THE BEST LAID PLANS… Qualitative Research Design During COVID-19
Throughout March we will explore research design, with a focus on theory and conceptual frameworks. Find the unfolding series here. This post is from this month’s Mentor in Residence, Dr. Sharon Ravitch.
“It is important to reclaim for humanity the ground that has been taken from it by various arbitrarily narrow formulations of the demands of rationality.”
-Amartya Sen
Qualitative research seeks toidentify and incorporate the complexities of participants’ lived experiencesand feedback into the research process itself—not just the findings—in waysthat challenge researcher power and the imposition of interpretive authority. Researcherand research design responsiveness requires what is sometimes referred toas an emergent design approach. This means that elements of a study’s researchdesign, such as participant selection and data collection methods, are carefullyreconsidered in relation to emergent understandings and realities of participants’views and experiences. As Ravitch and Carl (2020) state,
Since participants’ experiencesand mediating contexts are difficult to anticipate, identify, and articulatefully in advance of the implementation of research, researchers need to respondto these in real time once the research is under way. In fact, the primary criterion of qualitative validity is fidelityto participants and their experiences rather than a strict adherenceto methods and research design.
Qualitative research design includes: 1) Site and Participant Selection; 2) Data Collection Methods; 3) Data Analysis Strategies and Techniques (Ravitch & Carl, 2020). In this post, I address the first two domains in relation to COVID-19. The researchers I know—both seasoned and new—are quite concerned about the data collection aspects of research design given sudden changes in the world. What follows are things I’ve been discussing with students and colleagues since Coronavirus arrived and changed the world, and therefore our research in that world, in incalculable ways that will unfold for years.
In this moment of the global COVID-19pandemic, the ideas of emergent design and researcher and designresponsiveness take on new meaning and import; they can serve, I argue, to connectmore traditional qualitative methods with participatory frameworks and criticaland humanizing methodologies such as trauma-informed methodology and ChronicIllness Methodology, which I describe below.
Site and Participant Selection Changes
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Suddenly, researchers have arange of new concerns about our research. These include participant accessgiven that most of the United States, indeed the world, is practicing socialdistancing at home. Concerns range from 1) identifying participants given thatpeople are no longer congregating together physically in naturally occurringgroups and organizations, and 2) asking people for time to do interviews, focusgroups, or other asks for time (this is true even when people had already securedparticipants) given the burdens placed on everyone by this pandemic. Theseconcerns are central given that life has radically changed since completingtheir research designs—people are displaced, working from home, out of work,looking for jobs, juggling family responsibilities sometimes including kids andelderly parents during the workday, unwell or taking care of people who are ill,and so on. This global moment, importantly, necessitates learning a set of newskills necessary to design and conduct valid, humanizing research online.
Don't let challenging times obstruct your research progress!
Below are ways to considerthese design changes, embedded in live examples of research design changes madesince Coronavirus. For example, Beckett designed a case study that was to examineleader agility in complex adaptive systems in a Fortune-100 company. He had justfinalized his interview protocol and received IRB approval when COVID-19 haltedthe workplace, creating sudden access issues given international pandemic flux.He was going to interview executives from 3 countries face-to-face, which canno longer happen. As well, his topic and research questions needed to change giventhe enormity of this new global development and how it relates to his topic. Beckettneeded to pivot. He decided that rather than interview a dispersed group of 40business leaders once about critical incidents of team agility, he will engagemore deeply with a smaller group in the US. Beckett chose a US-based leadershipteam (12 people) and shifted the focus to a case study on leading with agility throughCoronavirus. This still builds on his intended topic and theoretical framework,and in fact, deepens what he’ll be able to learn during a live criticalincident of crisis leadership. Beckett adjusted his interview protocol toreflect the new research questions and shift in participant demographics. Andbecause they believe it will be generative in real-time to learn from hisresearch, the team agreed to participate in a more intensive data collection process.Beckett submitted an addendum and interview protocol to IRB and they approvedthe switch.
Another example is Camilla, adoctoral student who’s a school principal and who just passed her dissertationproposal defense on exploring Black girls’ perceptions and experiences ofsafety in an under-resourced urban middle school. With COVID-19, the schoolclosed making access to students difficult. As well, the issues she wanted toexplore—racial microaggressions and racialized stress—suddenly feel less urgentthan finding food and shelter for students and their families. Camilla believesthe research is even more important now—it provides an opportunity to check onthe students’ well-being while in transient living situations. She’s exploringopportunities for virtual data collection with less girls more intensively fora shorter duration. She was planning to interview thrice weekly for threemonths, but since she can’t access the larger group over time given that thestructure of school is no longer there, and moreover, given that they’restruggling in myriad ways. If not, Camilla will pivot again and interview hercolleagues—fellow principals, teachers, and school counselors—to understandtheir experiences and ideas for exploring and supporting student well-being andsafety in the current pandemic. Camilla is clear about keeping her existing theoreticalframework (literature review). This pivot makes that possible and, importantly,it will contribute to a much-needed literature on crisis leadership in complexadaptive schooling systems.
It’s important to state that issues of equity in relation to participant access and representation are central to deciding if and how these choices make sense or create validity or ethical concerns. One plus of design pivots may be greater access to a wider range of participants, though in pandemic it is hard to know. Importantly, this raises issues of representation—if the most vulnerable in society are unable to engage in research because their lives are exponentially turned upside down, their stories and anything built from our research excludes them.
Data Collection Method Changes
Most of the world cannot leaveour homes which raises questions about conducting an entire data collectionprocess using online methods. People wonder if they should 1) postpone datacollection; 2) conduct interviews and focus groups online (and/or change to a study using extant sources), 3) employ different data collection methodssince interviews are virtual and working from home precipitates issues ofprivacy and confidentiality (on both sides of the screen), all of which mustbe addressed and explicated in the research design.
A colleague conductingresearch on difficult conversations about family dynamics is now forced to conductonline interviews since participants are home, which she worries about fordisclosure and confidentiality reasons. She worries about asking participantsfor their time and to be interviewed about family dynamics while home. She askedthe women who had already agreed to be a part of her study if they were able tojoin a Virtual Focus Group to discuss options once everyone needed to doat-home social distancing. Together, they developed a new data collection planin which they: 1) started a google doc for group-think generally and forspecific weekly email prompts for data collection purposes, 2) created aWhatsApp group and gave written permission to use all chats as data, and 3) sharedtranscripts from the first interview—and instead of doing a second round of interviews,the participants will comment on their own interviews, layering in additionalinsights and concerns, and then they will have an online focus group to discusswhat they were all thinking and feeling after they read their individualtranscripts. This is a creative work-around that enables the research tocontinue. It’s a great example that even with new challenges come new researchdesign possibilities. An emergent design mindset supports this.
In contrast, some work-aroundsare ethically problematic. Jono could no longer access participants for hisdissertation research because, as a transient population (migrant workers), they’recurrently scattered given COVID-19. He asked if he can simply re-analyze hisold data from a year-old pilot study that had different research questions andaddress the new questions with these data. This is not an ethical solutionbecause everything maps from and back onto the research questions, and thus,analyzing old data from a different set of research questions and for a newpopulation would skew the analysis and undermine validity.
Researcher and Design Responsiveness as Ethical Stance in Global Crisis Times
Trauma-informed methodology foregroundslearning about trauma and its intra-psychic and interactional effects, cultivatinga research environment comfortable to those who’ve experienced trauma, andrecognizing the resilience and resources of individuals and communities whohave experienced or are experiencing trauma (Pak & Ravitch, in review). Traumaexperiences can influence behavior and responses in interviews and focus groups.Memory loss, lack of focus, emotional reactivity, and different versions of thesame story can be signs of trauma as it is exhibited during interviews andfocus groups. While we cannot essentialize, it is important to raise awarenessof these possibilities for any individual.
Trauma-informed methodologyhas always been important for the broader population given its foregrounding ofthe affective and social-emotional dimensions of interviewing and the need tobe intentional in relation to possible trauma histories playing out in the present.I argue that trauma-informed methodology should become much more widely used incurrent research studies. Given that we are, I believe, in a moment ofcollective trauma—both our own trauma and vicarious trauma—we must attuneourselves to both its inner and outer reverberations, for ourselves and ourparticipants. It is important to engage people with an understanding that alltraumas are not the same, and while the pandemic is shared trauma, it landsinto the lives of already-vulnerable populations in ways that cause more severediffusion effects. As well, many already have trauma histories completelyseparate from COVID-19 that must be considered with compassion. Interviewersand focus group facilitators should be familiar with possible signs of traumaand not assume a participant is being evasive or dishonest if their responsesor communication styles depart from more familiar ones. Additionally, it’svital to consider the intersection of trauma with aspects of social identity andstructural inequity including culture, gender, ethnic, racel, social class andcaste, religion, immigrant status and so on.
Related to better aligning research with our sharedhumanity, I draw on Kapadia’s Chronic Illness Methodology (2016), which is anintentionally embodied, relational, critical approach to designing and conductingresearch. Chronic Illness Methodology isamethodological approach that “views research as an embodied project,acknowledges researchers’ and participants’ bodies and lived experiences ascentral to the research process, encourages participants to take up space inthe research process, supports an active concern for participant well-beingthroughout research and writing, and enables a critical focus on participants’ layeredand societally contextualized stories of their own lives….Chronic illness methodology is for allbodies."Critical humanizing qualitativemethodologies, in these times, help us toengage cosmopolitanism—the idea that weare all connected, dependent on, and responsible to, each other as humans—as we rethink and work to dismantle deficit orientations and false,socially constructed binaries relating to illness/wellness andability/disability as the embodied struggles of the human family (Appiah, 2006). Engagingthis kind of critical and humanizing methodology seems, to me, the only waythat our research can proceed with humility and authenticity in these fraughtand challenging times. We must un-learn so much now as we re-learn forward; allof which requires an emergent design mindset and a collectivist orientation.
Recommendations
Learn more about qualitative research design!
Use SAGE2020 as a discount code when you order the new edition!
Moving data collection whollyonline creates specific validity and ethical issues that need to be identifiedand addressed as part of research design (see Ravitch & Carl 2020 forresources). Be intentional in planning for and rehearsing online datacollection situations (interviews and focus groups) so the research experienceis generative, positive, engaged, and enriching.
Read about trauma-informedinterviewing and Chronic Illness Methodology. Build a working understanding of strategiesfor developing data collection instruments and techniques for approaching participantswith care given the ubiquity of trauma right now.
Approach study participants withrespect, humility, and appreciation for their time. Make every effort toschedule around their needs (e.g., childcare, work schedules). Let them knowthat an ideal interview scenario will provide them a confidential space.
Develop a brief script tobegin online interviews and focus groups that 1) addresses, with compassion, thecurrent difficult moment of Coronavirus as well as changes in the interview format/processcaused by the pandemic. Do this before the general framing of interviews andfocus groups (Welcome, informed consent, etc.).
Most of all, at this strangeand scary time of distancing in the world, I wish you good health, safety,peace, and goodness. Qualitative researchers generate powerful stories ofhealing, connection, and transformation. Right now, we can be truth-listeners andtruth-truthtellers for the world, which means we have a unique set of skills toserve as a light in dark times. If you’d like to stay in touch, or havequestions, follow me on Twitter @SharonRavitch.
References
Appiah, K.A. (2006). Cosmopolitanism:Ethics in a world of strangers. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
Kapadia-Bodi, Melissa, "Stories of ourworking lives: Literacy, power, & storytelling in the academicworkplace" (2016). Dissertations available from ProQuest.AAI10158578.
https://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI10158578
Pak, K. &Ravitch, S.M. (2020, manuscript in review). Critical Leadership Praxis. NewYork, NY:
Columbia Teachers College Press,Practitioner Inquiry Series.
Ravitch S.M. & Carl, M.N. (2020). Qualitative research: Bridging the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological. (2nd Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.