Introduction
INTRODUCTION TO THE MANUAL
Qualitative research in countries of South has remained neglected for far too long. While there is a growing recognition of the potential inherent in rigorous and good quality qualitative approaches to research, the know-how pertaining to the why and how has remained neglected. This manual is a small attempt at redressing this imbalance and is an outcome of a research partnership between institutions of the South and the North.
Our research partnership not only demanded a range of research skills, both quantitative and qualitative in nature, but it also brought together people from varied disciplines, where it became crucial to foster a shared understanding of not only how to do research, but also around what we meant by research itself. This manual presents a snapshot of how we developed a programme that enabled all of us to engage in a useful dialogue (and indeed practice various skills) about qualitative research. It formed the backbone of workshops that were organised in India, Kenya, Ghana and Pakistan, and then again in India. What is presented here might seem misleadingly straightforward: but the reality is far from this. Each workshop helped us evolve this manual in different ways and it has changed considerably from the original – we hope for the better. The spirit of dialogue, experimentation and a belief in the value of qualitative research that we developed during the process of refining the manual underpins our desire to share this work. We do not believe the process is over now that the manual is on the web: we hope everyone who reads and uses this material will tell us how it went, and engage with us and other users to adapt and improve it.
Who can use this manual?
This manual is designed to assist facilitators, with some level of experience of teaching and practice of qualitative research, to train others to conduct qualitative research. We hope that it would be of help to:
academicians in the Global South who may wish to train graduate students researchers who would like to train people working in local NGOs, who are now more commonly becoming involved in research people working in international organisations who may wish to train their staff members to undertake or commission qualitative research in Southern contexts. The skills developed through this approach would be of benefit even for evaluation of programmes, a task commonly undertaken by many agencies.
It is desirable for participants already to have some background knowledge of qualitative research. Some participants might have hands-on experience, but more may have a rudimentary knowledge of the theory of qualitative research, without any practical experience. Facilitators might consider providing people in the former category with some basic readings as preparation for the workshop (though the manual is designed to be as user-friendly as possible for people with very little academic background in social research). In some places we have also assumed that participants may have had more experience, or more understanding, of carrying out household surveys or analysing quantitative research projects: one of our underlying principles has been to find ways of helping such participants ‘unlearn’ techniques that are suited to quantitative methods (such as following a questionnaire without deviation) but are not suited to qualitative methods.
It is, however, essential for the facilitator to have knowledge and experience of undertaking qualitative research: the more the facilitators can refer to practical examples from their own experience, the better. It is also highly desirable for two or more people to act as facilitators: though one of the authors [RJ] has led a workshop on his own, it was exhausting and not as good for the participants as those workshops where two or three people shared the presentations, assisted with small group work, etc
Suggestions on how to use the manual
This manual can be used as it is to run a training programme, but we would encourage you not to use it as a “prescription”. We hope that you will adjust the manual (from the number of days, to the kind of readings etc) to suit the needs of the participants. An important issue to flag here is that the manual should be used by the facilitator and NOT the participants. It is not designed to be a stand-alone text to be given to the participants for them to use on their own: we believe strongly that much of the benefit of using our approach comes from people learning together, and undertaking practical exercises and small-group work to reinforce the messages and help to develop the necessary skills.
Through out the manual we are encouraging a very interactive and engaged learning style, which is driven by a focus on ‘learning by doing’. Many sessions involve brain-storming, or small-group work, and we recommend keeping the number of sessions involving a didactic, lecture style, to the minimum. But do experiment with alternative activity-based teaching methods if you are happier with them, if they suit your participants better, or you just think they will work better. In keeping with this approach, we have put in place a 7 day programme which involves a range of activities, such as conducting interviews, note taking etc. These activities range from working in a one-to-one scenario, conducting small group tasks, and going into the field for observations of social interactions. Each session is prefaced with a list of things that you require to run the session (e.g., flip charts, audio recorders etc), a list of readings that will support you, and some readings which might be useful to share with the participants. Once again, if you’d rather use a computer and projector to record the responses of participants elicited by brainstorming, instead of a flip chart, we would encourage you to try this out – it has sometimes worked for us.
As noted earlier, the activities involve a lot of engagement with the participants, and the facilitator’s role is to facilitate discussions. The sessions which worked well are the ones when the participants got engaged and really spent time making sense of the activities, and we think time is necessary to let the issues sink in, so don’t try to rush things! In order to support some of this interaction we have, at various places, provided a list of responses generated at our various workshops, which can be useful supplements to your own discussions. These are not the only responses, but are designed to give the reader a sense of the range of responses that could be possible – and to help readers prepare for how to respond if similar responses come up in the sessions they run.
Hopes and Fears
In putting together this manual we are aware of some assumptions that we need to reflect upon:
1
While we believe in the value of qualitative research, this is not sufficient, as we believe that it is “quality qualitative research” which is imperative. In putting this training programme together we are not advocating that these 7 days will be sufficient to shape good qualitative researchers, rather we hope that we are supporting some initial steps towards considering, learning and engaging with the processes that are essential for good qualitative research. The skills being developed through this manual require further practice, reflection and updating.
2
By hosting this manual on the internet we are not assuming that the only people who will find this useful and are likely to be interested will have access to the internet. We would encourage you to share these materials with other colleagues who might find them useful. We are also working on a more accessible way of sharing this information and any thoughts from your end will be welcome. This is ‘open access’ work, and we do not claim copyright for non-commercial uses: if the materials are useful and are used, that will give us a great deal of pleasure. If you make copies of the materials for teaching purposes, please acknowledge this manual as the source (so that other people can easily find it) and let us know how you have developed the ideas.
3
In no way do we think that we have covered all the important issues in qualitative research. We are fully aware of the fact that we have engaged with only some of the central skills and a whole world of research methods and other issues still remain unaddressed. So we cannot stress strongly enough how much we would welcome feedback on any points which you feel “should” be included in any basic text engaging with qualitative research. We would also welcome information on how it worked for you – the changes that you made or did not make; how easy or complicated the hand outs were; any essential readings that would be useful to share with others. And if you decide eventually not to use the materials for some reason, do let us know: the feedback will be incredibly valuable. Hosting it on the web as an Open Educational Resource will hopefully make this task much simpler, and we hope to develop a community of qualitative research practice that will be much more stimulating, rewarding and interactive than is possible through the use of other media.
As a final note, we repeat that we see this manual as a starting point, not a final product. We believe that it has the ability to lay strong foundations for people to go on to become good qualitative researchers, even though the manual addresses only a limited range of issues. We hope that you will be inspired to use it, and with your ingenuity adapt it and indeed improve it.
Singal, N., and Jeffery, R. (2008). Qualitative Research Skills Workshop: A Facilitator's Reference Manual, http://oer.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/RECOUP, Cambridge: RECOUP (Research Consortium on Educational Outcomes and Poverty, http://recoup.educ.cam.ac.uk/). CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. (original page)
