Essential Question: How will you format and disseminate your research?
The first step in writing up qualitative research is to figure out who your research is for, your audience. Next you choose the focus. This is where you go back to the purpose of your study. “The focus “states a purpose and then fulfills the promise. Coming up with a focus means deciding what you want to tell your reader. You should be able to state it in a sentence or two” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015, pp. 271). Before you can even start writing you must go through all of the data you have collected.
There are many barriers to writing. When you write you could be critiqued and this could be good or bad. People may scrutinize you or criticize your ideas. You could even have many flaws in your research and someone may point those out. These things can make you feel inadequate, and defeated (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015, pp. 274). But if you don’t put your work out there no one will ever be able to benefit from the work you did. Öhman and Löfgren give the following advice when writing up your research:
- The report should be easy to understand and clearly contextualized
- Keep short
- Be clear in presenting methods
- Avoid too much detailed descriptions of the results
- Relate your findings with existing knowledge and theory
- Provide a discussion of the applicability for theory development and practice of the research field
There is no format you have to follow when writing up your research. “In standard research reports, the problem that gave rise to the study is laid out early in the report” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015, pp. 276). This may be in an introductory section where you talk about your framework and include references. Next you may write about the setting of your research. You may choose to include a section about yourself including: your training, experience, philosophical orientation, and biases (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015, pp. 277). A methodology should be included, but where you include it depends on the audience. Every report will list the findings. This is where you write about what you found out from your research. You may choose to discuss your findings in the same section or start a new section to discuss your data. One of the hardest parts it to determine how much data and analysis you should include. “A good rule when considering how much information to include is that readers should have been given enough information to be able to carry out similar research themselves” (Anderson, 2010). In this section if might be of benefit to include displays, charts, or figures. “Keep the number of displays to a minimum; using just a few figures to represent important ideas will draw attention to those ideas” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015, pp. 284).
According to Pitchforth (1995), you could use the following structure for your paper: introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusion. I really like how this is laid out and it seems like how I wrote my science lab reports in undergrad. To me it seems the most natural and I plan to use this as my outline. To disseminate my results I really just plan to share with the class and others at my school or in the district who might be interested.
References
Anderson, C. (2010, October 11). Presenting and Evaluating Qualitative Research. Retrieved November 14, 2015, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2987281/
Merriam, Sharan B.; Tisdell, Elizabeth J. (2015-07-06). Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation (JOSSEY-BASS HIGHER & ADULT EDUCATION SERIES). Wiley. Kindle Edition.
Öhman, A., & Löfgren, M. (n.d.). News and updates. Retrieved November 14, 2015, from http://www.medicaljournals.se/jrm/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27&Itemid=56
Pitchforth, E., Porter, M., Van Tijlingen, E., & Forrest Keenan, K. (1995, December 3). Writing up and presenting qualitative research in family planning and reproductive health care. Retrieved November 14, 2015, from https://lra.le.ac.uk/bitstream/2381/309/1/Qual research paper 4 final revised.pdf
Sara- These are good suggestions when writing up the report from Öhman and Löfgren:
ReplyDelete- The report should be easy to understand and clearly contextualized
- Keep short
- Be clear in presenting methods
- Avoid too much detailed descriptions of the results
- Relate your findings with existing knowledge and theory
- Provide a discussion of the applicability for theory development and practice of the research field
I think the keep short one is going to be hard. That is good to know though. I plan to share my with others at my school as well.
It's good to know that there's not a set in stone format, I knew that from the reading, but it didn't really stick until I read your blog this morning. I'm one of those people who tend to think that if mine isn't in the same form or doesn't look the same as someone else's that I did it wrong, so having that in the back of my mind will help. I like how you related the form you are using to something you already have a lot of familiarity with, it seems that will help make it easier as you are analyzing information and deciding what is important to include and what isn't.
ReplyDeleteThe way you plan to write your report is very simple and easy to follow. I like keeping things simple. Are you sharing your findings with anybody other than the class?
ReplyDeleteA couple of co-workers at my school and at least one who is not at my school but is in the same district. Really I only plan to share with those who want to know more about it. I think I would need to do some more testing to really get any solid info. So it will all depend on how much more I want to try using it and how much research I want to do to learn other methods of using Twitter in the classroom.
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