Problem: Analyze the following information
Restate your research question, your chosen approach, and your sampling:
"How do adolescents
"How do adolescents feel about goal therapy and their perceived success?"
Approach: I started with grounded theory, the best approach for my research study.
The grounded theory approach is a qualitative research methodology that attempts to unravel the meanings of people's interactions, social actions, and experiences. In other words, these explanations are grounded in the participants' interpretations or explanations. I am asking individual students how they feel about goal therapy and whether they will succeed as participants.
Sampling: I will use purposeful sampling, which enables me to select participants based on their characteristics, knowledge, experiences, or other criteria. In my study, I work in a middle school where my participants are adolescents.
Identify the key elements of data analysis that are consistent with your chosen approach to propose your analysis plan:
Grounded theory is a qualitative research methodology used to explore social processes and understand how participants interpret reality. Key theoretical principles of grounded theory include iterative data collection and analysis, constant comparison, and theoretical sampling. The researcher's role in knowledge creation is explicitly recognized in constructivist grounded theory, which involves collecting data through various methods such as interviews, observations, and document review. The analytic process in grounded theory involves flexible coding phases, moving from initial coding to higher-level focused codes and finally to axial coding to achieve a conceptual understanding situated in the study context. The basic principle of grounded theory is that hypotheses and theories emerge bottom-up from the data rather than top-down from existing theory. Researchers abstract hypotheses or theories from existing data sets and refine them as more data becomes available. Grounded theory analysis involves open coding, grouping open codes into categories, and abstracting these categories to capture the essential meaning of the phenomenon. The method aims to discover new insights, test those insights, and build partial understandings into a broader domain theory through layered coding and continual reexamination of the data.
Choose one coding method and code both interviews:
I chose to code both of my interviews manually. I used a Microsoft Word document to list data similarities. I would highlight each topic in a different color to systematically categorize excerpts to find themes and patterns in my data.
- Relaxed
- Sensitive
- Comfortable
- Worried
- Stressed
- Nervous
- Trusting
- Loving
- Comfortable
- Support
- Difficulty
- Barriers
Patton, M. Q. (2015). Qualitative research & evaluation methods: Integrating theory and practice (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE
Chapter 8, "Qualitative Analysis and Interviewing" (pp. 520-651)