Qualitative research is designed to answer questions. Questions such as, why did this happen? Who did it happen to? How did this happen? What did we do when this happened? And so on and so forth. There are two forms of qualitative research that will be addressed in the paragraphs to follow. Will be phenomenology, and narrative research methodology, I will discuss, both in full and describe the ways in which data is gathered, the role of the researcher and ways the data is proven trustworthy.
Phenomenology
Definition Phenomenology is a method practice that in very basic terms is designed to answer questions. Questions as to why, who, when, where etc? The purpose is to answer the question: “ what is …show more content…
That is exactly what the basis of narrative research is. Telling the stories of an individual or individuals through numerous avenues of storytelling. I.g. autobiographies, personal narratives, interpretive dance, journals, oral history, even popular memories. All of which are used to simply tell a story, and have the world view the story from the storytellers perspective.
Role of the Researcher Like all research, you have someone who is interested or wants to know more about a topic or issue. This is the same with narrative research, however with narrative research the role of the researcher is different and unique because it is the researcher who is mainly interested in the topic and seeks out participants to do research about. The researcher, unlike phenomenological research, is drawn by their own experiences with the topic in which they are researching. They connect with the participants and are interested in what they have to say because of their own stories and experiences, whereas with phenomenological research, the researcher must put away all biases they have about the topics they research(). The role of the researcher in narrative research however, is to simply listen, and ask questions about the storytellers view point of what happened in each topic the inquirer is studying or wants …show more content…
Most researchers recommend giving back the interview transcripts and emerging interpretations to participants to allow them to check for meaning. This is called member checking (book). This allows for member of the study to check for validity and mediate any distortion in their story. Also getting feedback from the members of the story before publishing the final story is ways that researchers can check for validity in the story and eliminate errors or skewed view points of the story being told. As well as collecting as much hard material as possible, i.e. journals, texts, cards, letters, as well as taping all interviews either on video or voice can greatly attribute to the trustworthiness of a narrative