SAGE Journal Articles
SAGE Journal Articles combine cutting-edge academic journal scholarship with the topics in your course for a robust classroom experience.
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Article 1: Hookway, N. (2008). ‘Entering the blogosphere': some strategies for using blogs in social research. Qualitative Research, 8(1), 91-113.
Summary: In this article, the author highlights the significance of the `blogosphere' as a new addition to the qualitative researcher's toolkit and some of the practical, theoretical and methodological issues that arise from this. Some of the key ethical issues involved in blog data collection are also considered. The research context is a project on everyday understandings and experiences of morality.
Questions to Consider:
1. What is the blogosphere and how can it be used to conduct qualitative data?
2. What are some of the difficulties that a researcher can encounter when using blogs as data?
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Article 2: Ryan, G. W., & Bernard, H. R. (2003). Techniques to identify themes. Field Methods, 15(1), 85-109.
Summary: In this article, the authors discuss theme identification - one of the most fundamental tasks in qualitative research. Explicit descriptions of theme discovery are rarely found in articles and reports, and when they are, they are often relegated to appendices or footnotes. Techniques are shared among small groups of social scientists, but sharing is impeded by disciplinary or epistemological boundaries. The techniques described here are drawn from across epistemological and disciplinary boundaries.
Questions to Consider:
1. Identify and discuss the six different technique dimensions
2. What is metacoding and how does it assist a research in their study?
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Article 3: Anders, A. D., & Lester, J. N. (2014). Lessons from interdisciplinary qualitative research: learning to work against a single story. Qualitative Research, 1468794114557994.
Summary: In this article, the authors consider the everyday practices and methodological and theoretical tensions of interdisciplinary, qualitative work. In particular, the authors discuss the varied interpretations of focus group data from Burundian men and women with refugee status and explore the consequences of representations that result in deficit-based understandings. The authors highlight how through our research process we learned that following participants, rather than leading with our disciplines, deepened our understanding and complicated our representations
Questions to Consider:
1. How do the authors interpret and represent resettlement in their study?
2. How can interdisciplinary can used in a study? How did the authors use it in their study?
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Article 4: Newman, L. C. (2002). Macroergonomic Methods: Interviews and Focus Groups. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 46(1), 1355-1359.
Summary: In this article, the author discusses macroergonomic methods, such as interviews and focus groups. Both the interviewing and focus group processes have been around and in use as tools for gathering information for decades. Individual as well as group interviews are windows to an understanding of the behaviors of those being interviewed. Focus groups, specifically, are viewed as a window into the human condition and human interaction. Although, the individual interview is one of the most widely used methods for collecting qualitative data, focus groups have recently gained more popularity among qualitative researchers as a method of choice.
Questions to Consider:
1. Discuss the interviewing method used by the author.
2. What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of using interviews and focus groups in a study?