lot

This really helped me out to have an approach to good chapter one of my project. Thank you very much.

I realy apreciate your work here. This article helped me alot.

Do you have another one on chapter 2 (literature review)

Thanks. “how to write chapter two”, an article that will guide researcher on how to write the literature review will soon be published.

tanx,tanx,tanx this really help me when I wrotte my exam on research topic on my N.C.E program

Nice one, I haven’t started but I think this is really a nice guide for a start.

This is a great light to me. Thanks for the post

This is a well analysed research procedure….

Good work , well articulated, unambiguous, simply & logically stated.

Thanks for the write up… This should help me writing my project… Thanks once again.

GOD BLESS YOU

I am so glad with your work,l have gone through.l think what I benefited from it, will definitely guide me in my project work.so l am so grateful to you for making me to discover what I am looking for.

Thaaaaanks A good guide i’ll do a study on chapter one

Truth be told, I wish I had come across this write up before now. This is the clearest article I’ve read about contents of the chapters of a research project, especially chapter two. I’ve sent the link to my colleague PG Students.

Thanks so much.

it will great if you can add examples of what these when properly written will look like.

good guidance, keep doing so to help us learn better, together we stand

God bless you ?

Omo thanks a bunch

Good work done keep it up, i think your write up have helped me alot

Thank you,I do really appreciate and I learned more about.

Thanks very much, I have found this piece to he very educative and resourceful to any researcher.

This is the best foundation of Researchers

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Research Structure

Research structure is basically an outline of your paper. In your dissertation you are expected to provide the research structure towards the end of introduction chapter. The components of research structure are illustrated in table below:

Components of each chapter in research structure

The following is a sample of a research structure:

Chapter One communicates the purpose and focus of the study and explains the outline of the research. This chapter includes a brief explanation of the research background , and provides rationale for the selection of the research area . Moreover, the first chapter contains explanation of the research aim and objectives , and explains research structure.

Chapter Two constitutes a literature review, and accordingly, contains analysis of models and theoretical frameworks that have been previously introduced to the research area. This chapter contains definitions of main terms and explains search strategy for the secondary data . Viewpoints of other authors regarding the research area in general and research problem in particular have been presented in a logical manner in this chapter.

Chapter Three addresses methodology. The chapter explains the research process and addresses the issues of research philosophy . Moreover, methodology chapter contains explanation of research design , and the choice and implementation of data collection methods . Sampling aspect of the study and discussions of ethical considerations are also included in this chapter.

Chapter Four contains presentation of the primary data collected through questionnaires/interviews/focus groups/observation/etc. Presentation of primary data findings have been facilitated through bar charts/pie charts. Brief discussions have been included to explain each chart.

Chapter Five constitutes discussions and analyses. This chapter plays a critical role in the achievement of research aim and objectives. Findings of the literature review have been compared to primary data findings in this chapter. Also, in-depth discussions have been provided in relation to each individual research objective.

Chapter Six concludes the work and summarises the level of achievement of research aim and objectives. The chapter comprises acknowledgement of limitations of the study and highlights scope for future studies in the same research area.

Your dissertation has also to contain title page, acknowledgements, abstract, table of contents at the beginning. Furthermore, you need to add references, bibliography and appendices sections at the end of your dissertation.

John Dudovskiy

• Chapter 1: Home
• Narrowing Your Topic
• Problem Statement
• Purpose Statement
• Conceptual Framework
• Theoretical Framework
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How to write Chapter 1: Introduction

How to write Introduction Chapter for Project Proposal (CP 3005)

Related Papers

Research proposal outline

JONATHAN N G U G I KN

Title  A concise statement of the main topic and should identify the variables  Should be a reflection of the contents of the document  Fully explanatory when standing alone  Should not contain redundancies such as 'a study of … or an investigation of …  Abbreviations should not appear in the title  Scientific names should be in italics should contain not more than 23 words ii) Author's name and affiliation  Avoid the use of the words like 'By….from….  Preferred order of names is to start with first, middle then the last name  Full names should be used, initials should be avoided  Titles like Dr. should not appear in the names iii) Affiliation  The affiliation should be well illustrated i.e. A thesis / proposal submitted to the department of …. In the school of …. In the partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of ….. of Kenyatta University  The month and the year should follow at the bottom of the caption Note: for the proposals (spiral bound) the cover should include the title, author and the affiliation (all in one page) and centered B) DECLARATION  It should include both the candidate's and the supervisor's declaration and duly signed This proposal / thesis is my original work and has not been presented for a degree in any other University …………………………………… …………………………….

Robertus Willy

Langley, BC: Trinity Western University. …

Paul T P Wong

Parlindungan Pardede

abdul rahim

Holuphumiee Adegbaju

tinuade adeola

Education India: A Quarterly Refereed Journal of Dialogues on Education

Shubham kumar Sanu , Vishwa Raj Sharma , Dr Mukesh Kumar , Smriti Shreya

Writing a research proposal for an early career researcher is one of the toughest part of research work. A research proposal is a blueprint to conduct research work and a well-structured proposal provides smooth functioning for the proposed research. Generally, young researchers face various types of problem in structuring a good research proposal in absence of proper guidelines, steps and strategies. This paper aims to provide a general guideline to the students and researchers to develop a wellstructured research proposal for the purpose of PhD/dissertation/research projects, etc. The concept and significance of a research proposal, how to start research work, the process of producing and appropriate sections for a good research proposal has been discussed in great detail.

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Online Guide to Writing and Research

The research process, explore more of umgc.

• Online Guide to Writing

Structuring the Research Paper

Formal research structure.

These are the primary purposes for formal research:

enter the discourse, or conversation, of other writers and scholars in your field

learn how others in your field use primary and secondary resources

find and understand raw data and information

For the formal academic research assignment, consider an organizational pattern typically used for primary academic research.  The pattern includes the following: introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusions/recommendations.

Usually, research papers flow from the general to the specific and back to the general in their organization. The introduction uses a general-to-specific movement in its organization, establishing the thesis and setting the context for the conversation. The methods and results sections are more detailed and specific, providing support for the generalizations made in the introduction. The discussion section moves toward an increasingly more general discussion of the subject, leading to the conclusions and recommendations, which then generalize the conversation again.

Sections of a Formal Structure

The introduction section.

Many students will find that writing a structured  introduction  gets them started and gives them the focus needed to significantly improve their entire paper. 

Introductions usually have three parts:

presentation of the problem statement, the topic, or the research inquiry

purpose and focus of your paper

summary or overview of the writer’s position or arguments

In the first part of the introduction—the presentation of the problem or the research inquiry—state the problem or express it so that the question is implied. Then, sketch the background on the problem and review the literature on it to give your readers a context that shows them how your research inquiry fits into the conversation currently ongoing in your subject area. 

In the second part of the introduction, state your purpose and focus. Here, you may even present your actual thesis. Sometimes your purpose statement can take the place of the thesis by letting your reader know your intentions. 

The third part of the introduction, the summary or overview of the paper, briefly leads readers through the discussion, forecasting the main ideas and giving readers a blueprint for the paper. 

The following example provides a blueprint for a well-organized introduction.

Example of an Introduction

Entrepreneurial Marketing: The Critical Difference

In an article in the Harvard Business Review, John A. Welsh and Jerry F. White remind us that “a small business is not a little big business.” An entrepreneur is not a multinational conglomerate but a profit-seeking individual. To survive, he must have a different outlook and must apply different principles to his endeavors than does the president of a large or even medium-sized corporation. Not only does the scale of small and big businesses differ, but small businesses also suffer from what the Harvard Business Review article calls “resource poverty.” This is a problem and opportunity that requires an entirely different approach to marketing. Where large ad budgets are not necessary or feasible, where expensive ad production squanders limited capital, where every marketing dollar must do the work of two dollars, if not five dollars or even ten, where a person’s company, capital, and material well-being are all on the line—that is, where guerrilla marketing can save the day and secure the bottom line (Levinson, 1984, p. 9).

By reviewing the introductions to research articles in the discipline in which you are writing your research paper, you can get an idea of what is considered the norm for that discipline. Study several of these before you begin your paper so that you know what may be expected. If you are unsure of the kind of introduction your paper needs, ask your professor for more information.  The introduction is normally written in present tense.

THE METHODS SECTION

The methods section of your research paper should describe in detail what methodology and special materials if any, you used to think through or perform your research. You should include any materials you used or designed for yourself, such as questionnaires or interview questions, to generate data or information for your research paper. You want to include any methodologies that are specific to your particular field of study, such as lab procedures for a lab experiment or data-gathering instruments for field research. The methods section is usually written in the past tense.

THE RESULTS SECTION

How you present the results of your research depends on what kind of research you did, your subject matter, and your readers’ expectations. 

Quantitative information —data that can be measured—can be presented systematically and economically in tables, charts, and graphs. Quantitative information includes quantities and comparisons of sets of data. 

Qualitative information , which includes brief descriptions, explanations, or instructions, can also be presented in prose tables. This kind of descriptive or explanatory information, however, is often presented in essay-like prose or even lists.

There are specific conventions for creating tables, charts, and graphs and organizing the information they contain. In general, you should use them only when you are sure they will enlighten your readers rather than confuse them. In the accompanying explanation and discussion, always refer to the graphic by number and explain specifically what you are referring to; you can also provide a caption for the graphic. The rule of thumb for presenting a graphic is first to introduce it by name, show it, and then interpret it. The results section is usually written in the past tense.

THE DISCUSSION SECTION

Your discussion section should generalize what you have learned from your research. One way to generalize is to explain the consequences or meaning of your results and then make your points that support and refer back to the statements you made in your introduction. Your discussion should be organized so that it relates directly to your thesis. You want to avoid introducing new ideas here or discussing tangential issues not directly related to the exploration and discovery of your thesis. The discussion section, along with the introduction, is usually written in the present tense.

THE CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS SECTION

Your conclusion ties your research to your thesis, binding together all the main ideas in your thinking and writing. By presenting the logical outcome of your research and thinking, your conclusion answers your research inquiry for your reader. Your conclusions should relate directly to the ideas presented in your introduction section and should not present any new ideas.

You may be asked to present your recommendations separately in your research assignment. If so, you will want to add some elements to your conclusion section. For example, you may be asked to recommend a course of action, make a prediction, propose a solution to a problem, offer a judgment, or speculate on the implications and consequences of your ideas. The conclusions and recommendations section is usually written in the present tense.

Key Takeaways

• For the formal academic research assignment, consider an organizational pattern typically used for primary academic research. 
•  The pattern includes the following: introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusions/recommendations.

Mailing Address: 3501 University Blvd. East, Adelphi, MD 20783 This work is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License . © 2022 UMGC. All links to external sites were verified at the time of publication. UMGC is not responsible for the validity or integrity of information located at external sites.

Table of Contents: Online Guide to Writing

Chapter 1: College Writing

How Does College Writing Differ from Workplace Writing?

What Is College Writing?

Why So Much Emphasis on Writing?

Chapter 2: The Writing Process

Doing Exploratory Research

Getting from Notes to Your Draft

Introduction

Prewriting - Techniques to Get Started - Mining Your Intuition

Prewriting: Targeting Your Audience

Prewriting: Techniques to Get Started

Prewriting: Understanding Your Assignment

Rewriting: Being Your Own Critic

Rewriting: Creating a Revision Strategy

Rewriting: Getting Feedback

Rewriting: The Final Draft

Techniques to Get Started - Outlining

Techniques to Get Started - Using Systematic Techniques

Thesis Statement and Controlling Idea

Writing: Getting from Notes to Your Draft - Freewriting

Writing: Getting from Notes to Your Draft - Summarizing Your Ideas

Writing: Outlining What You Will Write

Chapter 3: Thinking Strategies

A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone

A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone: Style Through Vocabulary and Diction

Critical Strategies and Writing

Critical Strategies and Writing: Analysis

Critical Strategies and Writing: Evaluation

Critical Strategies and Writing: Persuasion

Critical Strategies and Writing: Synthesis

Developing a Paper Using Strategies

Kinds of Assignments You Will Write

Patterns for Presenting Information

Patterns for Presenting Information: Critiques

Patterns for Presenting Information: Discussing Raw Data

Patterns for Presenting Information: General-to-Specific Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Problem-Cause-Solution Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Specific-to-General Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Summaries and Abstracts

Supporting with Research and Examples

Writing Essay Examinations

Writing Essay Examinations: Make Your Answer Relevant and Complete

Writing Essay Examinations: Organize Thinking Before Writing

Writing Essay Examinations: Read and Understand the Question

Chapter 4: The Research Process

Planning and Writing a Research Paper

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Ask a Research Question

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Cite Sources

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Collect Evidence

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Decide Your Point of View, or Role, for Your Research

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Draw Conclusions

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Find a Topic and Get an Overview

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Manage Your Resources

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Outline

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Survey the Literature

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Work Your Sources into Your Research Writing

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Human Resources

Research Resources: What Are Research Resources?

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found?

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Electronic Resources

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Print Resources

Structuring the Research Paper: Formal Research Structure

Structuring the Research Paper: Informal Research Structure

The Nature of Research

The Research Assignment: How Should Research Sources Be Evaluated?

The Research Assignment: When Is Research Needed?

The Research Assignment: Why Perform Research?

Chapter 5: Academic Integrity

Academic Integrity

Giving Credit to Sources

Giving Credit to Sources: Copyright Laws

Giving Credit to Sources: Documentation

Giving Credit to Sources: Style Guides

Integrating Sources

Practicing Academic Integrity

Practicing Academic Integrity: Keeping Accurate Records

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Paraphrasing Your Source

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Quoting Your Source

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Summarizing Your Sources

Types of Documentation

Types of Documentation: Bibliographies and Source Lists

Types of Documentation: Citing World Wide Web Sources

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - APA Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - CSE/CBE Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - Chicago Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - MLA Style

Types of Documentation: Note Citations

Chapter 6: Using Library Resources

Finding Library Resources

Chapter 7: Assessing Your Writing

How Is Writing Graded?

How Is Writing Graded?: A General Assessment Tool

The Draft Stage

The Draft Stage: The First Draft

The Draft Stage: The Revision Process and the Final Draft

The Draft Stage: Using Feedback

The Research Stage

Using Assessment to Improve Your Writing

Chapter 8: Other Frequently Assigned Papers

Reviews and Reaction Papers: Article and Book Reviews

Reviews and Reaction Papers: Reaction Papers

Writing Arguments

Writing Arguments: Adapting the Argument Structure

Writing Arguments: Purposes of Argument

Writing Arguments: References to Consult for Writing Arguments

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Anticipate Active Opposition

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Determine Your Organization

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Develop Your Argument

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Introduce Your Argument

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - State Your Thesis or Proposition

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Write Your Conclusion

Writing Arguments: Types of Argument

Appendix A: Books to Help Improve Your Writing

Dictionaries

General Style Manuals

Researching on the Internet

Special Style Manuals

Writing Handbooks

Appendix B: Collaborative Writing and Peer Reviewing

Collaborative Writing: Assignments to Accompany the Group Project

Collaborative Writing: Informal Progress Report

Collaborative Writing: Issues to Resolve

Collaborative Writing: Methodology

Collaborative Writing: Peer Evaluation

Collaborative Writing: Tasks of Collaborative Writing Group Members

Collaborative Writing: Writing Plan

General Introduction

Peer Reviewing

Appendix C: Developing an Improvement Plan

Working with Your Instructor’s Comments and Grades

Appendix D: Writing Plan and Project Schedule

Devising a Writing Project Plan and Schedule

Reviewing Your Plan with Others

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Academic research and writing

A concise introduction

Chapter 1 – Primer

Introduction to chapter 1.

Chapter 1 introduces you to the world of academic research and writing from a practical, terminological and philosophical perspective. To start with, four sample cases exemplify how academic research is embedded in professional, university, institutional and collaborative scenarios. As a thread for you, the topic “windmill financing”, appearing as a recurring theme throughout this course, is used in each of the four sample cases; however, every sample case describes a different setting in order to illustrate different manifestations of academic research. Furthermore, relevant key terms such as academia, science and theory as well as method, set of methods and methodology are discussed providing a terminological foundation for the content of the subsequent chapters. Philosophical considerations are presented in a concise way. The focus is on the terms truth and theories of truth as well as ontological positions and epistemic objectives. The concept of models, as simplifications of reality, is introduced. Finally, the structure of the subject matter “academic research and writing” is presented as a graphic. This illustration is used in order to explain the structure of the following chapters and will reappear as an entry point at the beginning of the subsequent chapters.

Go to Unit 0 Agenda

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Chapter 1. Introduction

“Science is in danger, and for that reason it is becoming dangerous” -Pierre Bourdieu, Science of Science and Reflexivity

Why an Open Access Textbook on Qualitative Research Methods?

I have been teaching qualitative research methods to both undergraduates and graduate students for many years.  Although there are some excellent textbooks out there, they are often costly, and none of them, to my mind, properly introduces qualitative research methods to the beginning student (whether undergraduate or graduate student).  In contrast, this open-access textbook is designed as a (free) true introduction to the subject, with helpful, practical pointers on how to conduct research and how to access more advanced instruction.  

Textbooks are typically arranged in one of two ways: (1) by technique (each chapter covers one method used in qualitative research); or (2) by process (chapters advance from research design through publication).  But both of these approaches are necessary for the beginner student.  This textbook will have sections dedicated to the process as well as the techniques of qualitative research.  This is a true “comprehensive” book for the beginning student.  In addition to covering techniques of data collection and data analysis, it provides a road map of how to get started and how to keep going and where to go for advanced instruction.  It covers aspects of research design and research communication as well as methods employed.  Along the way, it includes examples from many different disciplines in the social sciences.

The primary goal has been to create a useful, accessible, engaging textbook for use across many disciplines.  And, let’s face it.  Textbooks can be boring.  I hope readers find this to be a little different.  I have tried to write in a practical and forthright manner, with many lively examples and references to good and intellectually creative qualitative research.  Woven throughout the text are short textual asides (in colored textboxes) by professional (academic) qualitative researchers in various disciplines.  These short accounts by practitioners should help inspire students.  So, let’s begin!

What is Research?

When we use the word research , what exactly do we mean by that?  This is one of those words that everyone thinks they understand, but it is worth beginning this textbook with a short explanation.  We use the term to refer to “empirical research,” which is actually a historically specific approach to understanding the world around us.  Think about how you know things about the world. [1] You might know your mother loves you because she’s told you she does.  Or because that is what “mothers” do by tradition.  Or you might know because you’ve looked for evidence that she does, like taking care of you when you are sick or reading to you in bed or working two jobs so you can have the things you need to do OK in life.  Maybe it seems churlish to look for evidence; you just take it “on faith” that you are loved.

Only one of the above comes close to what we mean by research.  Empirical research is research (investigation) based on evidence.  Conclusions can then be drawn from observable data.  This observable data can also be “tested” or checked.  If the data cannot be tested, that is a good indication that we are not doing research.  Note that we can never “prove” conclusively, through observable data, that our mothers love us.  We might have some “disconfirming evidence” (that time she didn’t show up to your graduation, for example) that could push you to question an original hypothesis , but no amount of “confirming evidence” will ever allow us to say with 100% certainty, “my mother loves me.”  Faith and tradition and authority work differently.  Our knowledge can be 100% certain using each of those alternative methods of knowledge, but our certainty in those cases will not be based on facts or evidence.

For many periods of history, those in power have been nervous about “science” because it uses evidence and facts as the primary source of understanding the world, and facts can be at odds with what power or authority or tradition want you to believe.  That is why I say that scientific empirical research is a historically specific approach to understand the world.  You are in college or university now partly to learn how to engage in this historically specific approach.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe, there was a newfound respect for empirical research, some of which was seriously challenging to the established church.  Using observations and testing them, scientists found that the earth was not at the center of the universe, for example, but rather that it was but one planet of many which circled the sun. [2]   For the next two centuries, the science of astronomy, physics, biology, and chemistry emerged and became disciplines taught in universities.  All used the scientific method of observation and testing to advance knowledge.  Knowledge about people , however, and social institutions, however, was still left to faith, tradition, and authority.  Historians and philosophers and poets wrote about the human condition, but none of them used research to do so. [3]

It was not until the nineteenth century that “social science” really emerged, using the scientific method (empirical observation) to understand people and social institutions.  New fields of sociology, economics, political science, and anthropology emerged.  The first sociologists, people like Auguste Comte and Karl Marx, sought specifically to apply the scientific method of research to understand society, Engels famously claiming that Marx had done for the social world what Darwin did for the natural world, tracings its laws of development.  Today we tend to take for granted the naturalness of science here, but it is actually a pretty recent and radical development.

To return to the question, “does your mother love you?”  Well, this is actually not really how a researcher would frame the question, as it is too specific to your case.  It doesn’t tell us much about the world at large, even if it does tell us something about you and your relationship with your mother.  A social science researcher might ask, “do mothers love their children?”  Or maybe they would be more interested in how this loving relationship might change over time (e.g., “do mothers love their children more now than they did in the 18th century when so many children died before reaching adulthood?”) or perhaps they might be interested in measuring quality of love across cultures or time periods, or even establishing “what love looks like” using the mother/child relationship as a site of exploration.  All of these make good research questions because we can use observable data to answer them.

What is Qualitative Research?

“All we know is how to learn. How to study, how to listen, how to talk, how to tell.  If we don’t tell the world, we don’t know the world.  We’re lost in it, we die.” -Ursula LeGuin, The Telling

At its simplest, qualitative research is research about the social world that does not use numbers in its analyses.  All those who fear statistics can breathe a sigh of relief – there are no mathematical formulae or regression models in this book! But this definition is less about what qualitative research can be and more about what it is not.  To be honest, any simple statement will fail to capture the power and depth of qualitative research.  One way of contrasting qualitative research to quantitative research is to note that the focus of qualitative research is less about explaining and predicting relationships between variables and more about understanding the social world.  To use our mother love example, the question about “what love looks like” is a good question for the qualitative researcher while all questions measuring love or comparing incidences of love (both of which require measurement) are good questions for quantitative researchers. Patton writes,

Qualitative data describe.  They take us, as readers, into the time and place of the observation so that we know what it was like to have been there.  They capture and communicate someone else’s experience of the world in his or her own words.  Qualitative data tell a story. ( Patton 2002:47 )

Qualitative researchers are asking different questions about the world than their quantitative colleagues.  Even when researchers are employed in “mixed methods” research ( both quantitative and qualitative), they are using different methods to address different questions of the study.  I do a lot of research about first-generation and working-college college students.  Where a quantitative researcher might ask, how many first-generation college students graduate from college within four years? Or does first-generation college status predict high student debt loads?  A qualitative researcher might ask, how does the college experience differ for first-generation college students?  What is it like to carry a lot of debt, and how does this impact the ability to complete college on time?  Both sets of questions are important, but they can only be answered using specific tools tailored to those questions.  For the former, you need large numbers to make adequate comparisons.  For the latter, you need to talk to people, find out what they are thinking and feeling, and try to inhabit their shoes for a little while so you can make sense of their experiences and beliefs.

Examples of Qualitative Research

You have probably seen examples of qualitative research before, but you might not have paid particular attention to how they were produced or realized that the accounts you were reading were the result of hours, months, even years of research “in the field.”  A good qualitative researcher will present the product of their hours of work in such a way that it seems natural, even obvious, to the reader.  Because we are trying to convey what it is like answers, qualitative research is often presented as stories – stories about how people live their lives, go to work, raise their children, interact with one another.  In some ways, this can seem like reading particularly insightful novels.  But, unlike novels, there are very specific rules and guidelines that qualitative researchers follow to ensure that the “story” they are telling is accurate , a truthful rendition of what life is like for the people being studied.  Most of this textbook will be spent conveying those rules and guidelines.  Let’s take a look, first, however, at three examples of what the end product looks like.  I have chosen these three examples to showcase very different approaches to qualitative research, and I will return to these five examples throughout the book.  They were all published as whole books (not chapters or articles), and they are worth the long read, if you have the time.  I will also provide some information on how these books came to be and the length of time it takes to get them into book version.  It is important you know about this process, and the rest of this textbook will help explain why it takes so long to conduct good qualitative research!

Example 1 : The End Game (ethnography + interviews)

Corey Abramson is a sociologist who teaches at the University of Arizona.   In 2015 he published The End Game: How Inequality Shapes our Final Years ( 2015 ). This book was based on the research he did for his dissertation at the University of California-Berkeley in 2012.  Actually, the dissertation was completed in 2012 but the work that was produced that took several years.  The dissertation was entitled, “This is How We Live, This is How We Die: Social Stratification, Aging, and Health in Urban America” ( 2012 ).  You can see how the book version, which was written for a more general audience, has a more engaging sound to it, but that the dissertation version, which is what academic faculty read and evaluate, has a more descriptive title.  You can read the title and know that this is a study about aging and health and that the focus is going to be inequality and that the context (place) is going to be “urban America.”  It’s a study about “how” people do something – in this case, how they deal with aging and death.  This is the very first sentence of the dissertation, “From our first breath in the hospital to the day we die, we live in a society characterized by unequal opportunities for maintaining health and taking care of ourselves when ill.  These disparities reflect persistent racial, socio-economic, and gender-based inequalities and contribute to their persistence over time” ( 1 ).  What follows is a truthful account of how that is so.

Cory Abramson spent three years conducting his research in four different urban neighborhoods.  We call the type of research he conducted “comparative ethnographic” because he designed his study to compare groups of seniors as they went about their everyday business.  It’s comparative because he is comparing different groups (based on race, class, gender) and ethnographic because he is studying the culture/way of life of a group. [4]   He had an educated guess, rooted in what previous research had shown and what social theory would suggest, that people’s experiences of aging differ by race, class, and gender.  So, he set up a research design that would allow him to observe differences.  He chose two primarily middle-class (one was racially diverse and the other was predominantly White) and two primarily poor neighborhoods (one was racially diverse and the other was predominantly African American).  He hung out in senior centers and other places seniors congregated, watched them as they took the bus to get prescriptions filled, sat in doctor’s offices with them, and listened to their conversations with each other.  He also conducted more formal conversations, what we call in-depth interviews, with sixty seniors from each of the four neighborhoods.  As with a lot of fieldwork , as he got closer to the people involved, he both expanded and deepened his reach –

By the end of the project, I expanded my pool of general observations to include various settings frequented by seniors: apartment building common rooms, doctors’ offices, emergency rooms, pharmacies, senior centers, bars, parks, corner stores, shopping centers, pool halls, hair salons, coffee shops, and discount stores. Over the course of the three years of fieldwork, I observed hundreds of elders, and developed close relationships with a number of them. ( 2012:10 )

When Abramson rewrote the dissertation for a general audience and published his book in 2015, it got a lot of attention.  It is a beautifully written book and it provided insight into a common human experience that we surprisingly know very little about.  It won the Outstanding Publication Award by the American Sociological Association Section on Aging and the Life Course and was featured in the New York Times .  The book was about aging, and specifically how inequality shapes the aging process, but it was also about much more than that.  It helped show how inequality affects people’s everyday lives.  For example, by observing the difficulties the poor had in setting up appointments and getting to them using public transportation and then being made to wait to see a doctor, sometimes in standing-room-only situations, when they are unwell, and then being treated dismissively by hospital staff, Abramson allowed readers to feel the material reality of being poor in the US.  Comparing these examples with seniors with adequate supplemental insurance who have the resources to hire car services or have others assist them in arranging care when they need it, jolts the reader to understand and appreciate the difference money makes in the lives and circumstances of us all, and in a way that is different than simply reading a statistic (“80% of the poor do not keep regular doctor’s appointments”) does.  Qualitative research can reach into spaces and places that often go unexamined and then reports back to the rest of us what it is like in those spaces and places.

Example 2: Racing for Innocence (Interviews + Content Analysis + Fictional Stories)

Jennifer Pierce is a Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota.  Trained as a sociologist, she has written a number of books about gender, race, and power.  Her very first book, Gender Trials: Emotional Lives in Contemporary Law Firms, published in 1995, is a brilliant look at gender dynamics within two law firms.  Pierce was a participant observer, working as a paralegal, and she observed how female lawyers and female paralegals struggled to obtain parity with their male colleagues.

Fifteen years later, she reexamined the context of the law firm to include an examination of racial dynamics, particularly how elite white men working in these spaces created and maintained a culture that made it difficult for both female attorneys and attorneys of color to thrive. Her book, Racing for Innocence: Whiteness, Gender, and the Backlash Against Affirmative Action , published in 2012, is an interesting and creative blending of interviews with attorneys, content analyses of popular films during this period, and fictional accounts of racial discrimination and sexual harassment.  The law firm she chose to study had come under an affirmative action order and was in the process of implementing equitable policies and programs.  She wanted to understand how recipients of white privilege (the elite white male attorneys) come to deny the role they play in reproducing inequality.  Through interviews with attorneys who were present both before and during the affirmative action order, she creates a historical record of the “bad behavior” that necessitated new policies and procedures, but also, and more importantly , probed the participants ’ understanding of this behavior.  It should come as no surprise that most (but not all) of the white male attorneys saw little need for change, and that almost everyone else had accounts that were different if not sometimes downright harrowing.

I’ve used Pierce’s book in my qualitative research methods courses as an example of an interesting blend of techniques and presentation styles.  My students often have a very difficult time with the fictional accounts she includes.  But they serve an important communicative purpose here.  They are her attempts at presenting “both sides” to an objective reality – something happens (Pierce writes this something so it is very clear what it is), and the two participants to the thing that happened have very different understandings of what this means.  By including these stories, Pierce presents one of her key findings – people remember things differently and these different memories tend to support their own ideological positions.  I wonder what Pierce would have written had she studied the murder of George Floyd or the storming of the US Capitol on January 6 or any number of other historic events whose observers and participants record very different happenings.

This is not to say that qualitative researchers write fictional accounts.  In fact, the use of fiction in our work remains controversial.  When used, it must be clearly identified as a presentation device, as Pierce did.  I include Racing for Innocence here as an example of the multiple uses of methods and techniques and the way that these work together to produce better understandings by us, the readers, of what Pierce studied.  We readers come away with a better grasp of how and why advantaged people understate their own involvement in situations and structures that advantage them.  This is normal human behavior , in other words.  This case may have been about elite white men in law firms, but the general insights here can be transposed to other settings.  Indeed, Pierce argues that more research needs to be done about the role elites play in the reproduction of inequality in the workplace in general.

Example 3: Amplified Advantage (Mixed Methods: Survey Interviews + Focus Groups + Archives)

The final example comes from my own work with college students, particularly the ways in which class background affects the experience of college and outcomes for graduates.  I include it here as an example of mixed methods, and for the use of supplementary archival research.  I’ve done a lot of research over the years on first-generation, low-income, and working-class college students.  I am curious (and skeptical) about the possibility of social mobility today, particularly with the rising cost of college and growing inequality in general.  As one of the few people in my family to go to college, I didn’t grow up with a lot of examples of what college was like or how to make the most of it.  And when I entered graduate school, I realized with dismay that there were very few people like me there.  I worried about becoming too different from my family and friends back home.  And I wasn’t at all sure that I would ever be able to pay back the huge load of debt I was taking on.  And so I wrote my dissertation and first two books about working-class college students.  These books focused on experiences in college and the difficulties of navigating between family and school ( Hurst 2010a, 2012 ).  But even after all that research, I kept coming back to wondering if working-class students who made it through college had an equal chance at finding good jobs and happy lives,

What happens to students after college?  Do working-class students fare as well as their peers?  I knew from my own experience that barriers continued through graduate school and beyond, and that my debtload was higher than that of my peers, constraining some of the choices I made when I graduated.  To answer these questions, I designed a study of students attending small liberal arts colleges, the type of college that tried to equalize the experience of students by requiring all students to live on campus and offering small classes with lots of interaction with faculty.  These private colleges tend to have more money and resources so they can provide financial aid to low-income students.  They also attract some very wealthy students.  Because they enroll students across the class spectrum, I would be able to draw comparisons.  I ended up spending about four years collecting data, both a survey of more than 2000 students (which formed the basis for quantitative analyses) and qualitative data collection (interviews, focus groups, archival research, and participant observation).  This is what we call a “mixed methods” approach because we use both quantitative and qualitative data.  The survey gave me a large enough number of students that I could make comparisons of the how many kind, and to be able to say with some authority that there were in fact significant differences in experience and outcome by class (e.g., wealthier students earned more money and had little debt; working-class students often found jobs that were not in their chosen careers and were very affected by debt, upper-middle-class students were more likely to go to graduate school).  But the survey analyses could not explain why these differences existed.  For that, I needed to talk to people and ask them about their motivations and aspirations.  I needed to understand their perceptions of the world, and it is very hard to do this through a survey.

By interviewing students and recent graduates, I was able to discern particular patterns and pathways through college and beyond.  Specifically, I identified three versions of gameplay.  Upper-middle-class students, whose parents were themselves professionals (academics, lawyers, managers of non-profits), saw college as the first stage of their education and took classes and declared majors that would prepare them for graduate school.  They also spent a lot of time building their resumes, taking advantage of opportunities to help professors with their research, or study abroad.  This helped them gain admission to highly-ranked graduate schools and interesting jobs in the public sector.  In contrast, upper-class students, whose parents were wealthy and more likely to be engaged in business (as CEOs or other high-level directors), prioritized building social capital.  They did this by joining fraternities and sororities and playing club sports.  This helped them when they graduated as they called on friends and parents of friends to find them well-paying jobs.  Finally, low-income, first-generation, and working-class students were often adrift.  They took the classes that were recommended to them but without the knowledge of how to connect them to life beyond college.  They spent time working and studying rather than partying or building their resumes.  All three sets of students thought they were “doing college” the right way, the way that one was supposed to do college.   But these three versions of gameplay led to distinct outcomes that advantaged some students over others.  I titled my work “Amplified Advantage” to highlight this process.

These three examples, Cory Abramson’s The End Game , Jennifer Peirce’s Racing for Innocence, and my own Amplified Advantage, demonstrate the range of approaches and tools available to the qualitative researcher.  They also help explain why qualitative research is so important.  Numbers can tell us some things about the world, but they cannot get at the hearts and minds, motivations and beliefs of the people who make up the social worlds we inhabit.  For that, we need tools that allow us to listen and make sense of what people tell us and show us.  That is what good qualitative research offers us.

How Is This Book Organized?

This textbook is organized as a comprehensive introduction to the use of qualitative research methods.  The first half covers general topics (e.g., approaches to qualitative research, ethics) and research design (necessary steps for building a successful qualitative research study).  The second half reviews various data collection and data analysis techniques.  Of course, building a successful qualitative research study requires some knowledge of data collection and data analysis so the chapters in the first half and the chapters in the second half should be read in conversation with each other.  That said, each chapter can be read on its own for assistance with a particular narrow topic.  In addition to the chapters, a helpful glossary can be found in the back of the book.  Rummage around in the text as needed.

Chapter Descriptions

Chapter 2 provides an overview of the Research Design Process.  How does one begin a study? What is an appropriate research question?  How is the study to be done – with what methods ?  Involving what people and sites?  Although qualitative research studies can and often do change and develop over the course of data collection, it is important to have a good idea of what the aims and goals of your study are at the outset and a good plan of how to achieve those aims and goals.  Chapter 2 provides a road map of the process.

Chapter 3 describes and explains various ways of knowing the (social) world.  What is it possible for us to know about how other people think or why they behave the way they do?  What does it mean to say something is a “fact” or that it is “well-known” and understood?  Qualitative researchers are particularly interested in these questions because of the types of research questions we are interested in answering (the how questions rather than the how many questions of quantitative research).  Qualitative researchers have adopted various epistemological approaches.  Chapter 3 will explore these approaches, highlighting interpretivist approaches that acknowledge the subjective aspect of reality – in other words, reality and knowledge are not objective but rather influenced by (interpreted through) people.

Chapter 4 focuses on the practical matter of developing a research question and finding the right approach to data collection.  In any given study (think of Cory Abramson’s study of aging, for example), there may be years of collected data, thousands of observations , hundreds of pages of notes to read and review and make sense of.  If all you had was a general interest area (“aging”), it would be very difficult, nearly impossible, to make sense of all of that data.  The research question provides a helpful lens to refine and clarify (and simplify) everything you find and collect.  For that reason, it is important to pull out that lens (articulate the research question) before you get started.  In the case of the aging study, Cory Abramson was interested in how inequalities affected understandings and responses to aging.  It is for this reason he designed a study that would allow him to compare different groups of seniors (some middle-class, some poor).  Inevitably, he saw much more in the three years in the field than what made it into his book (or dissertation), but he was able to narrow down the complexity of the social world to provide us with this rich account linked to the original research question.  Developing a good research question is thus crucial to effective design and a successful outcome.  Chapter 4 will provide pointers on how to do this.  Chapter 4 also provides an overview of general approaches taken to doing qualitative research and various “traditions of inquiry.”

Chapter 5 explores sampling .  After you have developed a research question and have a general idea of how you will collect data (Observations?  Interviews?), how do you go about actually finding people and sites to study?  Although there is no “correct number” of people to interview , the sample should follow the research question and research design.  Unlike quantitative research, qualitative research involves nonprobability sampling.  Chapter 5 explains why this is so and what qualities instead make a good sample for qualitative research.

Chapter 6 addresses the importance of reflexivity in qualitative research.  Related to epistemological issues of how we know anything about the social world, qualitative researchers understand that we the researchers can never be truly neutral or outside the study we are conducting.  As observers, we see things that make sense to us and may entirely miss what is either too obvious to note or too different to comprehend.  As interviewers, as much as we would like to ask questions neutrally and remain in the background, interviews are a form of conversation, and the persons we interview are responding to us .  Therefore, it is important to reflect upon our social positions and the knowledges and expectations we bring to our work and to work through any blind spots that we may have.  Chapter 6 provides some examples of reflexivity in practice and exercises for thinking through one’s own biases.

Chapter 7 is a very important chapter and should not be overlooked.  As a practical matter, it should also be read closely with chapters 6 and 8.  Because qualitative researchers deal with people and the social world, it is imperative they develop and adhere to a strong ethical code for conducting research in a way that does not harm.  There are legal requirements and guidelines for doing so (see chapter 8), but these requirements should not be considered synonymous with the ethical code required of us.   Each researcher must constantly interrogate every aspect of their research, from research question to design to sample through analysis and presentation, to ensure that a minimum of harm (ideally, zero harm) is caused.  Because each research project is unique, the standards of care for each study are unique.  Part of being a professional researcher is carrying this code in one’s heart, being constantly attentive to what is required under particular circumstances.  Chapter 7 provides various research scenarios and asks readers to weigh in on the suitability and appropriateness of the research.  If done in a class setting, it will become obvious fairly quickly that there are often no absolutely correct answers, as different people find different aspects of the scenarios of greatest importance.  Minimizing the harm in one area may require possible harm in another.  Being attentive to all the ethical aspects of one’s research and making the best judgments one can, clearly and consciously, is an integral part of being a good researcher.

Chapter 8 , best to be read in conjunction with chapter 7, explains the role and importance of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) .  Under federal guidelines, an IRB is an appropriately constituted group that has been formally designated to review and monitor research involving human subjects .  Every institution that receives funding from the federal government has an IRB.  IRBs have the authority to approve, require modifications to (to secure approval), or disapprove research.  This group review serves an important role in the protection of the rights and welfare of human research subjects.  Chapter 8 reviews the history of IRBs and the work they do but also argues that IRBs’ review of qualitative research is often both over-inclusive and under-inclusive.  Some aspects of qualitative research are not well understood by IRBs, given that they were developed to prevent abuses in biomedical research.  Thus, it is important not to rely on IRBs to identify all the potential ethical issues that emerge in our research (see chapter 7).

Chapter 9 provides help for getting started on formulating a research question based on gaps in the pre-existing literature.  Research is conducted as part of a community, even if particular studies are done by single individuals (or small teams).  What any of us finds and reports back becomes part of a much larger body of knowledge.  Thus, it is important that we look at the larger body of knowledge before we actually start our bit to see how we can best contribute.  When I first began interviewing working-class college students, there was only one other similar study I could find, and it hadn’t been published (it was a dissertation of students from poor backgrounds).  But there had been a lot published by professors who had grown up working class and made it through college despite the odds.  These accounts by “working-class academics” became an important inspiration for my study and helped me frame the questions I asked the students I interviewed.  Chapter 9 will provide some pointers on how to search for relevant literature and how to use this to refine your research question.

Chapter 10 serves as a bridge between the two parts of the textbook, by introducing techniques of data collection.  Qualitative research is often characterized by the form of data collection – for example, an ethnographic study is one that employs primarily observational data collection for the purpose of documenting and presenting a particular culture or ethnos.  Techniques can be effectively combined, depending on the research question and the aims and goals of the study.   Chapter 10 provides a general overview of all the various techniques and how they can be combined.

The second part of the textbook moves into the doing part of qualitative research once the research question has been articulated and the study designed.  Chapters 11 through 17 cover various data collection techniques and approaches.  Chapters 18 and 19 provide a very simple overview of basic data analysis.  Chapter 20 covers communication of the data to various audiences, and in various formats.

Chapter 11 begins our overview of data collection techniques with a focus on interviewing , the true heart of qualitative research.  This technique can serve as the primary and exclusive form of data collection, or it can be used to supplement other forms (observation, archival).  An interview is distinct from a survey, where questions are asked in a specific order and often with a range of predetermined responses available.  Interviews can be conversational and unstructured or, more conventionally, semistructured , where a general set of interview questions “guides” the conversation.  Chapter 11 covers the basics of interviews: how to create interview guides, how many people to interview, where to conduct the interview, what to watch out for (how to prepare against things going wrong), and how to get the most out of your interviews.

Chapter 12 covers an important variant of interviewing, the focus group.  Focus groups are semistructured interviews with a group of people moderated by a facilitator (the researcher or researcher’s assistant).  Focus groups explicitly use group interaction to assist in the data collection.  They are best used to collect data on a specific topic that is non-personal and shared among the group.  For example, asking a group of college students about a common experience such as taking classes by remote delivery during the pandemic year of 2020.  Chapter 12 covers the basics of focus groups: when to use them, how to create interview guides for them, and how to run them effectively.

Chapter 13 moves away from interviewing to the second major form of data collection unique to qualitative researchers – observation .  Qualitative research that employs observation can best be understood as falling on a continuum of “fly on the wall” observation (e.g., observing how strangers interact in a doctor’s waiting room) to “participant” observation, where the researcher is also an active participant of the activity being observed.  For example, an activist in the Black Lives Matter movement might want to study the movement, using her inside position to gain access to observe key meetings and interactions.  Chapter  13 covers the basics of participant observation studies: advantages and disadvantages, gaining access, ethical concerns related to insider/outsider status and entanglement, and recording techniques.

Chapter 14 takes a closer look at “deep ethnography” – immersion in the field of a particularly long duration for the purpose of gaining a deeper understanding and appreciation of a particular culture or social world.  Clifford Geertz called this “deep hanging out.”  Whereas participant observation is often combined with semistructured interview techniques, deep ethnography’s commitment to “living the life” or experiencing the situation as it really is demands more conversational and natural interactions with people.  These interactions and conversations may take place over months or even years.  As can be expected, there are some costs to this technique, as well as some very large rewards when done competently.  Chapter 14 provides some examples of deep ethnographies that will inspire some beginning researchers and intimidate others.

Chapter 15 moves in the opposite direction of deep ethnography, a technique that is the least positivist of all those discussed here, to mixed methods , a set of techniques that is arguably the most positivist .  A mixed methods approach combines both qualitative data collection and quantitative data collection, commonly by combining a survey that is analyzed statistically (e.g., cross-tabs or regression analyses of large number probability samples) with semi-structured interviews.  Although it is somewhat unconventional to discuss mixed methods in textbooks on qualitative research, I think it is important to recognize this often-employed approach here.  There are several advantages and some disadvantages to taking this route.  Chapter 16 will describe those advantages and disadvantages and provide some particular guidance on how to design a mixed methods study for maximum effectiveness.

Chapter 16 covers data collection that does not involve live human subjects at all – archival and historical research (chapter 17 will also cover data that does not involve interacting with human subjects).  Sometimes people are unavailable to us, either because they do not wish to be interviewed or observed (as is the case with many “elites”) or because they are too far away, in both place and time.  Fortunately, humans leave many traces and we can often answer questions we have by examining those traces.  Special collections and archives can be goldmines for social science research.  This chapter will explain how to access these places, for what purposes, and how to begin to make sense of what you find.

Chapter 17 covers another data collection area that does not involve face-to-face interaction with humans: content analysis .  Although content analysis may be understood more properly as a data analysis technique, the term is often used for the entire approach, which will be the case here.  Content analysis involves interpreting meaning from a body of text.  This body of text might be something found in historical records (see chapter 16) or something collected by the researcher, as in the case of comment posts on a popular blog post.  I once used the stories told by student loan debtors on the website studentloanjustice.org as the content I analyzed.  Content analysis is particularly useful when attempting to define and understand prevalent stories or communication about a topic of interest.  In other words, when we are less interested in what particular people (our defined sample) are doing or believing and more interested in what general narratives exist about a particular topic or issue.  This chapter will explore different approaches to content analysis and provide helpful tips on how to collect data, how to turn that data into codes for analysis, and how to go about presenting what is found through analysis.

Where chapter 17 has pushed us towards data analysis, chapters 18 and 19 are all about what to do with the data collected, whether that data be in the form of interview transcripts or fieldnotes from observations.  Chapter 18 introduces the basics of coding , the iterative process of assigning meaning to the data in order to both simplify and identify patterns.  What is a code and how does it work?  What are the different ways of coding data, and when should you use them?  What is a codebook, and why do you need one?  What does the process of data analysis look like?

Chapter 19 goes further into detail on codes and how to use them, particularly the later stages of coding in which our codes are refined, simplified, combined, and organized.  These later rounds of coding are essential to getting the most out of the data we’ve collected.  As students are often overwhelmed with the amount of data (a corpus of interview transcripts typically runs into the hundreds of pages; fieldnotes can easily top that), this chapter will also address time management and provide suggestions for dealing with chaos and reminders that feeling overwhelmed at the analysis stage is part of the process.  By the end of the chapter, you should understand how “findings” are actually found.

The book concludes with a chapter dedicated to the effective presentation of data results.  Chapter 20 covers the many ways that researchers communicate their studies to various audiences (academic, personal, political), what elements must be included in these various publications, and the hallmarks of excellent qualitative research that various audiences will be expecting.  Because qualitative researchers are motivated by understanding and conveying meaning , effective communication is not only an essential skill but a fundamental facet of the entire research project.  Ethnographers must be able to convey a certain sense of verisimilitude , the appearance of true reality.  Those employing interviews must faithfully depict the key meanings of the people they interviewed in a way that rings true to those people, even if the end result surprises them.  And all researchers must strive for clarity in their publications so that various audiences can understand what was found and why it is important.

The book concludes with a short chapter ( chapter 21 ) discussing the value of qualitative research. At the very end of this book, you will find a glossary of terms. I recommend you make frequent use of the glossary and add to each entry as you find examples. Although the entries are meant to be simple and clear, you may also want to paraphrase the definition—make it “make sense” to you, in other words. In addition to the standard reference list (all works cited here), you will find various recommendations for further reading at the end of many chapters. Some of these recommendations will be examples of excellent qualitative research, indicated with an asterisk (*) at the end of the entry. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. A good example of qualitative research can teach you more about conducting research than any textbook can (this one included). I highly recommend you select one to three examples from these lists and read them along with the textbook.

A final note on the choice of examples – you will note that many of the examples used in the text come from research on college students.  This is for two reasons.  First, as most of my research falls in this area, I am most familiar with this literature and have contacts with those who do research here and can call upon them to share their stories with you.  Second, and more importantly, my hope is that this textbook reaches a wide audience of beginning researchers who study widely and deeply across the range of what can be known about the social world (from marine resources management to public policy to nursing to political science to sexuality studies and beyond).  It is sometimes difficult to find examples that speak to all those research interests, however. A focus on college students is something that all readers can understand and, hopefully, appreciate, as we are all now or have been at some point a college student.

Recommended Reading: Other Qualitative Research Textbooks

I’ve included a brief list of some of my favorite qualitative research textbooks and guidebooks if you need more than what you will find in this introductory text.  For each, I’ve also indicated if these are for “beginning” or “advanced” (graduate-level) readers.  Many of these books have several editions that do not significantly vary; the edition recommended is merely the edition I have used in teaching and to whose page numbers any specific references made in the text agree.

Barbour, Rosaline. 2014. Introducing Qualitative Research: A Student’s Guide. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.  A good introduction to qualitative research, with abundant examples (often from the discipline of health care) and clear definitions.  Includes quick summaries at the ends of each chapter.  However, some US students might find the British context distracting and can be a bit advanced in some places.  Beginning .

Bloomberg, Linda Dale, and Marie F. Volpe. 2012. Completing Your Qualitative Dissertation . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.  Specifically designed to guide graduate students through the research process. Advanced .

Creswell, John W., and Cheryl Poth. 2018 Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five Traditions .  4th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.  This is a classic and one of the go-to books I used myself as a graduate student.  One of the best things about this text is its clear presentation of five distinct traditions in qualitative research.  Despite the title, this reasonably sized book is about more than research design, including both data analysis and how to write about qualitative research.  Advanced .

Lareau, Annette. 2021. Listening to People: A Practical Guide to Interviewing, Participant Observation, Data Analysis, and Writing It All Up .  Chicago: University of Chicago Press. A readable and personal account of conducting qualitative research by an eminent sociologist, with a heavy emphasis on the kinds of participant-observation research conducted by the author.  Despite its reader-friendliness, this is really a book targeted to graduate students learning the craft.  Advanced .

Lune, Howard, and Bruce L. Berg. 2018. 9th edition.  Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences.  Pearson . Although a good introduction to qualitative methods, the authors favor symbolic interactionist and dramaturgical approaches, which limits the appeal primarily to sociologists.  Beginning .

Marshall, Catherine, and Gretchen B. Rossman. 2016. 6th edition. Designing Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.  Very readable and accessible guide to research design by two educational scholars.  Although the presentation is sometimes fairly dry, personal vignettes and illustrations enliven the text.  Beginning .

Maxwell, Joseph A. 2013. Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive Approach .  3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. A short and accessible introduction to qualitative research design, particularly helpful for graduate students contemplating theses and dissertations. This has been a standard textbook in my graduate-level courses for years.  Advanced .

Patton, Michael Quinn. 2002. Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.  This is a comprehensive text that served as my “go-to” reference when I was a graduate student.  It is particularly helpful for those involved in program evaluation and other forms of evaluation studies and uses examples from a wide range of disciplines.  Advanced .

Rubin, Ashley T. 2021. Rocking Qualitative Social Science: An Irreverent Guide to Rigorous Research. Stanford : Stanford University Press.  A delightful and personal read.  Rubin uses rock climbing as an extended metaphor for learning how to conduct qualitative research.  A bit slanted toward ethnographic and archival methods of data collection, with frequent examples from her own studies in criminology. Beginning .

Weis, Lois, and Michelle Fine. 2000. Speed Bumps: A Student-Friendly Guide to Qualitative Research . New York: Teachers College Press.  Readable and accessibly written in a quasi-conversational style.  Particularly strong in its discussion of ethical issues throughout the qualitative research process.  Not comprehensive, however, and very much tied to ethnographic research.  Although designed for graduate students, this is a recommended read for students of all levels.  Beginning .

Patton’s Ten Suggestions for Doing Qualitative Research

The following ten suggestions were made by Michael Quinn Patton in his massive textbooks Qualitative Research and Evaluations Methods . This book is highly recommended for those of you who want more than an introduction to qualitative methods. It is the book I relied on heavily when I was a graduate student, although it is much easier to “dip into” when necessary than to read through as a whole. Patton is asked for “just one bit of advice” for a graduate student considering using qualitative research methods for their dissertation.  Here are his top ten responses, in short form, heavily paraphrased, and with additional comments and emphases from me:

• Make sure that a qualitative approach fits the research question. The following are the kinds of questions that call out for qualitative methods or where qualitative methods are particularly appropriate: questions about people’s experiences or how they make sense of those experiences; studying a person in their natural environment; researching a phenomenon so unknown that it would be impossible to study it with standardized instruments or other forms of quantitative data collection.
• Study qualitative research by going to the original sources for the design and analysis appropriate to the particular approach you want to take (e.g., read Glaser and Straus if you are using grounded theory )
• Find a dissertation adviser who understands or at least who will support your use of qualitative research methods. You are asking for trouble if your entire committee is populated by quantitative researchers, even if they are all very knowledgeable about the subject or focus of your study (maybe even more so if they are!)
• Really work on design. Doing qualitative research effectively takes a lot of planning.  Even if things are more flexible than in quantitative research, a good design is absolutely essential when starting out.
• Practice data collection techniques, particularly interviewing and observing. There is definitely a set of learned skills here!  Do not expect your first interview to be perfect.  You will continue to grow as a researcher the more interviews you conduct, and you will probably come to understand yourself a bit more in the process, too.  This is not easy, despite what others who don’t work with qualitative methods may assume (and tell you!)
• Have a plan for analysis before you begin data collection. This is often a requirement in IRB protocols , although you can get away with writing something fairly simple.  And even if you are taking an approach, such as grounded theory, that pushes you to remain fairly open-minded during the data collection process, you still want to know what you will be doing with all the data collected – creating a codebook? Writing analytical memos? Comparing cases?  Having a plan in hand will also help prevent you from collecting too much extraneous data.
• Be prepared to confront controversies both within the qualitative research community and between qualitative research and quantitative research. Don’t be naïve about this – qualitative research, particularly some approaches, will be derided by many more “positivist” researchers and audiences.  For example, is an “n” of 1 really sufficient?  Yes!  But not everyone will agree.
• Do not make the mistake of using qualitative research methods because someone told you it was easier, or because you are intimidated by the math required of statistical analyses. Qualitative research is difficult in its own way (and many would claim much more time-consuming than quantitative research).  Do it because you are convinced it is right for your goals, aims, and research questions.
• Find a good support network. This could be a research mentor, or it could be a group of friends or colleagues who are also using qualitative research, or it could be just someone who will listen to you work through all of the issues you will confront out in the field and during the writing process.  Even though qualitative research often involves human subjects, it can be pretty lonely.  A lot of times you will feel like you are working without a net.  You have to create one for yourself.  Take care of yourself.
• And, finally, in the words of Patton, “Prepare to be changed. Looking deeply at other people’s lives will force you to look deeply at yourself.”
• We will actually spend an entire chapter ( chapter 3 ) looking at this question in much more detail! ↵
• Note that this might have been news to Europeans at the time, but many other societies around the world had also come to this conclusion through observation.  There is often a tendency to equate “the scientific revolution” with the European world in which it took place, but this is somewhat misleading. ↵
• Historians are a special case here.  Historians have scrupulously and rigorously investigated the social world, but not for the purpose of understanding general laws about how things work, which is the point of scientific empirical research.  History is often referred to as an idiographic field of study, meaning that it studies things that happened or are happening in themselves and not for general observations or conclusions. ↵
• Don’t worry, we’ll spend more time later in this book unpacking the meaning of ethnography and other terms that are important here.  Note the available glossary ↵

An approach to research that is “multimethod in focus, involving an interpretative, naturalistic approach to its subject matter.  This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them.  Qualitative research involves the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical materials – case study, personal experience, introspective, life story, interview, observational, historical, interactional, and visual texts – that describe routine and problematic moments and meanings in individuals’ lives." ( Denzin and Lincoln 2005:2 ). Contrast with quantitative research .

In contrast to methodology, methods are more simply the practices and tools used to collect and analyze data.  Examples of common methods in qualitative research are interviews , observations , and documentary analysis .  One’s methodology should connect to one’s choice of methods, of course, but they are distinguishable terms.  See also methodology .

A proposed explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation.  The positing of a hypothesis is often the first step in quantitative research but not in qualitative research.  Even when qualitative researchers offer possible explanations in advance of conducting research, they will tend to not use the word “hypothesis” as it conjures up the kind of positivist research they are not conducting.

The foundational question to be addressed by the research study.  This will form the anchor of the research design, collection, and analysis.  Note that in qualitative research, the research question may, and probably will, alter or develop during the course of the research.

An approach to research that collects and analyzes numerical data for the purpose of finding patterns and averages, making predictions, testing causal relationships, and generalizing results to wider populations.  Contrast with qualitative research .

Data collection that takes place in real-world settings, referred to as “the field;” a key component of much Grounded Theory and ethnographic research.  Patton ( 2002 ) calls fieldwork “the central activity of qualitative inquiry” where “‘going into the field’ means having direct and personal contact with people under study in their own environments – getting close to people and situations being studied to personally understand the realities of minutiae of daily life” (48).

The people who are the subjects of a qualitative study.  In interview-based studies, they may be the respondents to the interviewer; for purposes of IRBs, they are often referred to as the human subjects of the research.

The branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge.  For researchers, it is important to recognize and adopt one of the many distinguishing epistemological perspectives as part of our understanding of what questions research can address or fully answer.  See, e.g., constructivism , subjectivism, and  objectivism .

An approach that refutes the possibility of neutrality in social science research.  All research is “guided by a set of beliefs and feelings about the world and how it should be understood and studied” (Denzin and Lincoln 2005: 13).  In contrast to positivism , interpretivism recognizes the social constructedness of reality, and researchers adopting this approach focus on capturing interpretations and understandings people have about the world rather than “the world” as it is (which is a chimera).

The cluster of data-collection tools and techniques that involve observing interactions between people, the behaviors, and practices of individuals (sometimes in contrast to what they say about how they act and behave), and cultures in context.  Observational methods are the key tools employed by ethnographers and Grounded Theory .

Research based on data collected and analyzed by the research (in contrast to secondary “library” research).

The process of selecting people or other units of analysis to represent a larger population. In quantitative research, this representation is taken quite literally, as statistically representative.  In qualitative research, in contrast, sample selection is often made based on potential to generate insight about a particular topic or phenomenon.

A method of data collection in which the researcher asks the participant questions; the answers to these questions are often recorded and transcribed verbatim. There are many different kinds of interviews - see also semistructured interview , structured interview , and unstructured interview .

The specific group of individuals that you will collect data from.  Contrast population.

The practice of being conscious of and reflective upon one’s own social location and presence when conducting research.  Because qualitative research often requires interaction with live humans, failing to take into account how one’s presence and prior expectations and social location affect the data collected and how analyzed may limit the reliability of the findings.  This remains true even when dealing with historical archives and other content.  Who we are matters when asking questions about how people experience the world because we, too, are a part of that world.

The science and practice of right conduct; in research, it is also the delineation of moral obligations towards research participants, communities to which we belong, and communities in which we conduct our research.

An administrative body established to protect the rights and welfare of human research subjects recruited to participate in research activities conducted under the auspices of the institution with which it is affiliated. The IRB is charged with the responsibility of reviewing all research involving human participants. The IRB is concerned with protecting the welfare, rights, and privacy of human subjects. The IRB has the authority to approve, disapprove, monitor, and require modifications in all research activities that fall within its jurisdiction as specified by both the federal regulations and institutional policy.

Research, according to US federal guidelines, that involves “a living individual about whom an investigator (whether professional or student) conducting research:  (1) Obtains information or biospecimens through intervention or interaction with the individual, and uses, studies, or analyzes the information or biospecimens; or  (2) Obtains, uses, studies, analyzes, or generates identifiable private information or identifiable biospecimens.”

One of the primary methodological traditions of inquiry in qualitative research, ethnography is the study of a group or group culture, largely through observational fieldwork supplemented by interviews. It is a form of fieldwork that may include participant-observation data collection. See chapter 14 for a discussion of deep ethnography. 

A form of interview that follows a standard guide of questions asked, although the order of the questions may change to match the particular needs of each individual interview subject, and probing “follow-up” questions are often added during the course of the interview.  The semi-structured interview is the primary form of interviewing used by qualitative researchers in the social sciences.  It is sometimes referred to as an “in-depth” interview.  See also interview and  interview guide .

A method of observational data collection taking place in a natural setting; a form of fieldwork .  The term encompasses a continuum of relative participation by the researcher (from full participant to “fly-on-the-wall” observer).  This is also sometimes referred to as ethnography , although the latter is characterized by a greater focus on the culture under observation.

A research design that employs both quantitative and qualitative methods, as in the case of a survey supplemented by interviews.

An epistemological perspective that posits the existence of reality through sensory experience similar to empiricism but goes further in denying any non-sensory basis of thought or consciousness.  In the social sciences, the term has roots in the proto-sociologist August Comte, who believed he could discern “laws” of society similar to the laws of natural science (e.g., gravity).  The term has come to mean the kinds of measurable and verifiable science conducted by quantitative researchers and is thus used pejoratively by some qualitative researchers interested in interpretation, consciousness, and human understanding.  Calling someone a “positivist” is often intended as an insult.  See also empiricism and objectivism.

A place or collection containing records, documents, or other materials of historical interest; most universities have an archive of material related to the university’s history, as well as other “special collections” that may be of interest to members of the community.

A method of both data collection and data analysis in which a given content (textual, visual, graphic) is examined systematically and rigorously to identify meanings, themes, patterns and assumptions.  Qualitative content analysis (QCA) is concerned with gathering and interpreting an existing body of material.    

A word or short phrase that symbolically assigns a summative, salient, essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute for a portion of language-based or visual data (Saldaña 2021:5).

Usually a verbatim written record of an interview or focus group discussion.

The primary form of data for fieldwork , participant observation , and ethnography .  These notes, taken by the researcher either during the course of fieldwork or at day’s end, should include as many details as possible on what was observed and what was said.  They should include clear identifiers of date, time, setting, and names (or identifying characteristics) of participants.

The process of labeling and organizing qualitative data to identify different themes and the relationships between them; a way of simplifying data to allow better management and retrieval of key themes and illustrative passages.  See coding frame and  codebook.

A methodological tradition of inquiry and approach to analyzing qualitative data in which theories emerge from a rigorous and systematic process of induction.  This approach was pioneered by the sociologists Glaser and Strauss (1967).  The elements of theory generated from comparative analysis of data are, first, conceptual categories and their properties and, second, hypotheses or generalized relations among the categories and their properties – “The constant comparing of many groups draws the [researcher’s] attention to their many similarities and differences.  Considering these leads [the researcher] to generate abstract categories and their properties, which, since they emerge from the data, will clearly be important to a theory explaining the kind of behavior under observation.” (36).

A detailed description of any proposed research that involves human subjects for review by IRB.  The protocol serves as the recipe for the conduct of the research activity.  It includes the scientific rationale to justify the conduct of the study, the information necessary to conduct the study, the plan for managing and analyzing the data, and a discussion of the research ethical issues relevant to the research.  Protocols for qualitative research often include interview guides, all documents related to recruitment, informed consent forms, very clear guidelines on the safekeeping of materials collected, and plans for de-identifying transcripts or other data that include personal identifying information.

Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods Copyright © 2023 by Allison Hurst is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Chapter 1: What is Research and Research Writing?

Write here, write now.

Developing your skills as a writer will make you more successful in ALL of your classes. Knowing how to think critically, organize your ideas, be concise, ask questions, perform research and back up your claims with evidence is key to almost everything you will do at university.

Writing is life

Solid writing skills will help you wow your family and friends with your well-articulated ideas, ace job interviews, build confidence in yourself, and feel part of a community of writers.

Beyond University

Whether you go on to graduate school, teach, work for the government or a non-profit, start your own business or your own heavy metal band, becoming a stronger writer will give you a solid foundation you can keep building on.

This chapter:

• Defines research and gives examples
• Describes the writing process
• Introduces writing using research
• Introduces simple research writing
• Prompts you to think about research and writing meaningful to you

 Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass : Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants . Milkweed Editions, 2013.

From “ Why Writing Matters “ .   Writing Place: A Scholarly Writing Textbook by Lindsay Cuff. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. 2023.

Reading and Writing Research for Undergraduates Copyright © 2023 by Stephanie Ojeda Ponce is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Research 101

• ACRL Framework Alignment
• Before You Begin...
• Lesson 1: Choose a Research Topic
• Lesson 2: Develop a Research Strategy
• Lesson 3: Conduct Ongoing Research
• Lesson 4: Analyze & Review Sources
• Lesson 5: Use Information Effectively
• After You Finish...
• Acknowledgements

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Lesson 1: Choose a Research Topic  

In this chapter, you'll learn to: 

• Formulate questions for research, based on information gaps or on reexamination of existing, possibly conflicting, information.
• Recognize that you, the researcher, are often entering into an ongoing scholarly conversation, not a finished conversation.
• Conduct background research to develop research strategies.
• Instructions
• 1) Scholarly Conversations
• 2) Research Topic
• 3) Research Question

Click on the numbered tabs to complete each activity.

Activities include videos, tutorials, and interactive tasks.

Questions about this lesson will be included on the Research 101 Quiz.

*It is recommended that you take notes while you complete each activity to prepare for the Research 101 quiz.

*If you have to take a break, make a note of your last activity so that you can pick up where you left off later.

"Choosing a Topic" Video by Amanda Burbage

This introductory video explains how when you choose a research topic, you are actually joining an ongoing academic conversation.

• "Choosing a Topic" Video Transcript
• CC BY-SA 4.0

"Scholarly Conversations" Tutorial by New Literacies Alliance

"In this lesson, students will discover how research is like a conversation that takes place between scholars in a field and will investigate ways they can become part of the conversation over time."  -NewLiteraciesAlliance.org

"Scholarly Conversations" Tutorial

1. Click on the tutorial link above.

2. Click the green "Sign In" button to login to your New Literacies Alliance account before beginning the tutorial .

*Go to the "Before You Begin" page of Research 101 if you have not yet registered for an account. 

3. Click the green "View Course" button.

4. Click the plus sign beside "Lesson".

5. Click the link that appears below to begin the tutorial.

• CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

"Picking Your Topic IS Research" Video by NC State University Libraries

This video explains that before you begin a project, you should do some preliminary research on your topic. This is a cyclical process, involving collecting background information and tweaking, to construct an interesting topic that you can further explore in your paper.

• "Picking Your Topic IS Research" Video Transcript

"Using Wikipedia for Academic Research (CLIP)" Video by Michael Baird

Although Wikipedia is not a suitable source for an academic research paper, it can still be very helpful! This video explains how this online encyclopedia can serve as a treasure trove of topic phrases, keywords, names, dates, and citations that you can use throughout the research process.

NOTE: Audio begins at 0.18 seconds.

• "Using Wikipedia for Academic Research (CLIP)" Video Transcript

"How to Develop a STRONG Research Question" Video by Scribbr

This video explains how to turn your research topic into a research question that is focused, researchable, feasible, specific, complex, and relevant.

• "How to Develop a STRONG Research Question" Video Transcript
• Scribbr Video Citation

"Ask the Right Questions" Tutorial by New Literacies Alliance

"In this lesson, students will explore what it takes to narrow a search in order to find the best information."  -NewLiteraciesAlliance.org

"Ask the Right Questions" Tutorial

• << Previous: Before You Begin...
• Next: Lesson 2: Develop a Research Strategy >>
• Last Updated: Feb 13, 2024 4:11 PM
• URL: https://libguides.randolph.edu/R101

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Part 4: Using qualitative methods

18. Qualitative data collection

Chapter outline.

• Ethical responsibility and cultural respect (5 minute read)
• Critical considerations (3 minute read)
• Preparations for the data gathering process (6 minute read)
• Interviews (20 minute read)
• Focus groups (15 minute read)
• Observations (6 minute read)
• Documents and other artifacts (13 minute read)

Content warning: examples in this chapter contain references to multiple demands on students’ time, loss of employment, sexual assault, trauma-informed care, inpatient psychiatric services, immigration, and the Holocaust.

In this chapter we will explore information to help you plan for and organize your strategy to gather your qualitative data. You will face a number of decisions as you plan this section of your proposal. Gathering qualitative data comes with important ethical and cultural responsibilities. Furthermore, qualitative research can be a powerful tool, but we need to be thoughtful as to how it will be used, as it can as easily become a tool of oppression as one of empowerment. Below are some considerations to help you reflect on some of these dynamics as you plan your study. The first sections apply to every type of qualitative research. Then, we discuss specific strategies to choose from as you plan your qualitative study.

18.1 Ethical responsibility and cultural respect

Learning objectives.

Learners will be able to…

• Explain the special considerations researchers should keep in mind as they design qualitative studies and collect qualitative data
• Determine steps that can be taken to protect participants and exhibit cultural respect during qualitative data collection

Because qualitative data collection so often involves direct contact with human participants and requesting them to share detailed and potentially personally sensitive information with us as researchers, we need to be especially sensitive to ethical considerations. It is a process that requires forethought, planning, and mindful attention throughout. Below are some ethical considerations to help guide you in this activity.

Special limitations to anonymity, confidentiality and ability to remove or withdraw data

Because with qualitative research we are often meeting with people in person to gather data, either from interviews , focus groups , or observations , we clearly can’t guarantee them anonymity . This makes it all the more important to consider what you will do to protect the confidentiality of your participants. This may involve using steps like:

• Using pseudonyms or assigned study identification codes rather than names on study materials
• Stripping all potentially identifying information from transcripts
• Keeping signed informed consent forms separate from other data so the two can’t be linked
• Ensuring that when data is not being used it is appropriately stored and locked so that others outside the research team don’t have access to it
• Ensuring that when data is being used it is not in a space (in person or virtual) where people outside the research team can view it
• Making sure that all members of your research team have been approved by your IRB
• Being very clear in your informed consent who will have access to data and for what purposes

Additionally, at times we will write into our informed consent that participants may withdraw from a study at any time. When a person expresses a desire to withdraw, we remove their data from the study. However, let’s say we conducted interviews and identified a theme that was present in their interview, but was also in a number of other interviews. Their ideas would still be represented in our findings, but we would make sure not to use any quotes or unique contributions from that individual. Also, if a person participates in a focus group, they are part of an interactive dialogue and the discussion is often connected to ideas shared by others as the conversation evolves, making it very hard to completely remove their data. Again, we would respect their wishes by not using any of their direct words, but their presence and contributions shaped the discussion in ways that we won’t be able to excise. It is best to be upfront about this as you are seeking informed consent.

• What steps will you be taking to protect the qualitative data that is shared with you?

Prepare with competence, enter with humility

When we ask people to share their thoughts, feelings, and experiences with us, we need to do so in a way that demonstrates respect and authenticity . This means that we approach participants in a professional manner that reflects both competence as a researcher and that illustrates we have done some preparation to learn about the population ahead of time (that we are not “coming in cold”). Activities that can help to demonstrate this are:

• Speaking with knowledgeable community members regarding the topic, our research design, and important aspects of the community (contemporary and historical) before beginning our data collection)
• Examining previous research and other sources of information regarding the group/community we are interested in work with, or if not available, groups/communities that may be similar
• Using data from the first two bullet points, we design our data collection in a way that is culturally sensitive (e.g. where we ask people to provide data, what tools we use, our wording)
• Preparing research materials (e.g. informed consent forms, recruitment materials, informational sheets) that are accessible and understandable for participants
• Providing information and education about research in general and our research topic specifically

This needs to be tempered with humility. Participants grant us the privilege of allowing us to witness some piece of their life. We need to have humility in knowing that we can never fully understand their experiences because we are not them. In a real sense, we are the learners and they are the teachers. Despite us doing the pre-work discussed above to become more competent in our approach, humility means we will ask the participant directly what is acceptable in respect to our data collection. I believe that when taking a culturally humble approach that we should take at least a little bit of time to understand what research means to the participant and what this particular topic means to the them, again, by asking them directly.

Key Takeaways

• Qualitative data collection involves special considerations to help ensure the privacy, confidentiality, or anonymity of participants because of the the often intimate and detailed information that we are collecting as qualitative researchers.
• Preparing for qualitative data collection requires that we educate ourselves as researchers in advance about the population we will be working with to guide and develop our data collection plan. Furthermore, from the standpoint of cultural humility, we don’t assume that these preparations are adequate. We need to verify with participants what is culturally acceptable to them as individuals.
• As you prepare for data collection planning, what actions do you plan to take to demonstrate preparations for cultural sensitivity and cultural humility?

18.2 Critical considerations

• Assess factors that may impact community members’ perceptions of researchers and their intentions
• Identify opportunities to support greater reciprocity in researcher-participant relationships (especially as it relates to your proposal)

What/whose interests are represented?

Data is a resource that participants own that they choose to share with us. Think about it: When a smartphone app or computer program wants your personal data, you’re usually asked to read a privacy statement and agree to certain terms. Companies are legally required to notify you about their intentions to use the data you may share. And many companies certainly recognize that your data is a valuable resource and seek it out. As researchers, we have similar responsibilities, but with higher ethical standards.

If we are going to ask participants to share this resource, we need to consider why we need it. Clearly, we are invested in this research for some reason, otherwise we wouldn’t be spending our time doing it. Being upfront and genuine with our participants about why this topic is important to us and what we hope comes out of this research is a good first step. We also need to describe to other stakeholders (such as funders or sponsors) who might be involved why we are interested in it. In addition, it is helpful to consider what this research might represent to our participants.

• They may be unsure what to think about the research—This especially may be true if they have had limited exposure to research and/or academia.
• They might be nervous or apprehensive that it could have consequences, either for them individually or for their community
• They might be excited to share their story and may feel as though they are contributing to something larger or some beneficial change

Considering these factors can help us to be more sensitive as we prepare to enter the field for data collection.

Think about your study. Put yourself in the role of research participant.

What information would you want to know?

• About research in general
• About the researcher
• About the research topic

How reciprocal is the arrangement?

Building off the preceding discussion about what research might mean to participants, it is also important to consider the reciprocity in the researcher – participant relationship. We know that we are benefiting from the exchange – we are getting data, research findings, research products and any other advantages or opportunities that might be attached to these. However, the benefits are not always as clear on the participant side of this relationship. Sometimes we are able to provide incentives to honor a participant’s time and contribution to a project, but these are often relatively limited. Participants may also intrinsically value making a contribution to a research project that can eventually help to change or build awareness around something that is important to them, but these are often distant and intangible benefits. While we may not be able to change the fact that we may benefit more from this exchange than our participants, it is important for us to acknowledge this and to consider how this can affect the power differential. We may be asking for a lot, with relatively little to offer in return. This is in contrast to participatory research approaches (which have been discussed elsewhere), in which there is much more of an intentional effort to more equally distribute the benefits of these relationships.

• As a means of developing empathy as a researcher, it is worth considering what the significance or meaning of research is to the populations we are interested in working with. What do we (as researchers) and our projects represent to community members?
• As critical researchers, we need to be considered with the power differences that often exist as we conduct research, especially in the act of asking for data from participants. The request is often lop-sided, with us benefiting considerably more than the participant.

18.3 Preparations for the data gathering process

• Explain important influences to account for in qualitative data gathering
• Organize and document preparatory steps to plan data gathering activities for your qualitative proposal

As you may have guessed from our discussion regarding qualitative research planning and sampling, you have a number of options available for qualitative data gathering, and consequently, a number of choices to make. Your decisions should be driven by your research question and research design, including the resources that are at your disposal for conducting your study. Remember, qualitative research is a labor-intensive venture. While it may not require lots of fancy equipment, it requires a significant investment of people’s time and potentially other resources (e.g. space, incentives for participants, transportation). Each source of data (interviews, focus groups, observations, other artifacts), will require separate planning as you approach data gathering.

Our impact on the data gathering process

In the last chapter, you were introduced to the tool of reflexive journaling as a means of encouraging you to reflect on and document your role in the research process. Since qualitative researchers generally play a very active and involved role in the data gathering process (e.g. conducting interviews, facilitating focus groups, selecting artifacts), we need to consider ways to capture our influence on this part of the qualitative process. Let’s say you are conducting interviews. As you head into the interview, you might be bringing in thoughts about a previous interview, a conversation you just had with your research professor, or worries about finishing all your assignments by the end of the semester! During the interview, you are likely to be surprised by some things that are said or some parts may evoke strong emotions. These responses may lead you to consider pursuing a slightly different line of questioning, and potentially highlighting or de-emphasizing certain aspects. Understanding and being aware of your personal reactions during the data collection process is very important. As part of your design and planning, you may specify that you will reflexively journal before and after each interview in an attempt to capture pre- and post-interview thoughts and feelings. This can help us to consider how we influence and are influenced by the research process. Towards the end of this chapter, after we have had a chance to talk about some of these data gathering strategies, there is a reflexive journal prompt to help you consider how to begin to reflect on the way you as a researcher might impact your work and how you work might impact you.

Decision Point

How will you account for your role in the research process?

• This may be your reflexive journal or you may have other thoughts about how you can account for this.
• Whatever you choose, how will you develop a routine/habit around this to ensure that you are regularly implementing this?

Reflexive Journal Entry Prompt

This is going to be a bit meta, but for this prompt, I want you reflect on the reflecting you are doing for your reflexive journaling.

• Do you see this as a potentially helpful tool for tracking your influence and reactions? What appeals to you? What puts you off?
• If so, how did you develop this mindset?
• If not, how can you strengthen this skill?

When are we done

Finally, as you plan for your data collection you need to consider when to stop. As suggested previously in our discussion on sampling, the concept of saturation is important here. As a reminder, saturation is the point at which no new ideas or concepts are being presented as you continue to collect new pieces of data. Again, as qualitative researchers, we are often collecting and analyzing our data simultaneously. This is what enables us to continue screening for the point of saturation. Of course, not all studies utilize the point of saturation as their determining factor for the amount of data they will collect. This may be predetermined by other factors, such as restricted access or other limitations to the scope of the investigation. While there is no hard and fast rule for the quantity of data you gather, the quality is important; you want to be comprehensive, consistent, and systematic in your approach.

Next, we will discuss some of the different approaches to gathering qualitative data. I’m going to start out with Table 18.1 that allows us to compare these different approaches, providing you with a general framework that will allow us to dive a bit deeper into each one. After you finish reading this chapter, it might be helpful to come back to this table as you continue with your proposal planning.

• As you are preparing to initiate data collection, make sure that you have a plan for how you will capture and document your influence on the process. Reflexive journaling can be a useful tool to accomplish this.
• Be sure to take some time to think about when you will end your data collection. Make this an intentional, justified decisions, rather than a haphazard one.

18.4 Interviews

• Identify key considerations when planning to use interviewing as a strategy for qualitative data gathering, including preparations, tools, and skills to support it
• Assess whether interviewing is an effective approach to gather data for your qualitative research proposal

A common form of qualitative data gathering involves conducting interviews . Interviews offer researchers a way to gather data directly from participants by asking them to share their thoughts on a range of questions related to a research topic. Interviews are generally conducted individually, although occasionally couples (or other dyads , which consist of a combination of two people) may be interviewed. Interviews are a particularly good strategy for capturing unique perspectives and exploring experiences in detail. People may have a host of responses to the request to be interviewed, ranging from flat out rejection to excitement at the opportunity to share their story. As you plan to conduct your interviews you will need to decide on your delivery method, how you will capture the data, you will construct your interview guide , and hone your research interviewing skills.

Delivery method

As technology has advanced, so too have our options for conducting interviews. While in-person interviews are generally still the mainstay of the qualitative researcher, phone or video-based interviews have expanded the reach of many studies, allowing us to gain access to participants across vast distances with relatively few resources. Interviewing in-person allows you to capture important non-verbal and contextual information that will likely be limited if you choose to conduct your interview via phone or video. For instance, if we conduct an interview by phone, we miss the opportunity to see how our participant interacts with their surroundings and we can’t see if their arms are crossed or their foot is fidgety. This may indicate that a certain topic might make them particularly uncomfortable. Alternatively, we may pose a question that makes a smile come across their face. If we are interviewing in person, we can ask a follow-up question noting the smile as a change in their expression, however, it’s hard to hear a smile over the phone! Additionally, there is something to be said for the ability to make a personal connection with your interviewee that may help them to engage more easily in the interview process. This personal connection can be challenging over the phone or mediated by technology. As an example, I often offer to my students that we can meet for “virtual” office hours using Zoom if it is hard for them to get to campus. However, they will often prefer to come to campus, despite the inconvenience because they would prefer to avoid the technology.

Regardless of which method you select, make sure you are well prepared. If you are meeting in person, know where you are going and allow plenty of time to get there. Remember, you are asking someone to give up their time to speak with you, and time is precious! When determining where you will meet for your interview, you may choose to meet at your office, their home, or a neutral setting in the community. If meeting somewhere in the community, do consider that you want to choose a place where you can reasonably assure the participant’s privacy and confidentiality as they are speaking with you. In most instances, I try to ask participants where they would feel most comfortable meeting. If you are speaking over phone or video, make sure to test your equipment ahead of time so that you are comfortable using it, and make sure that both you and the participant have access to a private space as you are speaking. If participants have minor children, plan ahead for whether the children should stay in the same space as the interview. If not, you may need to arrange child care or at least discuss child care with participants in advance. We also want to be mindful of how we are situated during an interview, ideally minimizing any power imbalances. This may be especially important when meeting in an office, making sure to sit across from our participants rather than behind a desk.

Capturing the data

You will also need to consider how you plan to physically capture your data. Some researchers record their interviews, using either a smartphone or a digital recording device. Recording the exchange allows you to have a verbatim record, which can allow the researcher to more fully participate in the interview, instead of worrying about capturing everything in writing. However, if there is a problem with recording – either the quality of the recording or some other equipment malfunction, the researcher can be up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Additionally, using a recording device may be perceived as a barrier between the researcher and the participant, as the participant may not feel comfortable being recorded. If you do plan to record, you should always ask permission first and announce clearly when you are starting and stopping the recording. If you will use recording equipment, be sure to test it carefully in advance, and bring backup batteries/phone charger with you.

The alternative to recording is taking field notes. Field notes consist of a written record of the interview, completed during the interview. You may elect to take field notes even if you are recording the interview, and most people do. This allows us to capture main ideas that stand out to us as researchers, nonverbal information that won’t show up in a recording, and some of our own reactions as the interview is being conducted. These field notes become invaluable if you have a problem with your recording. Even if you don’t, they provide helpful information as you interpret the data you do have in your transcript (the typed version of your recording).

If you are not recording and are relying completely on your notes, it is important to know that you are not going to capture every word and that you shouldn’t try. You want to plan in advance how you will structure your notes so that they make sense to you and are easy to follow. Try to capture all main ideas, important quotes that stand out, and whenever possible, use the participant’s own words. We need to recognize that when we paraphrase what the person is stating, we are introducing our ‘spin’ on it – their ideas go through our filter. We likely can’t avoid some of this, but we do want to minimize it as much as possible. Part of how we do this when we are relying on field notes is to take our interview notes and create expanded field notes , ideally within 24 hours of the interview. The longer you wait to expand your field notes, the less reliable they become, as our memory fades quickly! Much like they sound, expanded field notes take our jottings from the interview and expand them, providing more detail regarding the context or meaning of the statements that were captured. Expanded field notes may also contain questions, comments, or reactions that we, as the researcher, may have had to the data, which are usually kept in the margins, rather than in the body of the notes.

Below are a few resources to learn more about taking quality field notes. Along with the reading, practice, practice, practice!

Resources to learn more about capturing your Field Notes:

Deggs, D., & Hernandez, F. (2018). Enhancing the value of qualitative field notes through purposeful reflection .

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (2008). Qualitative guidelines project: Fieldnotes .

University of Southern California Libraries. (2019). Research guides: Organizing your social sciences research paper, writing field notes .

Wolfinger, N. (2002). On writing fieldnotes: Collection strategies and background expectancies.

Interview guide

The questions that you ask during your interview will be outlined in a tool called an interview guide . Along with your interview questions, your interview guide will also often contain a brief introduction reminding the participant of the topics that will be covered in the interview and any other instructions you want to provide them (note: much of this will simply serve as a reminder of what you already went over in your informed consent, but it is good practice to remind them right before you get started as well). In addition, the guide often ends with a debriefing statement that thanks the participant for their contribution, inquires whether they have any questions or concerns, and provides contact and resource information as appropriate. Below is a brief interview guide for a study that I was involved with, in which we were interviewing alumni regarding their perceptions of advanced educational needs in the field of social work and specifically their thoughts about practice doctorate of social work (DSW) degrees/programs.

Some interviews are prescribed or structured, with a rigid set of questions that are asked consistently each time, with little to no deviation. This is called a structured interview . More often however, we are dealing with semi-structured interviews , which provide a general framework for the questions that will be asked, but- contain more flexibility to pursue related topics that are brought up by participants. This often leads to researchers asking unplanned follow-up questions to help explore new ideas that are introduced by participants. Sometimes we also use unstructured interviews . These interview guides usually just contain a very open-ended talking prompt that we want participants to respond to. If we are using a highly structured interview guide, this suggests we are leaning toward deductive reasoning apporach—we have a pretty good idea based on existing evidence what we are looking for and what questions we want to ask to help us test our existing understanding. If we are using an unstructured guide, this suggests we are leaning toward an inductive reasoning approach—we start by trying to get people to elaborate extensively on open-ended questions to provide us with data that we will use to develop our understanding of this topic.

An important concept related to the contents of your interview guide is the idea of emergent design . With qualitative research we often treat our interview guide as dynamic, meaning that as new ideas are brought up, we may integrate these new questions into our interview guide for future interviews. This reflects emergent design, as our interview guide shifts to accommodate our emerging understanding of the research topic as we are gathering data. If you do plan to use an emergent design approach in your interviews, it is important to acknowledge this in your IRB application. When you submit your application, you will need to provide the IRB with your interview guide so that they have an idea of the questions you will be discussing with participants. While using an emergent approach to some of your questions is generally acceptable (and even expected), these questions still should be clearly relevant and related to what was presented in your IRB application. If you find that you begin diverging into new areas that are substantively different from this, you should consider submitting an IRB addendum that reflects the changes, and it may be a good idea to consult with your IRB to see if this is necessary.

Designing interview questions and probes

Making up questions, it sounds easy right? Little kids are running around asking questions all the time! However, what you quickly find when conducting research is that it takes skills, ingenuity and practice to craft good interview questions. If you are conducting an unstructured interview, you will generally have fewer questions and they will be quite broad. Depending on your topic, you might ask questions like:

• Tell me about a time…
• What was it like to…
• What should people understand about…
• What does it mean to…

If your interview is more structured, your questions will be a bit more focused, but with qualitative interviewing, we are still generally trying to get people to open up about their experiences with something, so you will want to design questions that will help them to do this. Probes can be important tools to help us accomplish this. You can think of probes as brief follow-ups that are attached to a particular question that will help you explore a topic a bit further. We usually develop probes either through existing literature or knowledge on a topic, or we might add probes to our interview guide as we begin data collection based on what previous participants tell us. As an example, I’m very interested in research on the concept of wellness. I know that the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has adopted a heuristic tool, The Wheel of Wellness , that outlines eight dimensions of wellness based on research by Swarbrick (2006). [1] When interviewing participants with the broad, unstructured question “What does wellness mean in your life?”, I might use these eight dimensions that are spokes of this wheel (i.e. emotional, spiritual, intellectual, physical, environmental, financial, occupational, and social) as probes to explore if/how these dimensions might be relevant in the lives of these participants. Probes suggest that we are anticipating that certain areas may be relevant to our question.

Here are a few general guidelines to consider when crafting your interview questions.

Make them approachable

We are usually relatively unfamiliar with our participants, at least on a personal level. This can make sitting down for an interview where we might be asking some deep questions a bit awkward and uncomfortable, at least at first. Because of this, we want to craft our questions in such a way that they are not off-putting, inadvertently accusatory or judgmental, or culturally insensitive. To accomplish this, we want to make sure we phrase questions in a neutral tone (e.g. “Tell me what that was like”, as opposed to, “That sounds horrible, what was that like”). To accomplish this, we can shift perspectives and think about what it would be like for us to be asked these questions (especially by a stranger). Pilot testing is especially important here. You should plan in time for this, both conducting pilot testing and incorporating feedback on questions. Pilot testing involves you taking your questions on a dry-run with a few people outside of your sample. You might consider testing these out with peers, colleagues, or friends to get their perspective. You might want to get feedback on:

• Did the question make sense to them?
• Did they know what information you were looking for and how to respond?
• What was it like to be asked that question?
• What suggestions do they have for rephrasing the question (if it wasn’t clear)?

Also, if we are conducting interviews on topics that may be particularly hard for people to talk about, we will likely want to start out with some questions that are easier to address prior to getting into the heavier topics.

Make them relatable

Unlike surveys, where researchers may not be able to explain the meaning of a question, with interviews, we are present to help clarify questions if needed. However, ideally, our questions are as clear as possible from the beginning. This means that we avoid jargon or technical terms, we anticipate areas that might be hard to explain and try to provide some examples or a metaphor that might help get the point across, and we do our homework to relay our questions in an appropriate cultural context. Like the discussion above, pilot testing our questions can be very helpful for ensuring the relatability of our questions, especially with community representatives. When pilot testing, do your best to test questions with a person/people from the same culture and educational level as the future participants. What sounds good in our heads might make little sense to our intended audience.

Make them individually distinct, but collectively comprehensive

Just like when we are developing survey questions, you don’t want to ask more than one question at the same time. This is confusing and hard to respond to for the participant, so make sure you are only asking about one idea in each question. However, when you are thinking about your list of questions, or about your interview guide collectively, ensure that you have comprehensively included all the ideas related to your topic. It’s extremely disheartening for a qualitative researcher that has concluded their interviews to realize there was a really important area that was not included in the guide. To avoid this, make sure to know the literature in your area well and talk to other people who study this area to get their perspective on what topics need to be included. Additional topics may come up when you pilot test your interview questions.

Interview skills

As social workers, we receive much training regarding interviewing and related interpersonal skills. Many of these skills certainly transfer to interviewing for research purposes, such as attending to both verbal and non-verbal communication, active listening, and clarification. However, it is also important to understand how a practice-related interview differs from a research interview.

The most important difference has to do with providing clarity around the purpose of the interview. For a practice-related interview, we are gathering information to help understand our client’s situation and better meet their needs. The interview is a means to provide quality services to our clients, and the emphasis is on the client and resources flowing to them. However, the research interview is ideologically much different. The interview is the means and the end. The purpose of the interview is to help answer the research question, but most often, there is little or limited direct benefit to the participant. The researcher is largely the beneficiary of the exchange, as the participant provides us with data. If the participant does become upset or is negatively affected by their participation, we may help facilitate their connection with appropriate support services to address this, such as counseling or crisis numbers (and indeed, this is our ethical obligation as a competent researcher). However, counseling and treatment is not our responsibility when conducting research interviews and we should be very careful not to confuse it as such. If we do act in this way, it creates the potential for a dual relationship with the interviewee (participant and client) and puts them in a vulnerable situation. Make sure you are clear what your role is in this encounter.

Along with recognizing the focus of your role, here is a checklist of general tips for qualitative interviewing skills:

• Approach the interview in a relaxed, but professional manner
• Be observant of verbal, nonverbal, and contextual information
• Exhibit a non-judgmental stance
• Explain information clearly and check for comprehension
• Demonstrate respect for your participants and be polite
• Utilize much more listening and much less talking
• Check for understanding when you are unclear, rather than making assumptions
• Know your materials and technology (e.g. informed consent, interview guide, recording equipment)
• Be concise, clear and organized as you are taking notes
• Have a structured approach for what you need to cover and redirect if the conversation is losing focus
• Be flexible enough so that the interview does not become impersonal and disengaging due to rigidity of your agenda
• Data collection through interviewing requires careful planning for both how we will conduct our interviews (e.g. in person, over the phone, online) and the nature of the interview questions themselves. An interview guide is an important document to develop in planning this.
• Qualitative interviewing uses similar skills to clinical interviewing, but is markedly different. This difference is due in large part to the very different purpose of these two activities.

Let’s get some practice!

Thinking about your topic, if you were to use interviewing as an approach for data collection, identify 4 interview questions that you would consider asking about your topic. Make sure these are open-ended questions so that your participants can elaborate on them.

• Interview question 1:
• Interview question 2:
• Interview question 3:
• Interview question 4:

Now pilot these. Ask a peer to read these questions and think about trying to answer them. You aren’t interested in their actual answers, you want feedback about how these questions were.

• Were they understandable and clear?
• Were they potentially culturally insensitive or offensive in any way?
• Are they something that it seems reasonable that someone could answer (especially with a researcher they likely don’t know previously)?
• Are they asked in a way that are likely to get people to elaborate (rather than just give a one-word answer)?
• What suggestions do they have to address all/any of these areas?

Based on your peer feedback, re-write your four questions incorporating their suggestions.

• Revised interview question 1:
• Revised interview question 2:
• Revised interview question 3:
• Revised interview question 4:

Resources for learning more about conducting Qualitative Interviews.

Baker, S. E., & Edwards, R. (2012) National Centre for Research Methods review paper: How many qualitative interviews is enough?

Clifford, S. Duke University Initiative on Survey Methodology at the Social Science Research Institute (n.d.). Tipsheet: Qualitative interviews.

Harvard University Sociology Dept. (n.d.). Strategies for qualitative interviews .

McGrath et al., (2018). Twelve tips for conducting qualitative research interviews .

Oltmann, S. M. (2016). Qualitative interviews: A methodological discussion of the interviewer and respondent contexts .

A few exemplars of studies employing Interview Data:

Ewart‐Boyle, S., Manktelow, R., & McColgan, M. (2015). Social work and the shadow father: Lessons for engaging fathers in Northern Ireland .

Flashman, S. H. (2015). Exploration into pre-clinicians’ views of the use of role-play games in group therapy with adolescents .

Irvin, K. (2016). Maintaining community roots: understanding gentrification through the eyes of long-standing African American residents in West Oakland .

18.5 Focus groups

• Identify key considerations when planning to use focus groups as a strategy for qualitative data gathering, including preparations, tools, and skills to support it
• Assess whether focus groups are an effective approach to gather data for your qualitative research proposal

Focus groups offer the opportunity to gather data from multiple participants at once. As you have likely learned in some of your practice coursework, groups can help facilitate an environment where people feel (more) comfortable sharing common experiences which can often allow them to delve deeper into topics than they may have individually. As people relate to what others in the group say, they often go on to share their responses to these new ideas – offering a collaborative synergy. Of course, similar to the research vs. clinical interview described above, the purpose of the focus group is much different than that of the therapeutic, psychoeducational, or support group. While other elements (e.g. information sharing, encouragement) may take place, the aim of the focus group must remain anchored in the collection of data and that should be made explicitly clear so participants have accurate expectations. As a cautionary note, the advantages discussed above should be the reason you choose to use a focus group to collect data. You should not choose to conduct a focus group solely out of convenience. Focus groups require a considerable amount of planning and skill to execute well, so it is not reasonable to think that just because a focus group allows you to collect data from multiple participants at once that it is an easier option for data gathering.

Group assembly

Assembling your focus group is an important part of your planning process. Generally speaking, focus groups shouldn’t exceed 10-12 participants. When thinking about size, there are a couple things to consider. On the lower end, you do want enough participants so that they don’t feel pressure to be constantly speaking. I f you only have a couple of focus group members, it loses most of the collective benefit of the focus group approach, as there are few people to generate and share ideas. On the higher end, you want to avoid having so many participants that not everyone gets to be heard and the group conversation becomes unwieldy and hard to manage.

As you are forming your group, you want to strike up a balance between heterogeneity (difference) and homogeneity (sameness) between your group members. If the group is too heterogeneous, then opinions may be so polarized that it is hard to have a productive conversation about the topic. People may not feel comfortable sharing their opinion or it may be difficult to gain a common understanding across the data. If the group is too homogeneous, then it may be hard to get much depth from the data. People may see the topic so similarly that we don’t gain much information about how differing perspectives think about the issue. You generally want your group composition to be different enough to be interesting and produce good conversation, but similar enough that members can relate to each other and have a cohesive conversation. Along these lines, you also need to consider whether or not your participants know each other. Do they have existing relationships? If they do know each other, we need to anticipate that there may be existing group dynamics. This may influence how people engage in discussion with us. On one hand, they may find it easy to share more freely. However, these dynamics may inhibit them from speaking their mind, as they might be concerned about repercussions for sharing within their social network.

As a final note on group composition, sometimes we make decisions on group members’ characteristics based on our topic. For instance, if we are asking questions about help-seeking and common experiences after (heterosexual) sexual assault, it may be challenging to host a mixed-gender group, where participants may feel triggered or guarded having members of the opposite gender present and therefore potentially less open to sharing. It is important to consider the population you are working with and the types of questions you are asking, as this can help you to be sensitive to their perceptions and facilitate the creation of a safe space. Other issues, such as race, age, levels of education, may require consideration as you think about your group composition.

Related to feelings of safety, the setting you select for your focus group is an important decision. Much like with interviews, we want participants to feel as comfortable and at-ease as possible, however, it is perhaps less common to use someone’s home for the purpose of a focus group because we are often bringing together people who may not know one another. As such, try to select a place that feels neutral (e.g. some people may not feel comfortable in a church or a courthouse), accessible, convenient, and that offers privacy for participants. If you are working with a particular group or community, there may be a space that is especially relevant or familiar for people that may work well for this purpose. A c ommunity gatekeeper or other knowledgeable community member can be an excellent resource in helping to identify where a good spa ce might be. Seating in a circle will help participants to share more easily. Focus group organizers often provide refreshments as an incentive and to make participants feel more comfortable. If you decide to provide refreshments, be sensitive to issues like common dietary restrictions and cultural preferences.

Roles of the researcher(s)

Ideally, you are conducting your focus group with a co-researcher. This is important because it allows you to divide up the tasks and makes the process more manageable. Most often, one of you will take on the main facilitator role, with responsibilities for providing information and instructions, introducing topics, asking follow-up questions and generally structuring the encounter. The other person takes on a note-taking/processing role. While not necessarily silent, they likely say very little during the focus group. Instead, they are focused on capturing the context of the encounter. This may include taking notes about what is said, how people respond or react, other details about the space and the overall exchange as a whole. They will also often be especially attentive to group dynamics and capturing these whenever possible. Along with this, if they see that certain group members are dominating or being left out of the conversation, they may help the facilitator to address or shift these dynamics so that the sharing is more equitable. Finally, if something arises where a participant becomes upset or there is an emergency where they need to leave the room, having a co-researcher allows one of you to remain with the group, while the other can attend to the person in distress. For consistency sake, you may want to maintain roles throughout data collection. If you do decide to alternate roles as you conduct multiple focus groups, it is important that you both conduct the respective roles as similarly as possible. Remember, research is about the systematic collection of data, so you want your data collection to follow a consistent process. Below is a chart that offers some tips for each of these roles.

Focus group guide and preparations

As in your preparation for an interview, you will want to spend considerable time developing your focus group guide and the questions it contains. Be sure the language you use in your questions is appropriate for the educational level of your participants; you will need to use vocabulary that is clear and not “jargon”. At the same time, you also want to avoid talking down to your participants. You will probably want to start with some easier, non-threatening questions to help break the ice for the group and help get folks comfortable talking and sharing their input. Be prepared to ask questions in a different way or follow up with probes to help prod the conversation along if a question falls flat or fails to elicit a dialogue. In addition, you will want to plan introductions, both to the study and to one another. Usually we stick to first names, and occasionally during introductions, participants will share how they are connected to the topic of the research. Just like in many practice-related groups, facilitators usually take time to review group norms and expectations before getting started with questions. Some common norms to discuss are:

• Not talking over other participants
• Being respectful of other participants’ contributions
• All people are expected to participate in the conversation
• Not pressuring people to respond to a question if they are uncomfortable
• Using respectful language and avoiding derogatory, discriminatory or accusatory language or tone
• Not using electronic devices and silencing cell-phones during the focus group
• Allowing others ample time to contribute to the conversation and not dominating the discussion

Another expectation to address that is especially important to include is confidentiality . It is important to make clear to participants that what is shared in the group should be kept confidential and not discussed outside the context of the focus group. Additionally, it is important to let participants know that while the researchers ask all participants to protect the confidentiality of what is shared, they can’t guarantee that will be honored. Below figure 18.4 offers an example of a focus group guide template to help you think about how to structure this type of document.

Capturing your data

Finally, as with interviews, you will need to plan how you will capture the data from your focus group(s). Again, you may choose to record the focus groups, take fie ld notes, or use a combination of both. There are some special considerations that apply to these choices when using a focus group, however. First, if recording, anticipate that it may be especially challenging when transcribing the recording to determine who said what. In addition, the quality of the recording can become a challenge. Despite requests for individuals to speak one at a time, inevitably there will be spots where there are multi ple people talking at once, especially with an animated group. Additionally, do test the recording devices, ideally in the space you will be using them. You want to make sure that it can pick up everyone’s voice, even if they are soft-spoken and seated a distance from the device. If you are relying solely on a recordi ng and there is a problem with it, it can be difficult to surmount the barriers this can pose . If this occurs with an interview, while not ideal, you can re-interview a person to replace the information, but re-creating a focus group can be a logistical night mare. When taking field notes , it is a good practice to make a quick seating chart at the beginning so you can make quick references for yourself of who is saying what (see Figure 18.5). Regardl ess of what system you use to stay organize d in taking these notes, make sure to have one that works for you. The conversations will likely happen more rapidly and will include multiple voices, so you will want to be prepared in advance.

• Focus groups offer a valuable tool for qualitative data collection when the topic we are exploring might best be understood through a group discussion that helps participants verbally process and consider their experiences, thoughts, and opinions with others.
• Details like focus group composition, roles of co-facilitators, and anticipation of group norms or guidelines require our attention as we prepare to host a focus group.

Reflexive journal prompt

How do you feel about conducting a focus group?

• What about it is appealing
• What about it seems challenging
• Would you prefer to be the main facilitator or the observer (and why)?
• What might make using a focus group a good choice for your specific research question?
• What might make using a focus group a poor choice for your specific research question?

Resources to learn more about conducting Focus Groups.

Leung, F. H., & Savithiri, R. (2009). Spotlight on focus groups .

Duke, ModU (2016, October 19). Powerful concepts in social science: Preparing for focus groups, qualitative research methods

Onwuegbuzie et al. (2009). A qualitative framework for collecting and analyzing data in focus group research .

Nyumba et al. (2018). The use of focus group discussion methodology: Insights from two decades of application in conservation .

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (2008). Qualitative Guidelines Project: Focus groups.

A few exemplars of studies employing Focus Groups:

Foote, W. L. (2015). Social work field educators’ views on student specific learning needs .

Hoover, S. M., & Morrow, S. L. (2016). A qualitative study of feminist multicultural trainees’ social justice development .

Kortes-Miller, K., Wilson, K., & Stinchcombe, A. (2019). Care and LGBT aging in Canada: A focus group study on the educational gaps among care workers .

18.6 Observations

• Identify key considerations when planning to use observations as a strategy for qualitative data gathering, including preparations, tools, and skills to support it
• Assess whether observations are an effective approach to gather data for your qualitative research proposal

Observational data can also be very important to the qualitative researcher. As discussed in Chapter 17 , observations can provide important information about context, rea ctions, behaviors, exchanges, and expressions. The focus of observations may be indi viduals, i nteractions between people or within groups, environments or settings, or events like artistic expressions (e.g. plays, poetry readings, art shows), public forums (e.g. town hall meetings, community festivals), private forums (e.g. board meetings, family reunions), and finally, your reactions or responses as the researcher to any and all of these. We will be discussing a variety of different types of qualitative designs in Chapter 22 , including ethnography. Observational data is especially important for ethnographic research designs. 

Researcher engagement

Observational data gathering is a more indirect form of data collection when compared with previous methods we have discussed. With both interviews and focus groups, you are gathering data directly from participants. When making observations, we are relying on our interpretation of what is going on. Even though we are often not directly interacting with people, we generally have an ethical responsibility to disclose that we are gathering data by making observations and gain consent to do so. That being said, there are some instances where we are making observations in public spaces, and in these instances disclosure may not be necessary because we are not gathering any identifiable information about specific people. These instances are rare, but if you are in doubt, consult with your IRB.

Even though I just suggested that making observations is often a more indirect form of data gathering, it does exist on a continuum. If utilizing observational data, you will need to consider where you fall on this continuum. Some research designs situate the researcher as an active participant in the community or group that they are studying, while other designs have the researcher as an independent and detached onlooker. In either case, you need to consider how your presence, either involved or detached, may influence the data you are gathering. This requires us to think of this on a more individual or micro level (how do the individuals we are directly observing perceive us) and a more mezzo or even macro level (how does the community or group of people we are studying collectively feel about our presence and our research)? Are people changing their behavior because of your presence? Are people monitoring or censoring what they say? We can’t always know the answers to these questions, but we can try to reduce these concerns by making repeated observations over time, rather than using a one-time, in-and-out data gathering mission. This means actually spending time within the community that is the focus of your observation. Taking the time to make repeated observations will allow you to develop a reasonable framework of understanding, which in turn will empower you to better interpret what you see and help you determine whether your observations and interpretation are consistent.

Observational skills

When gathering observational data, you are often attending to or taking in many different dimensions. You are potentially observing:

• the context of the environment
• the content of what is being said
• behaviors of people
• affective or emotional aspects of interactions
• sequences of events
• your own reactions to what is being observed

To capture this information, you will need to be keenly aware, focused, and organized. Additionally, you need to make sure you are capturing clear descriptions of what is going on. Remember, notes that seem completely logical and easy to understand at the time you are taking them can become vague and confusing with the passage of time and as you gather more and more data. Part of the clarity of your description often involves taking a non-judgmental approach to documenting your observations. While this may seem easy, judgments or biases frequently slip into our thinking and writing (unbeknownst to us). Along with a non-judgmental stance, researchers making observations also attempt to be as unobtrusive as possible. This means being conscious of your behaviors, your dress and overall appearance. If you show up wearing a suit and tie, and carrying a clipboard while everyone else is wearing jeans and t-shirts, you are likely to stick out like a sore thumb. This is also likely to influence how participants respond and interact with you. Know the environment that you are making your observations in, with a goal of blending in as much as possible.

Observational data is most often captured using field notes. Using recordings for observational data is infrequently used in social work research. This is especially true because of the potential for violations of privacy and threats to confidentiality that recordings (video or audio) may pose to participants. Mirroring our discussion above, when taking field notes, make sure to be organized and have a plan for how you will structure your notes so they are easy to interpret and make sense to you. Creswell (2013) [2] suggests capturing ‘descriptive’ and ‘reflective’ aspects in your observational field notes. Table 18.3 offers some more detailed description of what to include as you capture your data and corresponding examples.

For the purposes of qualitative research, our observations are generally unstructured or more naturalistic . However, you may also see mention of more systematic or structured observations. This is more common for quantitative data collection, where we may be attempting to capture or count the frequency with which a specific behavior or event occurs.

• Observational data collection can be an effective tool for gathering information about settings, interactions, and general human behavior. However, since this is gathered strictly through the researchers own direct observation, it is not a source of data on people’s thoughts, perceptions, values, opinions, beliefs or interpretations.
• There are a range of aspects that we may want to take note of while we are observing (e.g. the setting, interactions, descriptions of people, etc.).
• While we are making our observations, we generally want to do so as inconspicuously and non-judgmentally as possible.

Resources for learning more about conducting Qualitative Observations.

Kawulich, B.B. (2005, May) Participant observation as a data collection method .

Kawulich, B.B. (2012). Collecting data through observation . In C. Wagner, B. Kawulich, & M. Garner (Eds.), Doing social research: A global context ( 150-160). New York: McGraw Hill.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (2008). Qualitative Guidelines Project: Observations .

Sliter, M. (2014, June 30). Observational methods: Research methods.

A few exemplars of studies employing qualitative observations:

Avby et al. (2017). Knowledge use and learning in everyday social work practice: A study in child investigation work .

Wilkins et al. (2018). A golden thread? The relationship between supervision, practice, and family engagement in child and family social work .

Wood et al. (2017). The “gray zone” of police work during mental health encounters: Findings from an observational study in Chicago .

18.7 Documents and other artifacts

• Identify key considerations when planning to analyze documents and other artifacts as a strategy for qualitative data gathering, including preparations, tools, and skills to support it
• Assess whether analyzing documents and other artifacts is an effective approach to gather data for your qualitative research proposal

Qualitative researchers may also elect to utilize existing documents (e.g. reports, newspapers, blogs, minutes) or other artifacts (e.g. photos, videos, performances, works of art) as sources of data. Artifact analysis can provide important information on a specific topic, for instance, how same-sex couples are portrayed in the media. They also may provide contextual information regarding the values and popular sentiments of a given time and/or place. When choosing to utilize documents and other artifacts as a source of data for your project, remember that you are approaching these as a researcher, not just as a consumer of media. You need to thoughtfully plan what artifacts you will include, with a clear justification for their selection that is solidly linked to your research question, as well as a plan for systematically approaching these artifacts to identify and obtain relevant information from them.

Obtaining your artifacts

As you begin considering what artifacts you will be using for your research study, there are two points to consider: what will help you to answer your research question and what can you gain access to. In addressing the first of these considerations, you may already have a good idea about what artifacts are needed because you have done a substantial amount of preliminary work and you know this area well. However, if you are unsure, or you need to supplement your existing knowledge, some general sources can include: librarians, historians, community experts, topical experts, organizations or agencies that address the issue or serve the population you will be studying, and other researchers who study this area. In considering access, if the artifacts are public the answer may be a straightforward yes, but if the documents are privately held, you may need to be granted permission – and remember, this is permission to use them for research purposes, not just to view them. When obtaining permission, get something in writing, so that you have this handy to submit with your IRB application. While the types of artifacts you might include are almost endless (given they are relevant to your research question), Table 18.4 offers a list of some ideas for different sources you might consider:

Artifact analysis skills

Consistent with other areas of research, but perhaps especially salient to the use of artifacts, you will require organizational skills. Depending on what sources you choose to include, you may literally have volumes of data. Furthermore, you might not just be dealing with a large amount of data, but also a variety of types of data. Regardless of whether you are using physical or virtual data, you need to have a way to label and catalog (or file) each artifact so that you can easily track it down. As you collect specific information from each piece, make sure it is tagged with the appropriate label so that you can track it back down, as you very well may need to reference it later. This is also very important for honest and transparency in your work as a qualitative researcher – documenting a way to trace your findings back to the raw data .

In addition to staying organized, you also need to think specifically about what you are looking for in the artifacts. This might seem silly, but depending on the amount of data you are dealing with and how broad your research topic is, it might be hard to ‘separate the wheat from the chaff’ and figure out what is important or relevant information. Sometimes this is more clearly defined and we have a prescribed list of things we are looking for. This prescribed list may come from existing literature on the topic. This prescribed list may be based on peer-reviewed literature that is more conceptual, meaning that it focuses on defining concepts, putting together propositions, formulating early stage theories, and laying out professional wisdom, rather than reporting research findings. Drawing on this literature, we can then examine our data to see if there is evidence of these ideas and what this evidence tells us about these concepts. If this is the case, make sure you document this list somewhere, and on this list define each item and provide a code that you can attach when you see it in each document. This document then becomes your codebook .

However, if you aren’t clear ahead of time what this list might be, you may take an emergent approach, meaning that you have some general ideas of what you are seeking. In this event, you will actively create a codebook as you go, like the one described above, as you encounter these ideas in your artifacts. This helps you to gain a better understanding of what items should be included in your list, rather than coming in with preconceived notions about what they should be. There will be more about tracking this in our next chapter on qualitative analysis. Whether you have a prescribed list or use a more emergent design to develop your codebook, you will likely make modifications or corrections to it along the way as your knowledge evolves. When you make these changes, it is very important to have a way to document what changes you made, when, and why. Again, this helps to keep you honest, organized, and transparent. Just as another reminder, if you are using predetermined codes that you are looking for, this is reflective of a more deductive approach, whereas seeking emergent codes is more inductive .

Finally, when using artifacts, you may also need to bring in some creative, out-of-the-box thinking. You may be bringing together many different pieces of data that look and sound nothing alike, yet you are seeking information from them that will allow you tell a cohesive story. You may need to be fluid or flexible in how you are looking at things, and potentially challenge your preconceived notions.

As alluded to above, you may have physical artifacts that you are dealing with, digital artifacts or representations of these artifacts (e.g. videos, photos, recordings), or even field notes about artifacts (for instance, if you take notes of a dramatic performance that can’t be recorded). A large part of what may drive your decisions about how to capture your data may be related to your level of access to those artifacts: can you look at it? Can you touch it, can you take it home with you, can you take a picture of it? Depending on what artifacts we are talking about, some of these may be important questions. Regardless of the answers to these questions, you will need to have a clearly articulated and well-documented plan for how you are obtaining the data and how you will reference it in the future. Table 18.4 provides a list of data gathering activities you might consider, both for documents and for other audiovisual materials.

What types of artifacts might you have access to that might help to answer your research question(s)?

• These could be artifacts available at your field placement, publically available media, through school, or through public institutions
• These can be documents or they can be audiovisual materials
• Think outside the box, how can you gather direct or indirect indications of the thing you are studying

Generate a list of at least 3

Again, drawing on Creswell’s (2013) suggestion of capturing ‘descriptive’ and ‘reflective’ aspects in your field notes, Table 18.5 offers some more detailed description of what to include as your capture your data and corresponding examples when focusing on an artifact.

Resources to learn more about qualitative research with artifacts.

Bowen, G. A. (2009). Document analysis as a qualitative research method .

Rowsell, J. (2011). Carrying my family with me: Artifacts as emic perspectives .

Hammond, J., & McDermott, I. (n.d.). Policy document analysis .

Wang et al. (2017). Arts-based methods in socially engaged research practice: A classification framework .

A few exemplars of studies utilizing documents and other artifacts.

Casey, R. C. (2018). Hard time: A content analysis of incarcerated women’s personal accounts .

Green, K. R. (2018). Exploring the implications of shifting HIV prevention practice Ideologies on the Work of Community-Based Organizations: A Resource dependence perspective . 

Sousa, P., & Almeida, J. L. (2016). Culturally sensitive social work: promoting cultural competence .

Secondary data analysis

I wanted to briefly provide some special attention to secondary data analysis at the end of this chapter. In the past two chapters we have focused our sights most often on what we would call raw data sources . However, you can of course conduct qualitative research with secondary data , which is data that was collected previously for another research project or other purpose; data is not originating from your research process. If you are fortunate enough to have access and permission to use qualitative data that had already been collected, you can pose a new research question that may be answered by analyzing this data. This saves you the time and energy from having to collect the data yourself!

You might procure this data because you know the researcher that collected the original data. For instance, as a student, perhaps there is a faculty member that allows you access to data they had previously collected for another project. Alternatively, maybe you locate a source of qualitative data that is publicly available. Examples of this might include interviews previously conducted with Holocaust survivors. Finally, you might register and join a research data repository . These are sites where contributing researchers can house data that other researchers can view and request permission to use. Syracuse University hosts a repository that is explicitly dedicated to qualitative data . While there are more of these emerging, it may be a challenge to find the specific data you are looking for in a repository. You should also anticipate that data from repositories will have all identifiable information removed. Sharing data you have collected with a repository is a good way to extend the potential usefulness and impact of data, but it also should be anticipated before you collect your data so that you can build it into any informed consent so participants are made aware of the possibility.

Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS)

Some qualitative researchers use software packages known as Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS) in their work. These are tools that can aid researchers in managing, organizing and manipulating/analyzing their data. Some of the more common tools include NVivo, Atlas.ti, and MAXQDA, which have licensing fees attached to them (although many have discounted student rates). However, there are also some free options available if you do some hunting. Taguette Project is the only free and open source CAQDAS project that is currently receiving updates, as previous projects like RQDA which built from the R library are not in active development. Taguette is a young project, and unlike the free alternatives for quantitative data analysis, it lacks the sophisticated analytical tools of commercial CAQDAS programs.

It is unlikely that you will be using a CAQDAS for a student project, mostly because of the additional time investment it will take to become familiar with the software and associated costs (if applicable). In fact the best way to avoid spending money on qualitative data analysis software is to do your analysis by hand or using word processing or spreadsheet software. If you continue on with other qualitative research projects, it may be worth some additional study to learn more about CAQDAS tools. If you do choose to use one of these products, it won’t magically do the analysis for you. You need to be clear about what you are using the software for and how it supports your analysis plan, which will be the focus of our next chapter.

Resources to learn more about CAQDAS.

Maher et al. (2018). Ensuring rigor in qualitative data analysis: A design research approach to coding combining NVivo with traditional material methods .

Woods et al. (2016). Advancing qualitative research using qualitative data analysis software (QDAS)? Reviewing potential versus practice in published studies using ATLAS. ti and NVivo, 1994–2013 .

Zamawe, F. C. (2015). The implication of using NVivo software in qualitative data analysis: Evidence-based reflections .

As you continue to plan your research proposal, make sure to give practical thought to how you will go about collecting your qualitative data. Hopefully this chapter helped you to consider which methods are appropriate and what skills might be required to apply that particular method well. Revisit the table in section 18.3 that summarizes each of these approaches and some of the strengths and challenges associated with each of them. Collecting qualitative data can be a labor-intensive process, to be sure. However, I personally find it very rewarding. In its very forms, we are bearing witness to people’s stories and experiences.

• Artifact analysis can be particularly useful for qualitative research as a means of studying existing data; meaning we aren’t having to collect the data ourselves, but we do have to gather it. As a limitation, we don’t have any control over how the data was created, since we weren’t involved in it.
• There are many sources of existing data that we can consider for artifact analysis. Think of all the things around us that can help to tell some story! Artifact analysis may be especially appealing as a potential time saver for student researchers if you can gain permission to use existing artifacts or use artifacts that are publicly available.
• Artifact analysis still requires a systematic and premeditated approach to how you will go about extract information from your artifacts.

Here are a few questions to get you thinking about the role that you play as you gather qualitative data.

• What are your initial thoughts about qualitative data collection?
• Why might that be?
• What excites you about this process?
• What worries you about this process?
• What aspects of yourself will strengthen or enhance this process?
• What aspects of yourself may hinder or challenge this process?

Decision Point: How will you go about qualitative data collection?

• Justify your choice(s) here in relation to your research question and availability of resources at your disposal
• who will be collecting data
• what will be involved
• how will it be safely stored and organized
• how are you protecting human participants
• if you have a team, how is communication being established so everyone is “on the same page”
• how will you know you are done
• What additional information do you need to know to use this approach?

Media Attributions

• checklist © mohamed_hassan is licensed under a CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) license
• start and finish line © Andrew Hurley is licensed under a CC BY-SA (Attribution ShareAlike) license
• field notes © Tom Carmony is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives) license
• group talking © Enoz is licensed under a CC BY-NC (Attribution NonCommercial) license
• children watching penguins © Amelia Beamish is licensed under a CC BY-NC (Attribution NonCommercial) license
• Swarbrick, M. (2006). A wellness approach. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 29 (4), 311. ↵
• Creswell, J. W. (2013). Chapter 7. Data collection. In J. W. Creswell, Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches (3rd ed.), Los Angeles: Sage ↵
• Harris, M. and Fallot, R. (2001). Using trauma theory to design service systems. New Directions for Mental Health Service s. Jossey Bass; Farragher, B. and Yanosy, S. (2005). Creating a trauma-sensitive culture in residential treatment. Therapeutic Communities, 26 (1), 93-109. ↵

A form of data gathering where researchers ask individual participants to respond to a series of (mostly open-ended) questions.

A form of data gathering where researchers ask a group of participants to respond to a series of (mostly open-ended) questions.

Observation is a tool for data gathering where researchers rely on their own senses (e.g. sight, sound) to gather information on a topic.

The identity of the person providing data cannot be connected to the data provided at any time in the research process, by anyone.

For research purposes, confidentiality means that only members of the research team have access potentially identifiable information that could be associated with participant data. According to confidentiality, it is the research team's responsibility to restrict access to this information by other parties, including the public.

Fake names assigned in research to protect the identity of participants.

Numbers or a series of numbers, symbols and letters assigned in research to both organize data as it is collected, as well as protecting the identity of participants.

A process through which the researcher explains the research process, procedures, risks and benefits to a potential participant, usually through a written document, which the participant than signs, as evidence of their agreement to participate.

an administrative body established to protect the rights and welfare of human research subjects recruited to participate in research activities conducted under the auspices of the institution with which it is affiliated

For the purposes of research, authenticity means that we do not misrepresent ourselves, our interests or our research; we are genuine in our interactions with participants and other colleagues.

An approach to research that more intentionally attempts to involve community members throughout the research process compared to more traditional research methods. In addition, participatory approaches often seek some concrete, tangible change for the benefit of the community (often defined by the community).

A research journal that helps the researcher to reflect on and consider their thoughts and reactions to the research process and how it may be shaping the study

The point where gathering more data doesn't offer any new ideas or perspectives on the issue you are studying.  Reaching saturation is an indication that we can stop qualitative data collection.

A combination of two people or objects

An interview guide is a document that outlines the flow of information during your interview, including a greeting and introduction to orient your participant to the topic, your questions and any probes, and any debriefing statement you might include. If you are part of a research team, your interview guide may also include instructions for the interviewer if certain things are brought up in the interview or as general guidance.

Context is the circumstances surrounding an artifact, event, or experience.

Notes that are taken by the researcher while we are in the field, gathering data.

Expanded field notes represents the field notes that we have taken during data collection after we have had time to sit down and add details to them that we were not able to capture immediately at the point of collection.

A statement at the end of data collection (e.g. at the end of a survey or interview) that generally thanks participants and reminds them what the research was about, what it's purpose is, resources available to them if they need them, and contact information for the researcher if they have questions or concerns.

Interview that uses a very prescribed or structured approach, with a rigid set of questions that are asked very consistently each time, with little to no deviation

An interview that has a general framework for the questions that will be asked, but there is more flexibility to pursue related topics that are brought up by participants than is found in a structured interview approach.

Interviews that contain very open-ended talking prompt that we want participants to respond to, with much flexibility to follow the conversation where it leads.

starts by reading existing theories, then testing hypotheses and revising or confirming the theory

when a researcher starts with a set of observations and then moves from particular experiences to a more general set of propositions about those experiences

Emergent design is the idea that some decision in our research design will be dynamic and change as our understanding of the research question evolves as we go through the research process. This is (often) evident in qualitative research, but rare in quantitative research.

Probes a brief prompts or follow up questions that are used in qualitative interviewing to help draw out additional information on a particular question or idea.

Testing out your research materials in advance on people who are not included as participants in your study.

Someone who has the formal or informal authority to grant permission or access to a particular community.

A document that will outline the instructions for conducting your focus group, including the questions you will ask participants. It often concludes with a debriefing statement for the group, as well.

Ethnography is a qualitative research design that is used when we are attempting to learn about a culture by observing people in their natural environment.

Making qualitative observations that attempt to capture the subjects of the observation as unobtrusively as possible and with limited structure to the observation.

The analysis of documents (or other existing artifacts) as a source of data.

unprocessed data that researchers can analyze using quantitative and qualitative methods (e.g., responses to a survey or interview transcripts)

A code is a label that we place on segment of data that seems to represent the main idea of that segment.

A document that we use to keep track of and define the codes that we have identified (or are using) in our qualitative data analysis.

study publicly available information or data that has been collected by another person

in a literature review, a source that describes primary data collected and analyzed by the author, rather than only reviewing what other researchers have found

Data someone else has collected that you have permission to use in your research.

These are sites where contributing researchers can house data that other researchers can view and request permission to use

These are software tools that can aid qualitative researchers in managing, organizing and manipulating/analyzing their data.

Graduate research methods in social work Copyright © 2021 by Matthew DeCarlo, Cory Cummings, Kate Agnelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How To Write Chapter One Of Research Projects

The outline of a well written Chapter One is supposed to include all or some of the following:

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

1.2 Statement of the Problem

1.3 Objectives or Purpose of the Study

1.4 Research Questions and /or Hypotheses

1.5 Significance of the Study

1.6 Scope and Limitation of the Study

1.7 Basic Assumptions

1.8 Operational Definition of Terms

As can be seen above, the project outline constitutes a huge part of the project proposal and the student researcher just needs to perfect the approved research proposal with the view of using it as the Chapter One. The fact remains that all the other parts that as had been written for the project proposal would still stand, with the inclusion of Operational Definition of Terms. At this stage, it is important to understand and know what is contained under each of the subheadings in the first chapter and these are described thoroughly in this article: –

1.1     Background to the Study

Just as the name means, this section outlines the history of the subject matter under investigation; the evolution of the research problem; how the researcher became fascinated with the problem. He goes on to describe the specific situation surrounding the research problem, using facts from the literature to support various arguments. In this section also, the student researcher tries to ascertain the suitability and feasibility of the study, concluding from the sufficient evidences drawn from the previous literature.

In a nutshell, this is where the student researcher initiates the subject of his investigation using all obtainable evidences and figures to establish its groundwork. Note that even if there is no standard number of pages that this should take, the lengthier and well focused the Background to the Study, the better for a good and solid groundwork for that research being conducted.

1.2     Statement of the Problem

The Problem Statement, as it is otherwise described, is the reasonable conclusion of the problems/issues raised in the Background to the Study. The idea is that while the Background to the Study offers a wider or global perspective/standpoint to the subject matter of the research, the Problem Statement makes assumptions from there and concludes on the specifics as they relate to the specific investigation being conducted.

That is the reason Problem Statement is expected to flow, rather logically, from the Background to the Study; and it is not a good Problem Statement, one that deviates from this; given that they are not expected to be two unconnected entities, as it were. It is nevertheless different from Background to the Study in that it must be stated reasonably briefly and very clearly. All the descriptive components of the Background to the Study would have assisted to allow one go straight for the specifics under the Problem Statement.

This is why experienced project supervisors would mainatain that the Problem Statement should be in the range of one to three paragraphs only. The idea is that the shorter, the clearer; and the clearer the better for the whole process of investigation. In a nutshell, one cannot overstate the need to state the research problem very clearly and accurately, since the entire course of the investigation depends on it.

Therefore, there is no doubt that a satisfactory statement of the research problem is the most important component of a research process. The plain reason for this claim is that the whole process of investigation centers on it and it is typically related to some of the following issues:

• A missing link
• One-sidedness
• An unanswered question.
• An unsatisfactory state of arrangements

Consequently, the Problem Statement offers direction to the rest of the project; signifying and highlighting the major variables of concern to the researcher as well as the exact relationship that exist between them.

1.3     Objectives {Purpose} of the Study

Simply similar to every other component in a research project, the Objectives of the Study is strongly connected to the Research Problem. The former is derived directly from the latter. The Objectives of the Study, which is sometimes described as Purpose, stand for the aims of carrying out the investigation and could be categorized into general and specific.

The general objective describes the overall aim of a research project whereas the specific objective is concerned with the comprehensive list of intentions concerning what the research stands to accomplish at the end of the project. Typically, the specific objectives are stated in the form of declarative statements for example, the statement should start with “to examine”, “to analyze”, “to determine”, “to assess”, “to find out” etc. The Research Questions usually take the form of interrogative statement, the Objectives present the same thing, but in the statement form.

1.4. Research Questions and/or Hypotheses

Typically, these come immediately after the Research objectives because of their strong relationship. They do not just seek to convert the declarative statement of the objectives into interrogative form, but further break down the major problems compressed in the research objectives. As its name implies, Research Questions is presented just like interrogations seeking to create specific relations among the main variables of investigation.

As well, the Research Questions usually serve as the foundation from where the questionnaire items/questions would ultimately be derived. The difference between the two is that the items in the questionnaire offer a further breakdown of each of the research questions to a greater specification. This is to the level that a single research question can turn out the range of between three to five questionnaire items/questions. But the Research Questions are wide in nature, the questionnaire items are typically directed towards the details thereby getting down to more specifics.

In the case of Hypotheses, they are not the same as Research Questions even though they are sometimes used to substitute each other. In other words, it is not unusual to find projects which have both as well as others which have only one of them. Since they are not the same, they are not expected to replace each other. If they stand to do that, then one should be retained and the other disposed of. By this piece of information, one can easily know that it is not necessary that a project should have both; particularly at the elementary level, where in most of the times, the research questions would be okay.

By meaning, a Research Hypothesis is a clear, specific statement whose validity and workability can be tested by means of scientific method. Being a declarative statement of prediction, it tries to determine the relationship or difference that exists between one variable and the other; and to what degree. It is a form of clever guess or supposition regularly derived from the results of previous studies and/or theories originating from the literature. Hypotheses are formulated on the core of any of the areas and objectives listed below:

• To merely describe a occurrence or a statement of fact
• To compare two or more concepts, individuals and places
• To reveal the relationship between variable
• To reveal a cause/ effect situation between variables.

Usually, there are two kinds of hypotheses; basically referring to the way they are stated. They are the Null and the Alternative. While the former is frequently stated in the negative form of “No Significant Relationship” or “No Significant Difference” etc., the latter takes the positive form of statement; such as “There is a Significant Relationship”, “There is a Significant Difference” etc.

The Research Hypotheses specify the fundamental issues relating to the data to be gathered in the process of conducting the study. They serve as a theoretical conceptualization of what the researcher anticipated with respect to his research outcomes. These help him to test and verify his concepts on the basis of which he makes very tangible and reliable conclusions and generalizations. They also assist in sharpening researcher’s focus on the research problem with a view to determining the direction where to find the solution.

Therefore, some of the qualities of a good hypothesis must include that:

• It should be sensible {i.e. clever guesses}.
• It should be in line with known facts or theories.
• It should be constructed in such a manner that it is testable and found to be probably true or false.
• It should be in very simple, unambiguous terms.
• It should be directly connected to the problem of research.
• It should involve very few variables at a time.
• It should be quantifiable {i.e. operationally formulated}.

1.5.    Significance of the Study

It is anticipated that every research project must have something new to contribute to knowledge in that research field, no matter how small. In point of fact, no research should take place if it will not contribute anything to knowledge; as this represents the major feature of all research endeavors.

Consequently, this section is expected to clarify the possible benefits of the research and to whom such anticipated benefits would be meant. All these should be clearly stated. In any way, there is no standard detail as to the number of benefits that a research project should have or its length. It can be arranged sequentially or itemized or paraphrased depending on the person’s method of writing.

1.6.    Scope and Limitation of the Study

The scope of the study basically refers to the level of coverage of the research subject being investigated and the good statement of the problem will act as a helpful guide to doing this. That means, if the problem had been properly stated at the beginning, it helps, certainly, in defining the scope of the research. That is why the scope of the study is partially dependent on the title of the research project. If well formulated, the phrase of the title only does define the scope of the study and possibly, needs a little rider to make it clearer. The limitation of the study represents the things and issues that constituted challenges in the process of investigations.

Consequently, if the scope was concerned with the level of the research’s coverage, then, limitation implies building a fence around the subject of research. This is with a view to creating a foundation for the non-inclusion of certain things in the study for understandable reasons.

1.7.    Basic Assumptions

Even though many student researchers tend to mistake Assumptions with Hypotheses, it is important to state very clearly that they are not the same. We have already discussed about hypotheses; its meaning and significance in a research project. However, Assumptions are only mere statements, which are frequently, not subjected to any testing. They are, more or less, ordinary statements that are taken for granted. They cannot replace the Hypotheses; yet, they tend to duplicate the Hypotheses, because they are fairly similar.

It is because of these reasons that a lot of research experts have suggested that if the study has hypotheses, then assumptions would no longer be needed. For a study with Research Questions only nevertheless, it is suitable to have assumptions, to act as a guide towards the achievement of the research objectives.

Assumptions are typically itemized while the number varies.

1.9     Operational Definition of Terms

This section of the Chapter one (introduction) is used to offer a kind of working definition to all the concepts, which would be operationally used in the course of the research. The notion is that there are some terminologies, which have been “adapted” and so utilized restrictively for the purpose of the research project.

This implies that such terminologies would mean something somewhat different from the one adapted under a different circumstances; therefore the name Operational Definition of Terms. In defining terms operationally, individual concepts/words to be so defined are recognized and then itemized. Thus, operational definitions are typically given in such a manner that will imply that they are not the usually accepted as standard definitions but those peculiar to the study in specifically. This section typically comes last in the introductory chapter.

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8.1 Legal Research

Legal research in the real world.

Practical legal research tends to be quite different from academic legal research, being far more concerned with “what is” than “what might/could be.” This means that the sources you consult, the techniques you use, and the material you produce, are likely to be very different from what you’re familiar with so far in your legal education.

This chapter is intended to introduce you to some of the sources and techniques that will help you be an efficient and effective practical legal researcher, and is intended to reflect one researcher’s perspective on how to approach a problem/question.

What’s the Real Question?

Need more? The Research Process – Introduction from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

Often, the hardest part of beginning the research process is determining what the  real  question is, and from there, where potential answers might be found. Start your research by asking yourself some of the following questions. You may not be able to answer all of them, and you may have to return to whoever assigned the research to you.

• What’s the scope of the research you’re undertaking? Are you putting together a brief summary of key aspects of a broad area of law, or doing a deep dive on a very particular aspect of a topic?
• Use a legal encyclopedia or leading text to see both how the topic fits into the broader area of law, and how it is split into narrower topics.
• If there are leading cases, they can be noted up, plus you can use a book’s Table of Cases to quickly find commentary.
• Is there governing legislation ?
• IE what groups/organizations/government bodies etc are involved? Check their websites, blogs, press releases, etc
• Recent changes won’t be reflected in textbooks. Try trade publications and CPD/CLE .
• What is “the answer” going to look like when you find it? Is it going to be a number ? A summary of caselaw ? A form ? A definition ?

Make a Plan

Need more? The Research Plan  from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

Before you dive in to your research, make a plan of where you want to look, and what techniques you’ll use. This might include keywords you want to look for in indices, authors whose work you want to track down, cases to note up, etc. It’s very easy to fall down a rabbit-hole of research, and forget to check a key source.

As you progress through your research, keep track of where you’ve been. Not every research project has a successful conclusion, and sometimes you simply cannot find the answer. Being able to say where and how you looked, can give confidence to whoever you’re sharing your research with that there truly is no answer available, or allow them to spot a gap in your process.

Sample research plan

Tools and Sources

Legal encyclopedias.

Need more? Secondary Sources: Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, and Other Definers  from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

It’s often a wise use of time to start research with one or more legal encyclopedias. They allow the reader to quickly understand a topic, and how it fits into both broader and narrower areas of law. As well, these can be quick sources to find key words, concepts, and cases to use elsewhere. Start here but don’t end here!

The two major Canadian legal encyclopedias are Halsbury’s Laws of Canada (on Lexis+) and the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest ( CED , on Westlaw Edge Canada). Both allow you to take a broad look at a hierarchically arranged list of legal topics, with entries that set out basic principles, and cite key legislation and cases.

Halbury’s covers all of Canada, while the CED covers Ontario and the Western provinces. However, one major advantage of the CED is that it contains links to Westlaw’s “Legal Topics,” which allows you to read a summary of a topic, and then jump directly to relevant caselaw and other material.

Both tools can be searched at the top level (good if you don’t know where your topic might fit in), or at any point as you browse down the tree structure to the actual content.

• Halsbury’s Laws of Canada – video from Lexis Advance Quicklaw, broadly applicable to Lexis+.
• How to start your research with the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest (CED) – video from Thomson Reuters/Westlaw

Secondary Sources: Stand on the Shoulders of Giants

Let leading experts do the heavy lifting! Textbooks and journal articles are a great place to take your research after a legal encyclopedia.

Need more? Secondary Sources: Texts and Looseleafs from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

Textbooks help you situate yourself in the broader area of law, providing key words​ and concepts, setting out how an area of law fits together, and perhaps most importantly, helps you avoid going too specific too quickly. As well, textbooks can help you find suggestions of further readings​, key cases​, and relevant legislation​.

Legal textbooks come in a much broader array of types than conventional academic texts: In addition to conventional bound books, you might also see supplemental updated volumes​ (these often have an accompanying softbound volume with updates), and loose-leaf binders with regular updated sheets​. E-books are often the same titles as loose-leafs.

Find textbooks using the University of Windsor Library Catalogue to find print and e-books that a library has in its collection​, at both the Law and Leddy libraries​. Not finding a sufficiently practice-oriented textbook? Try the LSO Great Library catalogue , which also searches courthouse libraries across Ontario.

Knowing how textbooks are organized can help you use them efficiently: One of the first pages in a book is the copyright info page, which contains all the information you’ll need to cite the book. Nearly every textbook will have a Table of Contents, which allows you to browse to situate your research in a subject hierarchy​. Most legal textbooks have a  Table of Cases, where cases are listed alphabetically, with every page on which they are cited. If you already have a case of interest, this helps you quickly find commentary on it and find related cases​. Some, but not all textbooks also have a Table of Legislation, and a Table of Sources (secondary material)​, both of which allow you to find related material. Finally, at the end of the textbook, you should find an Index, where key terms are listed alphabetically, with page numbers where they can be found in the textbook. Indices can, unfortunately, vary widely in quality, so don’t be surprised if sometimes they aren’t as helpful as you’d hope.

Journal Articles

Need more? Secondary Sources: Academic Journals and Trade Publications from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

Journal articles are excellent sources when you need timely materials because you’re researching a recent change, or when you’re looking for a broad survey of a topic (especially a broad survey of a narrow topic). Often, journal articles take a narrower focus, in comparison with textbooks.

Unlike academic research, you no longer need to restrict your focus to peer reviewed sources. While still valuable, these sources tend to respond more slowly to changes in law, and are often less practical in focus. Trade publications, on the other hand, focus on timely publication of matters of interest to legal practitioners. They are, truly, “news you can use.”

Index to Canadian Legal Literature (ICLL)

As an Index, ICLL does not contain the actual text of articles. However, while this means you’ll want to be very general in your searching (as you won’t be searching full text, just title, author, subject headings etc), it also means that the ICLL can cover/index a vast array of articles including CPD/CLE , trade and academic journals, and theses and dissertations: Coverage list . Once you have the citation to a promising article, you can then find it in other sources, or ask a librarian for help to retrieve it. ICLL is on both Westlaw Edge Canada, and Lexis+.

• Using the Index to Canadian Legal Literature (ICLL) to find journal articles, government publications and academic thesis (video from Thomson Reuters/Westlaw)

Academic Journals

There are collections of academic legal periodicals on both Westlaw Edge Canada and Lexis+. However, the broadest collection is on Heinonline. A significant advantage to accessing journal articles on Heinonline, when possible, is that the content is scans of the original full text, and as such, the original pagination as well as any diagrams/illustrations etc, are intact.

Trade Publications

Trade publications publish on a monthly, weekly, or sometimes even daily schedule, and therefore respond incredibly quickly to changes in legislation or jurisprudence. As well, they are usually aimed at practicing lawyers, with most of the articles written by practitioners. Some of the most commonly used trade publications are Canadian Lawyer , Law360 , and Law Times .

Need more? Continuing Legal Education/Continuing Professional Development Materials from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

Continuing professional development/continuing legal education materials are timely and eminently practical. Use them to find material on recent developments in the law, to stay up to date, and when you need practical advice or material. CPD/CLE usually take the form of a lecture/series of lectures by relevant experts (practitioners, council on recent key cases), and attendance usually includes collection of associated material (papers, case digests, forms and precedents, checklists). These seminars and their materials are offered by a range of vendors. The most accessible, and most prolific:

• AccessCLE : All LSO CPD since 2004, available for free. It can be a challenge to search, so when possible, use LSO Great Library catalogue instead
• OBA/CBA: These materials are available in print at most Courthouse libraries, and via the Great Library .
• PracticePro : Free, and also offers a great range of other free practice resources as well.
• Advocates’ Society : In addition to CPD/CLE available for purchase, this organization also offers a broad range of free “best practices” material.

Legislation

Need more?  An Introduction to Legislative Research from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

The most common legislative tasks are finding a current act (or regulation), finding how an act read at a certain point/period in time, and seeing how an act looked when it was originally made (as it was published in the Annual Statutes, before amendments, repeals, etc). At both the Ontario and Federal levels, there are fantastic websites to help you complete all of these tasks. However, there are some quirks and key differences between them that are important to keep in mind.

Annual v Revised v Consolidated Law

Need more? Legislation: Terms and Definitions from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

You’re going to see these terms bandied about below, and used generally in reference to legislation, and it’s important to understand what each one refers to.

Refers to legislation as it was passed (acts) or made (regulations). Annual statutes appear in the annual Statute volumes, while regulations appear in the relevant Gazette for the jurisdiction in question (and for both, their online equivalents and/or a central legislation website for each jurisdiction). You can recognize annual statutes as their citations will start with S and an abbreviation for the jurisdiction, followed by the year: SC 1999 (Statutes of Canada 1999) or SO 1999 (Statutes of Ontario 1999). A regulation’s citation will start with SOR or SI (Federal), or O Reg (Ontario), followed by the regulation number and year (SOR/2000-111, O Reg 426/00).

Over time, acts and regulations change… Sections get added, sections get amended, and sections get repealed. This meant that in order to understand what a piece of legislation looked like at a current date, you had to take the original legislation, and then “cut and paste” all the amendments to it. This, obviously, could be an immensely time consuming and confusing process. Hence, the practice of revisions began: Periodically, a jurisdiction would take all of the statutes, regulations, or both that were currently in force, and apply all those amendments that had taken place since the legislation originated (or was last revised). The new collection would be organized, often alphabetically, each piece of legislation would be renumbered to remove repealed sections/add new sections, and published as a set of bound volumes. Historically, this happened in Ontario every ten years, and more sporadically for federal legislation (also, federally, the acts and regulations would be revised at different times). However, thanks to consolidated law, revisions of the entire body of legislation in any jurisdiction are highly unlikely to ever occur again. The final Revised Statutes of Ontario (RSO) and Revised Regulations of Ontario (RRO) were in 1990, and the final Revised Statutes of Canada (RSC) was in 1985. The final revised regulations of Canada, slightly inaccurately named the Consolidated Regulations of Canada (CRC) was in 1978.

Consolidated

Like a revision, consolidated law “folds in” all the amendments since the legislation was made/revised. Unlike a revision, this process occurs on an act by act (or regulation by regulation) basis, when an amendment happens, rather than in a comprehensive way at a certain point in time. Also unlike a revision, the folding in of amendments does not result in a renumbering: This can result in many “point sections” (10.1, 10.2, 10.3) as new sections are crammed into an existing act/regulation, or huge gaps, where sections have been repealed. Both Justice Laws and E-laws are examples of continuing consolidations, providing access to up-to-date legislation on an on-going basis.

Federal: Justice Laws

Need more?  Federal Legislation: Official Sources from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

Justice Laws provides an official source of consolidated federal legislation. Current consolidated law​ may contain greyed out text: This is material from the original act that is not yet in force​. View a list of amendments not yet in force under “Related Information” from an act’s home page​. Regulations that belong to an act can be found at the bottom of the act’s home page, or via yellow “R” to right of the act title in the alphabetical list of consolidated acts, or by consolidated regulations list (by title)​. Select “Previous Versions” from the top of an act’s home page to see consolidated versions of the act from the past​. These versions span from one date to another; essentially between amendments​, and “ [g]enerally, the Point-in-time data is available from January 1, 2003 onwards for the Acts. ”

Justice Laws also provides annual statutes from 2001 onwards. These are not official, but are regarded as authoritative. If you need an annual statute from before 2001, most law libraries will hold print annual volumes at least back to Confederation, and often pre-Confederation. HeinOnline also provides scans of the print annual Statutes of Canada from 1897 through to current. As well, from 1974 to April 2014 (print), and 1974-current online, Canada Gazette Pt III contains acts of parliament more or less immediately after they receive Royal Assent

• Gazette Pt III, 1998+
• Gazette  1841-1997:  follow instruction in “Searching the Canada Gazette” dropdown to limit results

Annual regulations are  not available from Justice Laws . Find these in the Gazette . Part I contains notices and proposed regulations, while Part II contains regulations and other statutory instruments​

Ontario: E-Laws

Need more?  Ontario Official Sources from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

E-laws provides an official source of Ontario statutes and regulations.

To work with consolidated law, it is usually easiest to browse to the statute you’re interested in. Once there, the top of the page has a wealth of useful information:

• Consolidated versions of regulations made under the authority of the act are all grouped in this tab, organized in reverse chronological order (newest first).
• “Versions” provide point/period in time access to older versions of the legislation, as a new version is created every time the act is amended. Versions are available for amendments going back to January 2, 2004.
• “Revoked/spent regulations under this Act” is probably the least useful part of the page, but nonetheless has value, as it allows you to see no longer in force regulations that belonged to the act.

It’s also important to know that in consolidated law, each section or subsection of the act will have one or more citations at its end. These are called “predecessor sections” and tell you where the section came from, which is necessary if you need to complete a legislative history .

This example shows that the current version of subsection 5(1) of the Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves Act originated in SO 2006, c 12, s 5(1), and that it has been amended in some way twice, by SO 2009, c 33, Sched 22, s 9(1) and by SO 2020, c 36, Sched 40, s 1. You would have to look at these amending acts in Source Law to see what each one does (add, amend, revoke language).

As well, you may see greyed out text in consolidated legislation. This can indicate original OR amended/new material that is not yet in force​.

What isn’t included in consolidated law are sections that deal with how the act came into force, and consequential amendments to other acts:

To read this information, you’ll need to move from the consolidated law section of E-laws, to source law.

Source Law is where you will find “as passed” (acts: annual statutes ) or “as made/filed”​ (regulations) legislation, from 2000 forwards, and are best accessed by browsing to the year when the act/regulation of interest was passed/made. These versions do not include later amendments​, but do include in force and consequential amendment sections​.

Hansard or “the debates” are verbatim transcripts of discussions in legislative bodies. They can help you determine the legislative intent behind an act or amendment. As discussed below, bills are debated in legislative bodies as part of the process of becoming statutes.

Ontario Hansard are available online since March 5, 1974 at https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/house-documents OR http://hansardindex.ontla.on.ca/​ . Older debates are available in print at various law libraries from 1954 onwards (older debates are what is called the “scrapbook debates.” Talk to a law librarian if you need to go back this far).

Federal Hansard is available online since Confederation.

• The easiest to use source, which covers 1994 to 2004, includes an index: 1994-2004 ​.
• Unindexed debates are also available from 1994 to current ​.
• From 1867-1994, digitized debates are available  . Use the index volume for each session to find page numbers for relevant material, as “search within” works poorly or not at all (due to the limitations of Optical Character Recognition).

Legislative Process

Need more? Federal Legislative Process and Ontario Legislative Process from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

Why is understanding the legislative process important? Knowing how legislation progresses through a legislative body helps you understand the likelihood of a proposed change actually being successful, and prepare for changes before they happen.

Before an act is an act, it’s a bill. Read the “Bills” section of the Ontario Legislative Assembly FAQ  to learn about types of Ontario bills. Learn about types of Federal bills from the LegisInfo FAQ.

• Find Ontario bills, 1995+. ​
• Find Federal bills, 1994+.

Older Ontario and Federal bills are available in print from most law libraries.

Bills progress through a legislative body via a series of three readings​. At first reading, a bill is introduced, and will receive first reading as long as it is in the correct format. At second reading, the bill will be justified with a speech from the sponsoring legislator (MPP or MP), and then be debated by members of the legislative body, followed by a vote. If the vote is successful, usually the bill will be sent to a committee, where it is likely to be discussed clause by clause by a committee interested in the subject the bill addresses.

• Ontario committees 1990+ ​.
• Federal committees.

Upon return from committee, the bill will be read a third time, usually with little or no debate, before being voted on a final time.

At this point, an Ontario bill has completed the legislative process. However, the Federal system is a bicameral system​. Bills can be introduced in either the House of Commons or the Senate​, and after going through three readings in the first body, then has to go to the other body and repeat the process.

• Read more about the Ontario legislative process (“ How do bills become law? “)
• Read more about the Federal legislative process (“ How does a bill become law? “)

At this point, the bill is still a bill, not an act. The bill graduates to act status, and receives a statute number (ie Bill 15 becomes SO 1994, c 1) upon Royal Assent (“RA”). Royal assent is “in the name of the King,” and is granted by the Lieutenant Governor​ in Ontario, and the Governor General at the Federal level.

Do all bills actually make it through the legislative process? No. In fact, many if not most bills (especially private member’s bills ) “die on the order paper” when a legislative session is proroged/ended. Some bills, mainly government bills, are resuscitated in the next session, at the same stage (and sometimes even with the same bill number) where they previously died.

If a bill has made it all the way through the legislative process, received RA, and been assigned a chapter number, is it necessarily the law that must be followed? No! An act has to “come into force” before it has force or effect.  Look at the end of the act (usually)​, to find out how it comes into force. Note, omnibus bills (bills that create or amend many acts) often have in-force information at the end of individual schedules​. This can happen in a number of ways:

• On Royal Assent​: the date on which the act received RA.
• Deemed date​: “This act comes into force December 31, 2021.”
• Might be dependent on something else​: “This act comes into force sixty days after the coming into force of section 15 of  An Act to Amend Another Act , SO 2021, c 5.”
• Federal: consult the Table of Public Statutes and Responsible Ministers.  Look for your act (by name of original or amended act, not the amending act) in the alphabetized list, then look at the end of the act’s entries for the “CIF” (coming into force) information for both the original act (if post-dating the 1985 revision)and all of its amending acts.
• Ontario: Table of Proclamations
• Retroactive​: Usually retroactive in force dates are only for acts related to financial issues (especially taxation), to cover a complete fiscal year.
• Some combination​ of above: In force dates can cover a whole act… or sections (or subsections!)​. So, some sections might be in force on RA, other sections might require proclamation, and other sections again have a deemed in force date.
• Talk to a librarian! Coming into force information can be complex and complicated. Get help to either verify your research, or be guided through the research process.

What about regulations? As subordinate legislation, regulations are not debated​. However, you may be able to find a Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement or Proposed Regulation in the Canada Gazette (Federal)​ or in the Regulatory Registry (Ontario). The Federal government has also set up a system to allow Comment on Proposed Regulations , from 2021 onwards. Regulations are in force on filing unless otherwise specified.

Legislative Histories

Need more? Legislative Histories from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

Completing a legislative history can have a variety of goals. Sometimes, you simply want to know when a change to a section of an act was made, or when current language originated. This is often in pursuit of determining legislative intent, usually for the purposes of statutory interpretation , by then going to look at the debates around the adoption of that language. Other times, you may wish to trace the entire history of a particular act or section since its inception, to see how it evolved, and when each change to it was made (and perhaps, why).

The process of working through a legislative history can range from simple and easy (section of an Ontario act introduced last year) to the deeply complex (pre-Confederation Federal legislation, which might have originated in England). Therefore, while this is going to set out the basic process, and point to some useful tools, this is definitely a task where getting help is likely to be a real time and frustration saver.

At its most basic level, assuming we are tracing back one section of an act to its inception, a legislative history involves following predecessor sections back until one of two things happens: At certain points in the past, legislative bodies were kind enough to include the notation  New as a pseudo-predecessor section on new sections or clauses. In the absence of this incredibly helpful notation, look for a) no predecessor section information on the section you’re interested in  and b) no repeal of an act or sections of an act that deals with similar material (usually found at the end of the amending act).

• If you’re tracing a section back before the current revisions (Federal: 1985, Ontario: 1990), expect the section number to change. Revisions , which used to be a regular occurrence, would usually result in renumbering of both sections within an act, and of acts themselves.
• If you think you’ve tracing a section back as far as possible, but you’re in a revision ? Keep looking! There is nothing new in a revision, so it had to originate somewhere else. Talk to a librarian at this point.
• Don’t be shocked to see current legislation go back to before the 1900s, or even to Confederation (1867), or beyond.

Once you’re back as far as you need to go, determine the bill number for your originating act. In both Ontario and Federal annual statutes volumes, the Table of Contents at the start of each annual volume (or in the annual statutes section of Justice Laws and E-laws) includes not just a list of the acts in the volume, but also their bill numbers, which is super handy. The reason you need the bill number, rather than just the chapter number of the act, is that it is as a bill that the legislation will make its way through the legislative process , and so that’s how it will appear in the index of the debates . Also note the year that act was made, as you’ll have to map the year of the annual volume to the parliament and session, as that’s how the debates are organized (one calendar year can be split over multiple parliaments/sessions, and one parliament/session can encompass multiple years). Every session starts with a new Bill 1, so knowing the date is essential!

At this point, for a simple legislative history, you have enough information to trace the bill that created your act through the legislative process , and find the debates around it. If any of this information isn’t findable, or the process becomes more complex, come talk to a librarian .

How (Not) To Search Caselaw

Need more? Finding Tools from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

Training from vendors (Lexis+ and Westlaw Edge Canada) encourages keyword searching from database homepages. Unfortunately, this really is the least efficient, and most frustrating way to work with caselaw. Why is this? The primary reason is that legal arguments are about legal issues, and are not merely fact-driven: Keywords tend to be fact- and situation-focused, and therefore can result in missing out on leading cases relevant to the legal issues at play, but that differ on the facts (while simultaneously drowning you in hundreds or thousands of irrelevant cases).

There are better ways!

Firstly, start with legislation… Is your research pursuant to an act or regulation? If so, find cases that specifically deal with that legislation by noting it up.

• QuickCITE (Lexis+)
• Keycite (Westlaw)

Next, or you’re looking at an area of law not controlled by legislation, all the tools we’ve already discussed (textbooks, articles, CLE/CPD) are likely to contain citations to cases that are highly relevant to the legal issues at hand. Once you have found even one case that is relevant to the issues at hand, you can do what I call “working a case forwards and backwards:”

• Work it backwards: What cases does your starting case cite? Focus on the paragraph(s) that deal with the topic(s) most of interest to you. What cases does the judge refer to in their reasoning process? Beyond caselaw, are there articles/reports/texts cited by the judge? Make a list (part of your research plan) of all the items that seems to be useful.
• Work it forwards: Note up your case ( QuickCITE [Lexis+], Keycite [Westlaw Edge Canada]). Use filters to refine what cases have cited the case, by depth of treatment, jurisdiction, etc. Make a list of cases that seem promising.

Still need a starting point? Browse, don’t search. Use tools like the Canada Digest (Lexis +) or the Canadian Abridgement (Westlaw Edge Canada). Both of these tools are digests (summaries) of cases classified by topic. This classification can be quite detailed and multileveled, which allows you to browse to a very specific legal topic to see relevant cases. Should you need to search the full text of a topical division of caselaw on Westlaw Edge Canada, use Browse Legal Topics , which serves up exactly the same topical structure, but in full text. It is also good to remember that Browse Legal Topics  is linked from the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest , allowing you to go directly from reading about a legal topic, to reading cases and other material on the topic.

Criminal trial level decisions/jury trials

When we think of caselaw, what is actually reported are the reasons… Why the judge or decider made the decision that they made. Juries do not give reasons, just a verdict, and their deliberations are confidential. Therefore, jury trials are not reported, because there quite literally is nothing to report (although there may be related decisions that are reported, such as reasons for sentencing).

As well, trial level decisions in criminal cases, generally, are not necessarily reported, as even judges are not required to issue (written) reasons, so when looking at the history of a criminal case, do not be surprised if the trial decision isn’t available.

Quebec Decisions

Many Quebec decisions are reported in French, as that is the language in which they were decided. Generally speaking, there is no comprehensive project to translate these decisions into English (Supreme Court of Canada decisions are the only decisions that you should always expect to find in both official languages). That being said, the Centre de Traduction et de Terminologie Juridiques has begun a project “ Translation of Important Unilingual Court Decisions in the Other Official Language ”. Currently, this project focuses primarily on the areas of criminal law and family law.

Noting up cases

Need more? Working with a Decision from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

“Noting up” is the process of establishing whether a case is still “good law” for the legal principle that we’re interested in. This takes two primary forms. Firstly, we need to determine the appeal status of the case in question: if it’s a really recent case, could an appeal be pending? If so, you will need to check back later, after the time limit allowed for launching an appeal has expired. If the case is older, has it been appealed, and if so, was it overturned on appeal? Even if you do find out that the case has been overturned, you should still give the appeal decision a good close read. It’s not uncommon for cases to deal with multiple issues, and the case may have been overturned on an issue other than what you’re concerned with. Secondly, and this is the more complex process, we need to look at whether our case has been “judicially considered” by subsequent cases. This consideration can be as simple as merely citing our case within a long string of similar cases, or as complex as interpreting our case, applying it, or even disagreeing with it.

Noting up a case is important because most of Canada follows common law principles, which means we use the principle of stare decisis, “to stand by things decided.” Judges look to past cases that deal with similar legal issues for guidance on how to treat the case before them. This creates a legal system that’s both predictable, but that also allows the state of the law to gradually shift.

This is important to our research for a number of reasons: Firstly, and most legally significant, sufficient negative subsequent interpretation can lead to a case being no longer considered “good law.” Secondly, cases that cite your case may be dealing with similar issues… This is a good way to advance your research.

If you want to use a case to argue a point, or try to convince a judge to follow it, it’s very important to look at where  the case comes from. Cases with precedential value can either be binding or persuasive. A binding case comes from a higher court in the same jurisdiction, or from the Supreme Court of Canada, and it must be followed if on a sufficiently similar point of law. A persuasive case will originate from other jurisdictions, or from a court within the same jurisdiction at the same or lower level, and a judge can be persuaded to follow it… or not.

Also important is that cases heard by a panel of judges, such as at the Court of Appeal or SCC can contain a “dissent,” where a judge can write a differing opinion to that which the majority of the court held. This is NOT binding, so be careful when reading long appeal cases… “Ctrl+F” can easily pull you into a dissent without knowing it. Now, just because you find useful material in the dissent, doesn’t mean you have to discount it, as it can be persuasive, just that you need to be aware that’s what you’re looking at.

Tools for Specific Tasks

Words and phrases.

Collected and edited judicial definitions of words or phrases… like a dictionary but for legal definitions. Sometimes these are not the same as general definitions! There are versions on both Westlaw Edge Canada and Lexis+.

• How to find words and phrases that have been judicially defined (Video from Thomson Reuters/Westlaw)

Forms & Precedents

Need more? Forms and Precedents from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

These are documents drafted by experts that serve as a starting point for your work. Examples include contracts, leases, licensing agreements, and cohabitation agreements. Some are mandated by legislation (court forms), but most are not. Generally, forms and precedents are more “fill in the blank” than “filled in.”

Use them when you need to draft a form, instead of drafting from scratch. They will help you save time, and ensure you cover essentials. Usually, it’s not feasible to simply take a form and use it “as is.” Use them for inspiration or confirmation, and by combining clauses from multiple forms.

Find forms and precedents in major, broad scope sets: O’Briens (on Westlaw and in print), Canadian Forms and Precedents (on Lexis+ and in print). Also consider topical collections: Find these by searching a library catalogue for general area of law + “forms.” Many topical textbooks also contain some forms, and CPD/CLE are excellent for new and notable topics.

News/Opinion/Statistics

Research for legal purposes can expand far beyond what we usually think of as “legal sources,” to include news media, statistical information, social media, and older versions of websites. While hardly an exhaustive list, here are some tips for searching beyond legal resources.

News and Editorial Content

You may need to search current or historical news coverage, to gauge public opinion, find more useful information about a casually mentioned case, or gather information about a person, company, or other organization. Think about the language you use for searching… Journalists writing for a popular audience are not likely to use highly “legal” language, so think of terms that would be recognizable to a lay audience.

Leddy Library subscribes to a wide range of databases that cover local, national, and foreign newspapers. For current news coverage,  Google News is a fast, free source that covers a broad range of news sources, although not to the historical depth of subscription databases. As well, limitations on access (articles per month, etc) are still determined by each individual source, not Google News.

One particularly useful site for editorial/opinion content is The Conversation, where experts and academics write for a broad audience. In addition to a Canadian version, The Conversation is also available for a range of other jurisdictions, including the US, the UK, and pan-Africa.

Statistics Canada is always the best place to look for any statistics focused on the Canadian population. StatsCan collections encompass a huge range of crime and justice statistics, which are a likely place to start your research. Do be aware that Canada has historically been reluctant to collect race-based statistics (with occasional exceptions around Indigenous populations). Therefore, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to find detailed information stratified by race.

If you need access to statistical data to perform your own analysis, rather than reading existing reports, contact the Academic Data Centre for assistance.

Social Media

Searching social media is always a challenge, especially as more people (wisely) lock down their privacy settings. That being said, search engines focused on social media, such as Social Searcher , do exist. However, this is one place where absence of evidence/content, is not evidence of absence (of content): Social media posts, especially of a dubious quality, are often deleted. However, the next tool might just help you find even a deleted tweet…

Wayback Machine

The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is my secret weapon… Have a citation to a webpage that’s disappeared or changed? Need to see what an organization was saying about itself ten years ago? Looking for the aforementioned deleted tweets?

The Wayback Machine collects and archives copies of many (but certainly not all) websites on a regular or semi-regular basis. While there certainly is no guarantee that the website you need was archived at the date you require, it is a quick and easy place to look. Just enter the URL that you’re interested in, in the search bar. If the site was archived at any point, you will be able to browse through a timeline and calendar of all the dates it was archived. Other tools allow you to compare various captures of a site, but the calendar is by far the most useful tool. Media embedded on a site, such as videos, Flash, and sometimes even linked documents such as pdfs are not always captured, but the Wayback Machine still is the single best tool to put truth to the aphorism that “nothing disappears from the internet.”

Quantum services

Need more? Quantum Services from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

Quantum services are tools to help you (more) easily determine the amount of something (personal injury damages, criminal sentencing, child support etc). They tend to be focused on one specific topic. In format, quantum tools are numbers-based, but usually have some accompanying explanatory text including key factors that influence the number. Some quantum tools allow your input, others just allow you to browse and read. They are the best choice when “the answer” is a number: Searching for “how much”/“how long” is not efficient.

There are a range of quantum services on Lexis+  (video) and Westlaw Edge Canada (video on Litigator quantum services, but also see How to find digests of sentencing quantum decisions ).

How you use a given quantum service depends on its arrangement. Many quantum services are browsable via “tree” structure, which allows you to drill down through relevant “+” menus and then scan for key information in case digests. Others are accessed via a fillable form, where you can input all relevant information (that you have available), and then get a specific result/number, accompanied by supporting case digests.

Municipal Material

Municipal governments are the third level of government that affect our lives (the others being federal and provincial). In many ways, municipal bylaws have some of the greatest effect on how we live our day to day life… Where can we park? What pets can we have? How tall can we build a fence? Yet, municipal government information is usually the most difficult to find.

There is no central repository within Ontario for municipal bylaws. Each municipality maintains their own bylaws. Happily, in contrast to even a decade ago, most municipalities do now put a current consolidation of at least some of their bylaws online, and the larger the municipality, the more tends to be online. Less happily, if you need to see what a bylaw looked like before a newer amendment (IE point in time) or a bylaw that hasn’t been made available online, you will have to contact the municipality and request it. Generally these requests are fulfilled, but not necessarily in a particularly timely manner.

Council proceedings are not nearly as accessible as equivalent material from the federal or provincial government. Even the largest cities do not produce transcripts (IE easily searchable text). Agendas, and sometimes minutes and reports are likely to be available, often for at least a few years, and can help you narrow down dates on which a topic was discussed, and perhaps who was involved in the discussion. Some municipalities broadcast their council meetings, either through local cable, or online, and sometimes there are archives of past recordings of these broadcasts. However, this is very much on a municipality by municipality basis.

Indeed, this is the overarching theme of researching municipal materials and processes… The information available, and the means by which you can access that information, are wholly dependent on each municipality in question. Often, the only thing you can do is essentially throw yourself on the mercy of a municipal clerk, and hope that they have access to, knowledge of, and a willingness to share the information you need.

Blogs, Firm Websites, and Other Sources

Need more? Evaluation of Sources from Meris Bray, Legal Research – A Practical Perspective .

These are another example of sources that would typically not be used at all in academic research, but can be quite useful in practical research. They are especially useful for researching novel or fast-evolving areas of law. You will have to be quite discerning in order to evaluate the quality of the information in these sources. Think about the CRAAP test:

• Currency: Look for a date on the source. Do you know that there’s been a significant amendment to legislation, or major case since this date? It might no longer be accurate.
• Relevance: In terms of legal research, replace this with jurisdiction. Is this author/source originating in/writing about Canadian or Ontario law (as applicable)? The law of child support in Ontario, California won’t be relevant to research about support in Ontario, Canada!
• Authority: Who wrote the material, and where is it hosted? If you can’t tell, do not use this source. On the other hand, if it’s written by lead counsel in a significant recent case, and hosted on the site of a major Canadian law firm, this is more likely to be good quality.
• Accuracy: At the most basic level, is it well written? I would be dubious about a source that has many egregious grammar mistakes. In terms of legal research, this also encompasses accurate and correct citations to cases and legislation. Does the information that this source is trying to impart to you, fit with what you already know?
• Purpose: Are you being sold something? Or propagandized? What audience is the information intended for? Laypeople or legal professionals?

Where Can I Find Help?

Librarians and libraries will accompany you throughout your legal career. The practice of law is the practice of information; finding it, interpreting it, synthesizing it, and conveying it to other people. Therefore, expert information workers, in the form of librarians, are always here to help.

In addition to reaching out to the staff of the university law library , every courthouse in Ontario has a library (of various sizes), and if you’re working with/for a member of the Law Society of Ontario, you’ll also have access to the vast array of resources and expertise at the Great Library .

Never hesitate to reach out to a librarian, at any phase of the research process. We can help you devise a research plan, ensure you haven’t missed anything in your search, or help you with challenging tasks, such as legislative histories. Also, don’t worry about asking a “non law” question… If we don’t know the answer, we have subject expert contacts that we can rely on to get you the help you need.

How Do I Know I’m “Done?”

It can be really difficult to determine when your research is complete, especially when you’ve been asked to do a really deep examination of a topic. This is where your research plan comes back in: Is every source you’re looking at telling you something you already know? Perhaps more importantly, do you feel like you’re going in circles, because regardless of what source/technique you use, you end up back at the same information/cases? This is a pretty reliable sign that you either need to take a dramatically different tack in your research (which may not be relevant), or that you have truly canvassed the area of examination.

Learning in Place (3rd Edition) Copyright © 2024 by Gemma Smyth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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