Qualitative Research Report - Essay Example

? Qualitative Research Report Introduction This is a research based on analysis of various qualitative interviews as the chosen data collection method among students. The interviews objective is to clearly understand the experiences of different students in the campus in all aspects of life, including social, academic and economic values the students uphold in the university. The qualitative interviews investigate the attitudes which these students express towards various aspects of life. The title of the research is “Qualitative Research Report”. It is an appropriate topic because it discusses the qualitative aspects of student life in the campus including attitude, emotions, likes and dislikes. It goes further into exploring the nature of socialization among the students. Qualitative attributes of the students cannot be measured in magnitudes. For example, it is not easy to measure the amount of emotions, love, hatred and happiness (Becker & Geer, 1982). The research explores a set of questions such as: Do students have common feelings and experience in the campus life? How does qualitative attributes of foreign students compare with those of indigenous students? What is the common challenge in the students’ campus experience and what are the aspects that students like most? What are the responses of students about changing environmental location from one specific location to another and also from one university to another? Are there any inherent risks to which the students are exposed to and are there any ways to mitigate or prevent the risks from affecting the lives of the students? The answers to these questions will essentially articulate the objectives of the research and act as the guiding principles to remain relevant to the research topic. This research makes critical comparisons between the various experiences that students have about campus life and their responses. It then analyses the information by converting the data from qualitative to quantitative. This goes through a very complex process of assigning quantities to the qualitative parameters in order to measure the magnitudes of the qualitative responses. The rationale of the research is to use the sample responses to the interviews and show clearly that the students respond to the questions in diverse ways, a fact that will create a variation in the distribution of the information. In the questions and responses, the interviewers are attempting to create atmospheres that enable the interview respondents to be relaxed, confident, honest and openly interactive. 2. Methods This research uses purely qualitative interviews for data collection because the nature of data that it uses for analysis and the entire process is qualitative. The set of questions to which the students are producing responses are open and accept varied description, which cannot be measured. It then falls within the discretion of the research expert to judge and assign certain weights for measuring the effects of the data on the topic of study that we are undertaking. The qualitative interviews are very essential for this research compared to other methods according to Bogdan and Biklen (1982), because it allows the respondents to provide candid information. In quantitative methods, the questions provided are more often closed and restrict the respondents to fixed answers such as “Yes” and “No”, or even numerical responses. This may not provide the exact position of the facts, since they prompt responses that are based on personal prejudices. Qualitative data are easy to manage since they have a high flexibility level regarding the freedom to express opinions (Richards & Richards, 1991). The best target group for our research is the university students for obvious reasons that the research topic is about the experiences that students have in the university. The reason why we restrict ourselves to interviewing students within the campus is that we cannot expect students to go out of the campus to get interviews lest we interfere with their class programs. In organizing the qualitative interviews, we principally had to brainstorm in group work to formulate the research topic, the research objectives and hence the kind of questions that could enable us to acquire the information we needed to accomplish our task (Praverand, 1984). We also had to make a critical consideration of sensitive factors in deciding on the target group for our study as Becker (1986) suggests. Of course in the formulation of the study objectives, we formulated the research questions to guide our group work into attaining the required objectives. During the interview, we simply distributed our research team members to different groups of students at random. The team members then randomly selected students for interviews, where each of us asked questions and recorded the responses after each question. The team had also discussed ethical issues related to interviews such as clarity, the limits of enquiring about personal matters, avoidance of insulting remarks and also allowing the respondents adequate time to respond to questions (Bryman, 1988). The number of questions was simply the same from one interview to another, but the responses clearly different, indicating that different people had different ways of responding to life issues. It also showed that no two different students had the same approach to the experiences in the campus. In the interview, the respondents had enough time to answer questions and the interviewers were keen on giving the respondents sufficient time and attention to answer the questions accepting to clarify the complex ones (Patton, 1980). 3. Analysis In the interviews, we listed the responses that were provided for all the questions and compared the responses in terms of numbers. This was to enable of have mechanisms for doing interpretation and presentation before we reach the statistical stage of producing recommendations and conclusions for action points to commence. Our sample set is the number of interview that we carried out, that is 5. An example of the analysis we did and found responses are as follows: Question: Experiences of living in Nottingham: Responses: Response Number Good 3 Bad 1 Not Sure 1 Table 1: Students experiences in campus life The interpretation of the data is that out of the 2 university students who were interviewed, three of them had good experiences in the campus life, one had a bad experience while one was not sure of the exact response to provide. Out of the responses, we proceeded to conduct data presentation in a graphical way to show the strength of the qualitative data in a quantitative way. The result appears as follows: Figure 1: Classification of students by Experience in campus life From my own interview, the theme was to discover the impact of the experiences of student life to their other aspects of life that affect their stay and socialization in the university. This was based on the discovery of the responses that we gather from the student and performing the analysis by classifying the students in categories depending on the particular information that we are discussing at any one time. In the group, we raised a theme to establish the ultimate feeling that students have in residing in campus life and review the aspects of the student’s experiences to notice the areas that essentially require improvement (Becker & Geer, 1982). The numbers of students affected by negative indicators reflect the dire improvement need in the locations that we are handling (Vogt, 2007). We thus made collective review of the theme based on the classification of students. From the sample classification of the student according to their comments on experiences of campus life, we converted the numbers into percentages based on the total sample set of 5 students. We then had the students with good experiences as 60 percent, bad experiences as 20 percent and the unsure students as 20 percent. We then proceeded as a group to present the information in a graphical was as it appears in the graph below. Figure 2: Students Experiences in Campus life classified by percentages We proceeded to do the same classification using all other parameters in the various questions and presented the responses based on the various answers that the students gave to the questions. In certain cases, the analysis presents similar responses for all the students. It is not logical to make decisions using the data of the people who are neutral or not sure about their ideas. Therefore, the university our research would advise the university administration to improve the living standards of Nottingham to encourage the few who are unsure and those who do report that living in Nottingham is a bad idea. The other scenario is where we tested the attitude of the students towards moving away from home into the campus. Some students liked the idea of staying away from home arguing that it did not present any negative difference and it also gave them the much needed freedom they required away from their guardians and parents. On the other hand, others argued that staying away from home separated them from home. They did not therefore support the idea. The third section of the respondents remained neutral; neither supporting nor opposing the idea of staying away from home. Among the 5 respondents, we managed to prepare the following data: Response Number Support The idea 2 Oppose the idea 1 Neutral 2 Table 2: Students response on staying away from Home Figure 3: Students response about staying away from Home Analyzing by percentage, the students that supported the idea are 40 percent; those who opposed were 20 percent while the neutral students were 40 percent. The graph therefore was as follows: Figure4: Percentages Students response about staying away from Home Out of the data analysis, we can proceed to make interpretation that those who oppose the idea of staying away from home are less than the supporters of the idea. It therefore indicates to the university administration that majority of the students prefer staying away from home. To that effect, it would be advisable for the administration to increase the number of hostels to accommodate a large number of students. 4. Reflexivity Our research was a relevant task, considering the various experiences that students have in the campuses. It could serve the purpose of modification of the campus to fit the expectations of the majority of students. This of course is the theme of our study as a group to enable the campus administration to make informed decisions (Balnaves & Caputi, 2001). The research method was effective and it gave room to the respondents to provide relevant information that could possibly lead us as the researchers to the appropriate responses and classification. We thus had an easy time reading through the responses to make the classifications in logical order to present data that could possibly lead to the accurate information that communicates the exact picture we expected to answer the research questions. Our experiences in the interview differed from one interviewer to another depending on the moods of the students we were interviewing. Some students were talking a lot while others had to be assisted in answering almost every question. This was of course quite disturbing to the interviewers in these categories. Other students were just not willing to co-operate, because they pretended to be unable to give answers to even simple obvious questions. It was boring for some interviewers to receive the responses such as “I don’t know” for very obvious interrogative questions. The one thing that I could do differently in the subsequent interviews is to supplement qualitative interviews with qualitative questionnaires as Singh (2007) suggests. This could assist the interviewers to be able to handle the stubborn students who do not take the interviews seriously. At the same time, I would avoid asking questions on certain open features such as “When did you join the campus” after getting leading information. For example, this question should not come after asking the student “How old are you in the campus?” The latter question is leading to the former. I recommend the method that we used since we did not waste time disturb students by knocking at their doors to ask questions. The research work was eventually successful in meeting the objectives and answering the research questions. References Balnaves, M., & Caputi, P., 2001. Introduction to Quantitative Research Methods: An Investigative Approach. London: Sage. Becker, H., & Geer, B., 1982. Participant Observation: The Analysis of Qualitative Field Data, in Burgess, R. (ed.) Field Research: A Sourcebook and Field Manual. London: Allen & Unwin. Becker, H., 1986. Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book or Article. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bogdan, R. C., & Biklen, S. K., 1982. Qualitative Research for Education: An Introduction to Theory and Methods. Boston and London: Allyn & Bacon Inc. Bryman, A., 1988. Quantity and Quality in Social Research. London: Unwin Hyman Ltd. Patton, M. Q., 1980. Qualitative Evaluation Methods. London: Sage. Praverand, P., 1984. Tomorrow is already Today: Development Education and the New 21st Century Paradigm, in Garrett, R. (ed.) Education and Development. Beckenham, Kent: Croom Helm. Richards, L., & Richards, T., 1991. The Transformation of Qualitative Method. London: Sage. Singh, K., 2007. Quantitative Social Research Methods. London: Sage. Vogt, W. P., 2007. Quantitative research methods for professionals. New York: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon. Read More