Methods in Flux: Emphasis on Emergent Design

by Sharon Ravitch
Dr. Sharon Ravitch is a regular Methodspace contributor, and served as the Mentor in Residence in March 2022. She is a co-author of Qualitative Research: Bridging the Conceptual, Theoretical, and Methodological. If ordering her books from SAGE, use the code MSPACEQ322 for a 20% discount from 1 July – 30 September.

This post relates to the June 2022 focus on Emerging Methods, while raising important questions for researchers to consider when engaging with participants (the July focus) and ethical implications of our research practice (the August focus.)

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Context is everything.
It mediates human experiences, perspectives, choices and meaning making. How researchers design and conduct our research shapes the data we collect and what we can know, referred to in qualitative research as the inseparability of methods and findings (Ravitch & Carl, 2021). Since the central tenets of qualitative research are understanding the subjectivity and situatedness of human experience and meaning making—this moment of flux has significant research design and methods implications.

Researchers must become increasingly aware of how shifting conditions shape life and research into that life.
Importantly, in qualitative research validity requires “achieving fidelity to the complexity of people’s lived experiences in context” (Ravitch & Carl, 2021, p. 36). Since current settings and experiences are increasingly multifaceted and complex, it follows that the methods we choose must be complicated to fully capture contextual flux. Time both mediates and constitutes research context and must be a foregrounded aspect of research design. Researchers need to actively consider the implications of current flux on research thinking, design, and methods. On the contexts at the heart of our studies. Local, national, and global flux requires that we emphasize the emergent design quality of qualitative work. 

Research responsiveness requires an emergent design approach wherein aspects of study design such as recalibrating research questions, adjusting theoretical frameworks, shifting data collection and analysis plans, and/or revising data collection instruments are intentional and in motion throughout data collection. Further, an emergent design approach requires understanding social identities, issues of equity and bias critically, relationally, and contextually, including deep considerations of temporality. As Ravitch and Carl (2021) state,

Since participants’ experiences and mediating contexts are difficult to anticipate, identify, and articulate fully in advance of the implementation of research, researchers need to respond to these in real time once the research is underway. In fact, the primary criterion of qualitative validity is fidelity to participants and their experiences rather than a strict adherence to methods and research design. (p. 18)

While all qualitative inquiry exists on a continuum of emergent design research, in an expressly emergent design approach, researchers and participants create the conditions to “work from local knowledge and interest; bridge to other knowledge domains; and liberate their local knowledge from its specific situated embodiment” (Cavallo, 2000, p. 780). Aspects of research design and data collection shift as research methods get adjusted during fieldwork; participant perspectives, as data, are formative to research design and implementation.

Emergent design offers a more dynamic approach to data collection and data analysis.
In emergent design research, design elements such as data collection methods are actively examined and reconsidered in relation to in-the-field learnings. Since researchers cannot possibly anticipate, identify, or articulate participants’ experiences and perspectives in advance of implementing our research, we must plan for and build skills to respond to our data-based learning in real time once our research is already underway.

 Ravitch and Tarditi (2011) discuss this through the prism of relational ethics and centralizing local knowledges in applied emergent design qualitative research this way:

An emergent design research approach enables ongoing recognition and incorporation of local expertise, skills, knowledge, resources, and concerns. Understanding the context intricacies of the community environment from multiple perspectives as they change over time is essential to capacity-building education approaches that incorporate local knowledge and values. Emergent design research develops knowledge and skills, building from local experience, culture, interest, values, and expertise. (p. 3)

Qualitative research must be both procedurally and relationally ethical.
This means committing to research that can authentically respond to what we learn as we learn it, that honestly engages the layered and limitless complexity of life, people, setting, and social conditions in ways that are relational not extractive, critical not socially reproductive, assets and resource oriented rather than deficit based. We must reimagine methods to be more inclusive and to move the dial on humanization and equity (Ravitch & Carl, 2021).

Qualitative researchers must enact responsive and humanizing research grounded in collective care.
We are uniquely situated to generate powerful and authentic stories of healing, connection, and transformation. This requires an approach that can do justice to the stories shared with us, entrusted to us. Right now, we must be truth-listeners and truth-truthtellers for the world; we have a unique set of skills to serve as night lanterns in these dark times. Let us do so with humility, criticality, reflexivity, and responsiveness. Let us create new logics and methods that honor real life.

References

Cavallo, D. (2000). Emergent design and learning environments: Building on Indigenous knowledge. IBM Systems Journal, 39(3&4): 768-781.
Ravitch S. M. & Carl, M. N. (2021). Qualitative Research: Bridging the Conceptual, Theoretical, and Methodological. (2nd Ed.). SAGE Publications.
Ravitch, S. M. & Tarditi, M. J. (2011). Semillas Digitales Theory of Action. Jinotega, Nicaragua: Seeds for Progress Foundation Publications.

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