Chapter 3

Method

This study of negotiated agreements is a qualitative descriptive study. Qualitative descriptive research studies obtain information about the current status of phenomena (Ary, Jacobs & Razavieh, 1979; Swatzell & Jennings, 2007). Qualitative descriptive research does not attempt to predict an outcome, it simply seeks organize large amounts of data and to answer the basic questions of who, what, when, where and how (Swatzell & Jennings, 2007). Sandeloweski (2000) describes qualitative descriptive research as being “especially amenable to obtaining straight and largely unadorned (i.e., minimally theorized or otherwise transformed or spun) answers to questions of special relevance to practitioners and policy makers”. (p. 337) While qualitative description is often an entry point to a research project, it is also a valuable method in and of itself (Sandelowski, 2000).

Content analysis is the preferred method for analyzing data in a qualitative descriptive study (Sandeloweski, 2000). Content analysis is the systematic description of the contents of a document (Anderson, 1990, Wallen & Fraenkel, 2001). It can be used in any context where the researcher wants to systematize and quantify information that is not previously organized (Wallen & Fraenkel, 2001). In content analysis, the researcher analyzes the occurrence of various words, statements, concepts, pictures, and ideas (Wallen & Fraenkel, 2001). The researcher develops categories to identify and then count and compare the elements being researched. While the categories are sometimes developed in advance, they generally emerge from a study of the data (Wallen & Fraenkel, 2001; Sandelowski, 2000). It is important that the researcher define the categories as precisely as possible, so that another researcher who uses them to examine the same material would find essentially the same results. After identifying and coding the data, the frequencies of the occurrence of the categories can be studied to arrive at conclusions about how often certain categories are presented in the documents analyzed (Wallen & Fraenkel, 2001).

The expected outcome of content analysis in a qualitative research study is a straightforward, well organized descriptive summary of the data (Sandelowski, 2000).

See the rest of the Method in the attached document. . .

Distance Education Terms in Faculty Contracts by Stephanie Delaney, JD is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.