This essay is going to show an analytical overview of qualitative research project in group work that studies the media influence on refugee crisis to the UoS (University of Sheffield) students. Accessing a semi-structured interview, it will present a discussion of how to develop our group’s research topic; the issues happened in the individual interview experience; and teamwork in the group work. The overview will then provide some suggestions from the novice experience after each section of the discussion. It is hoped that the overview could give some practical suggestions, which could develop a better qualitative research in the future.
Choosing a research site
Choosing a research topic
Qualitative research provides and requires a great extent of ‘flexibility and freedom to explore a phenomenon in depth (Strauss and Corbin, 1990:37), therefore it should not be constrained by previous research and knowledge. In our project, we initially spotted on one current issue, migration and refugee crisis. It is believed that the provision of flexibility of qualitative approach could provide an in-depth knowledge of how people formulate their thoughts on migrants and refugees via media. However, the flexibility approach might lead to time consuming to finalize our research topic. Irvine and Gaffikin (2006) commented that huge time investment is needed to access to different kinds of topic. Since the area of migration and refugee crisis covers various and broad issues, it could lead to a confusion of how to develop our research topic at first. As in our preliminary of literature findings, we found that mass media shaped public opinion in different perspectives, including positive and negative portrayal of migrants and refugees; economic and cultural perspective; and political agenda, etc. (Caviedes, 2015; O'Rourkea et al., 2006; Blackburn and Scharrer, 2015). There was a discussion of whether the need to narrow down the topic in order to concentrate on several issues in this research. Nevertheless, the narrowed topic could be contrary to the ontological nature of the qualitative approach. The hypothesis would be established, because some issues presumably should be influenced by media. Therefore, in our project, we did not pin down our topic.
Choosing the research respondent
Concerning the research respondent, it is capable to have a great extent of impact on the nature of qualitative approach in social research. The potential of qualitative research not only could generate new knowledge (Robson and McCartan, 2016; Curtis and Curtis, 2011), but also to ‘inform critically public politics, existent social movements, and daily community life’ (Fine and Weis, 1996: 264 – 265). Apart from the importance of choosing a research topic, the selection of research respondent is also essential to the qualitative research study. The studied respondent’s uniqueness of the life style and culture could determine the outcome of the research (Irvine and Gaffikin (2006). From our bibliography showed the explicit different kinds of opinion towards migration between different socio-economic group and educational level (O'Rourkea et al., 2006). In order to show a greater extent of media influence on public opinion, undergraduate students were involved in our research, because they are more likely to access information via media and they might have less possibly impacts directly from other migration influence.
Moreover, the selection of respondents could lead to a problem of sampling, as Miles and Huberman (1984:36) raised the question ’knowing, then, that one cannot study everyone everywhere doing everything, even within a single case, how does one limited the parameters of a study?’. Instead of a reviewing the whole issue of sampling determination, the discussion will examine the type of sampling. Maxwell (1996) shows the advantages of applying the ‘purposeful sampling’ (Patton, 1990: 169, cited in Maxwell, ibid.), which regards as ‘selecting those times, settings, and individuals that can provided you with the information that you need to in order to answer your research questions’ (Maxwell, ibid.: 70). In our study, it is required a small sample size of qualitative research; therefore randomization could be not suitable, which is reasonably beneficial to large sample size (Light et al., 1990).
It is suggested that a research site ought to be chosen which could offer the field not only for the collection of fruitful and rich data, but also flexibility about the research topic, and thus we could dig into the potential field that enables to think radically and flexibly about what the respondents concern.
Issues within interviewing experience
Interpretive issue
In qualitative research, the issue of interpretation could be a challenge of how to make sense of what has been learnt. Denzin (1998) stated that there was only interpretation in social science and nothing could speak for it. John Van Maanen (1988) also stated the strong interpretation positon in qualitative research that the interpreters were story tellers, who told the narrative tales. It could bring about various concerns about the impact of researcher. It is then raised up the question in the design of the interview: ‘how the interview should be conducted? And how is the role of researcher as interviewer?, in order to meet the acceptability of amount and type of researcher influences.
In our group’s interview design, we planned two opened questions (see Appendix 2) in order to provide freedom and encourage the interviewee to answer what they think. After that, we selected few articles from different media in terms of both positive and negative portrayal of refugees, and ask the interviewee’s opinion after reading the text and the photography in the articles. Despite the construction of the research questions seem relatively open to the interviewees, the interaction between researcher and interviewee could be another key to result in the interpretative issue. As Irvine and Gaffikin (2006) showed that the researcher’s experience and opinions could influence the choice of topic and continued to influence the focus on selecting the data for analysis and the interpretation of the data, it raises the concern of the role of researcher in qualitative research.
The role of the research in qualitative
For a novice qualitative researcher, it could be a muddy concept of how to be a good interviewer. The complexity of the interviewer role lays on different aspects, including the techniques of data collection, the character of data and the way of data processing and presentation (Fink, 2000). It could be a series of hurdle to overcome the interview process without clarifying and solving these fundamental problems in conducting the interview. Glensne and Peshkin (1992:83) raised the question of ‘how much of your non research self can be present without contaminating or distorting the interview’, which could express my worries of positing the role of researcher during the interview. From my interview experience, I did not ask many additional questions so as to avoid my large proportion of involvement that might lead to a guide throughout the interview. I also found myself nervous so that I stopped asking followed-up questions for further details or clarification of interviewee’s thought. The setting is semi-structured interview, which is the content are often modified based on the flow of the interview and unplanned questions as follow-up (Robson and McCartan, 2016). However, I relied on the planned questions mostly and lacked enough of interaction with the interviewee. Due to the oversight of the important of researcher role, it could need to a determined negative effect of the depth in collecting data. In order to conduct a good interview, the techniques of conducting an interview are also important to evaluate.
Technique of conducting a good interview
The approach of how to conduct a good interview is not only simply required a critical theoretical development, but also a technical one which the interpretive reflection, would be essential to influence the research purpose. We collected our data through semi-structured interview in our qualitative research. A good interview acquires the capacity of modifying the questions and enquiry during interview; and thus respondent could provide more clarified opinion and thought to the researcher for collecting the data (Robson and McCartan, 2016). Therefore, both the researcher and the interviewee could need to open their ‘thoughts, feelings, knowledge, and experience (Patton, 2002:353). However, it could be difficult to open the thought to a stranger or not familiarised person. At the beginning of the interview section, there was an awkward moment that seemed to be difficult to carry on an undistorted communication. However, after asking a few warm-up questions, the atmosphere turned better and it could sustain a relative opened interaction throughout the interview. However, if the research questions only remain on the level of ‘what do you think of migrants or refugees?’, the interview might not collect in-depth data or even could not meet the purpose of the study. Therefore, I would like to address the importance of functions of research questions. Maxwell (1996) revealed that there are some considerable problems in designing the research question such as too focused question, unexamined assumption in research questions and no discernible relationship to the purpose of the research. According to my interview experience, I might fall in to the problem of too general in research questions. LeCompte and Preissle (1993) showed that the distinguishing between the purpose and the research question might be challenging to ask unset questions, because the researcher needs to identify the ignorance and challenge the assumptions. According to my transcript (Appendix 1), I just asked few questions about media influence only in terms of newspaper, rather than asking various media type such as, social media and new media. Although the atmosphere of the interview was good for communication, the interaction between interviewer and interviewee might not be enough. I might not success in encourage the interviewee expresses more opinion on different issues around refugee crisis and thus it could give rise to few links back to our research purpose. There could be a danger in not formulating the research questions with other groupmates’ component of interview design (Maxwell, 1996). It is highly suggested to observe more interviews, such as different interview video. Although it could be difficult to see the direct effect in the technique of designing questions, observing more interviews could help get the sense of how to expand the research questions.
Teamwork
In this study, it is a group-based work. It might be some opinion that there are many practical research and projects can be done outstandingly by individuals and do not need teamwork. However, it cannot deny the benefits of teamwork in expanding the opportunities of learning through different partners and thus to develop their potentials mutually. Most importantly, teamwork can develop skills that could apply beyond university. Bailey (1990, cited in Hall and Hall, 1996) argued that teamwork skills were vital to the future working industry, by highlighting the differences between works in educational systems and real workplace, ‘our educational system is based on individual work… The ability of students to work with colleagues to “deliver the goods” by a set date is given little prominence, despite being a key element of the world of work’ (Bailey, 1990:69, cited in Hall and Hall, ibid).
Apart from that teamwork is essential to the future workplace; they dynamic of teamwork could be a key source of support for individuals. On one hand, it can help remind the sense of obligation; on the other hand, it can also help weight up the effect of dependency on each groupmate (Hall and Hall, ibid). From our group’s experience, firstly, in deciding the topic, we come up the research area very soon; however, we did not have many discussions to develop further in details. There was a lack of consensus of the purpose of the research and design the research question. I also found confusion in conducting the interview as I did not know what additional questions could ask in the interview. Regarding in writing report, we might not work well as a group because we agreed to allocate different tasks and then worked independently. It seemed that we had week bonding so that we rushed every piece of work in last minute. Although there were some problems or arguments happened during this group project, the benefits can weigh out the issues because this is the first time to us to conduct a formal qualitative research.
Conclusion
This essay provided an analytical overview of some problems appeared in the qualitative research project, including choosing the suitable research site; issues within interview experience and teamwork. This qualitative research is a value-added opportunity to learn not only a great deal of technical and theoretical knowledge to develop research skills, but also the attitude towards teamwork, which is essential to employability and future career. However, this essay could not cover whole bunch of problems or issues in qualitative research, it should be noted that this essay could be a part of reference for novice researcher and it is hoped to useful suggestions could be provided.