Doing Qualitative Research 4e by Silverman

Doing Qualitative Research 4e by Silverman is the 4th edition of the book authored and copyrighted by David Silverman and published in 2013 by SAGE Publications Inc. and affiliated companies.

• Adjacency pairs. Consecutive actions which are grouped in pairs and constrain what the next speaker may do (e.g. questions and answers).
• Analytic induction. The equivalent to the statistical testing of quantitative associations to see if they are greater than might be expected at random (random error). Using AI, the researcher examines a case, and, where appropriate, redefines the phenomenon and reformulates a hypothesis until a universal relationship is shown (Fielding, 1988: 7–8).
• Anecdotalism. Found where research reports appear to tell entertaining stories or anecdotes but fail to convince the reader of their scientific credibility.
• CAQDAS. Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software.
• Case study. Research based on the study of a limited number of naturally occurring settings.
• Chicago School. A form of sociological ethnography usually assumed to originate in the 1920s when students at the University of Chicago were instructed to put down their theory textbooks and to get out on to the streets of their city and use their eyes and ears. It led to a series of studies of the social organization of the city and of the daily life of various occupational groups.
• Coding. Putting data into theoretically defined categories in order to analyse them.
• Cognitive anthropology. Attempts to understand the structures that organize how people perceive the world. This leads to the production of ethnographies, or conceptually derived descriptions, of whole cultures, focused on how people communicate.
• Concepts. Clearly specified ideas deriving from a particular model.
• Constructionism. A model which encourages researchers to focus upon how phenomena come to be what they are through the close study of interaction in different contexts. It is opposed to naturalism.
• Content analysis. Involves establishing categories and systematic linkages between them, and then counting the number of instances when those categories are used in a particular item of text.
• Contextual sensitivity. Involves the recognition that apparently uniform social institutions (e.g. 'tribes', 'families', 'crime') take on different meanings in different contexts.
• Continuer. An utterance which signals to a listener that what they have just said has been understood and that they should now continue (see conversation analysis).
• Control group. A group not given some stimulus provided to another group; a control group is used for comparative purposes.
• Conversation analysis. A qualitative approach based on an attempt to describe people's methods for producing orderly talk-ininteraction. It derives from the work of Harvey Sacks (1992).
• Credibility. The extent to which any research claim has been shown to be based on evidence.
• Culture. A common set of beliefs, values and behaviours.
• Deviant case analysis. In qualitative research, involves testing provisional hypotheses by 'negative' or 'discrepant' cases until all the data can be incorporated in your explanation.
• Discourse analysis. The study of 'the way versions of the world, of society, events, and inner psychological worlds are produced in discourse' (Potter, 2004: 202).
• Emotionalism. A model of social research in which the primary issue is to generate data which give an authentic insight into people's experiences. Emotionalists tend to favour open-ended interviews (see Gubrium and Holstein, 1997).
• Empirical. Based on evidence through observation or experiment.
• Empiricism. An approach which believes that evidence about the world does not depend upon models or concepts (see positivism).
• Ethics. Guidelines or principles relating to good professional practice.
• Ethnography. Puts together two different words: 'ethno' means 'folk', while 'graph' derives from 'writing'. Ethnography refers, then, to social scientific writing about particular folks.
• Ethnomethodology. The study of folk – or members' – methods. It seeks to describe the methods that persons use in doing social life. Ethnomethodology is not a methodology but a theoretical model.
• Extensive analysis. Searching through your whole dataset to test hypotheses generated by analysis of one or two cases.
• Field. The setting or place where ethnographic research takes place.
• Fieldnotes. Records of observations and speech fragments arising from the field.
• Focus groups. Group discussions usually based upon stimuli (topics, visual aids) provided by the researcher.
• Formal theories. Theories which relate findings from one setting to many situations or settings (see Glaser and Strauss, 1967).
• Frame. Using the metaphor of a picture frame, Goffman (1974) applies this term to reference how people treat what is currently relevant and irrelevant. Such treatment defines the frame through which a setting is constituted.
• Gatekeeper. Someone who is able to grant or refuse access to the field.
• Genealogical Following. Foucault (1977; 1979), the study of the ways in which discourses have been structured at different historical points.
• Generalizability. The extent to which a finding in one setting can be applied more generally.
• Grand theory. A term used by Mills (1959) to describe highly abstract speculation which has little or no use in research.
• Grounded theory. A theory which involves three stages: an initial attempt to develop categories which illuminate the data; an attempt to 'saturate' these categories with many appropriate cases in order to demonstrate their relevance; and the attempt to develop these categories into more general analytic frameworks with relevance outside the setting.
• Hermeneutics. An approach concerned with interpretation (originally derived from the study of biblical texts).
• Hyphenated phenomena. A concept which refers to the way in which apparently stable social phenomena (a 'tribe' or a 'family') take on different meanings in different contexts. Thus a-family-asseen-by-the-oldest-child takes on a different meaning than afamily-as-seen-by-the-youngest (see constructionism).
• Hypothesis. A testable proposition often based on an educated guess.
• Idiom. A term used by Gubrium and Holstein (1997) to describe a set of analytical preferences for particular concepts, styles of research and ways of writing (see model).
• Inductive. Based on the study of particular cases rather than just derived from a theory.
• Interactionism. A theory, commonly used in qualitative sociological research, which assumes that our behaviour and perceptions derive from processes of interaction with other people.
• Intervening variable. A variable which is influenced by a prior factor and goes on to influence another. Commonly used in quantitative research to work out which statistical association may be spurious.
• Interview society. A term used by Atkinson and Silverman (1997) to point out the ways in which interviews have become a central medium for understanding who we are.
• Laboratory study. A method used in quantitative research in which subjects are placed in an artificial environment and their responses to various stimuli are measured.
• Leverage. Used by Marx (1997) to describe ways of finding multiple publishing outlets for one piece of research.
• Low-inference descriptors. Recording observations 'in terms that are as concrete as possible, including verbatim accounts of what people say, for example, rather than researchers' reconstructions of the general sense of what a person said, which would allow researchers' personal perspectives to influence the reporting' (Seale, 1999: 148) (see reliability).
• Member. Used by Garfinkel (1967) to refer to participants in society. It is a shorthand term for 'collectivity member' (see ethnomethodology).
• Membership categorization device. A collection of categories (e.g. baby, mommy, father = family; male, female = gender) and some rules about how to apply these categories.
• Methodology. Refers to the choices we make about appropriate models, cases to study, methods of data gathering, forms of data analysis etc., in planning and executing a research study.
• Methods. Specific research techniques. These include quantitative techniques, like statistical correlations, as well as techniques like observation, interviewing and audio-recording.
• Models. Provide an overall framework for how we look at reality (e.g. positivism, naturalism and constructionism). They tell us what reality is like and the basic elements it contains ('ontology') and what are the nature and status of knowledge ('epistemology'). See also idioms.
• Narrative analysis. The study of the organization of stories (e.g. beginning, middle and end; plots and characters) that makes stories meaningful or coherent in a form appropriate to the needs of a particular occasion.
• Naturalism. A model of research which seeks to minimize presuppositions in order to witness subjects' worlds in their own terms (Gubrium and Holstein, 1997).
• Naturally occurring data. Data which derive from situations which exist independently of the researcher's intervention.
• Normative. Pertaining to a norm or value; prescriptive.
• Operational definitions. Working definitions which allow the measurement of some variable within quantitative research.
• Paradigm. A conceptual framework (see model).
• Paradigmatic. A term used in structuralism to indicate a polar set o f concepts or activities where the presence of one denies the existence of the other (e.g. a red traffic light).
• Participant observation. A method that assumes that, in order to understand the world 'first hand', you must participate yourself rather than just observe at a distance. This method was championed by the early anthropologists but is shared by some ethnographers.
• Positivism. A model of the research process which treats 'social facts' as existing independently of the activities of both participants and researchers. For positivists, the aim is to generate data which are valid and reliable, independently of the research setting.
• Postmodernism. A contemporary approach which questions or seeks to deconstruct both accepted concepts (e.g. the 'subject' and the 'field') and scientific method. Postmodernism is both an analytical model and a way of describing contemporary society as a pastiche of insecure and changing elements.
• Preference organization. A concept derived from conversation analysis which suggests that recipients of actions recognize a preference for what they should do next.
• Recipient design. Work that is designed for a particular audience (the term derives from conversation analysis where it is used to describe how all actions are implicitly designed in this way).
• Reflexivity. A term deriving from ethnomethodology where it is used to describe the self-organizing character of all interaction so that any action provides for its own context. Mistakenly used to refer to self-questioning by a researcher.
• Relativism. A value position where we resist taking a position because we believe that, since everything is relative to its particular context, it should not be criticized.
• Reliability. 'The degree of consistency with which instances are assigned to the same category by different observers or by the same observer on different occasions' (Hammersley, 1992) (see validity).
• Researcher-provoked data. Data which are actively created and, therefore, would not exist apart from the researcher's intervention (e.g. interviews, focus groups).
• Respondent validation. Involves taking one's findings back to the subjects being studied. Where these people verify one's findings, it is argued, one can be more confident of their validity.
• Rewriting of history. A term used by Garfinkel (1967) to refer to the way in which any account retrospectively finds reasons for any past event.
• Romanticism. An approach taken from nineteenth-century thought in which authenticity is attached to personal experiences (see emotionalism).
• Sample, sampling. A statistical procedure for finding cases to study. Sampling has two functions: it allows you to feel confident about the representativeness of your sample, and such representativeness allows you to make broader inferences.
• Semiotics. The study of signs (from speech, to fashion, to Morse code).
• Social constructionism. See constructionism.
• Social structure. A term used in sociology and anthropology to describe the institutional arrangements of a particular society or group (e.g. family and class structures).
• Social survey. A quantitative method involving the study of large numbers of people, often through the use of questionnaires.
• Structuralism. A model used in anthropology which aims to show how single cases relate to general social forms. Structural anthropologists draw upon French social and linguistic theory of the early twentieth century, notably Ferdinand de Saussure and Emile Durkheim. They view behaviour as the expression of a 'society' which works as a 'hidden hand' constraining and forming human action.
• Subculture. A set of beliefs, values and behaviours shared by a particular group.
• Substantive theory. A theory about a particular situation or group. Can be used to develop formal theory.
• Syntagmatic. A term used within semiotics to denote the order in which related elements occur (e.g. how colours follow one another in traffic lights).
• Textual data. Documents and/or images which have become recorded without the intervention of a researcher (e.g. through an interview).
• Theories. Ideas which arrange sets of concepts to define and explain some phenomenon.
• Thick description. A term from anthropology and ethnography used to describe research reports which analyse the multiple levels of meaning in any situation (see Geertz, 1973).
• Triangulation. The comparison of different kinds of data (e.g. quantitative and qualitative) and different methods (e.g. observation and interviews) to see whether they corroborate one another.
• Turn-taking. The sequential organization of speech acts (see conversation analysis).
• Validity. 'The extent to which an account accurately represents the social phenomena to which it refers' (Hammersley, 1990: 57). Researchers respond to validity concerns by describing 'the warrant for their inferences' (Fielding and Fielding, 1986) (see reliability).
• Variables. Factors which are isolated from one another in order to measure their relationship; usually described in quantitative research.