1/ A thread on why I think collecting demographic data is important in qualitative research (& research more broadly) & a request for your thoughts on this. Am I alone in thinking this is important? I seem to be... based on experiences of ethics scrutiny this yr #AcademicChatter
2/ I get the sense that some researchers - esp those researching students - implicitly imagine their potential participants as the "usual suspects" (white, straight, nondisabled, middle class etc)... I've scrutinised several studies where disability (cog fog etc) would confound
3/ the quant results but no exclusion criteria & no demographics - I don't get it?! I've been told by white male students more than once that if for eg race/ethnicity aren't relevant to the research question there is no need to collect demog data on ethnicity. But as a white
4/ person I'm not convinced I'm a good authority on when ethnicity is & isn't relevant. I have been taught to see myself as existing outside of racial categories/as not racialised. More broadly it matters that in my discipline of psychology most research has been conducted with
5/ White people but is rarely framed as such. At the very, very least shouldn't we acknowledge when our participants are all/mostly white even if our research isn't explicitly about ethnicity? Back in the 1990s I remember my PhD supervisor railing against the refusal to collect
6/ data for "equal opportunities monitoring" as it was known then on sexuality. How can you know if things are un/equal if you're not collecting the data?! Another objection is that demographic questions are sensitive. I sort of get that but when you've asked people to describe
7/ their last orgasm, write a story on anal sex or draw public hair as @ginnybraun & I have done then asking someone their age seems rather straightforward! I wonder if people are worried about getting it wrong or causing offense? I think we need to accept that we might not get
8/ right for everyone (eg gender identity is a meaningful & inclusive concept for some, others will be baffled & some enraged). People are used to answering these kinds of questions more than ever & they are always voluntary - people can & do decline to answer. So I think
9/ collecting demographics is important for ethical reasons - if you're a British psychologist like me it's part of the ethical principle of respect & particularly respect for difference. It's also important for quality reasons - "situating the sample": bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.134…
10/ As an aside I do like checklist quality criteria but I have always treated them as inspiration & invitations (as I would any baking recipe - I have always been an unruly baker) not as cast in stone. Similarly demographics are important for what Lucy Yardley calls displaying
11/ sensitivity to context in qualitative research. How can we discuss the limitations of our "sample" & the knowledge generated from them if we have no demographics? I have heard worries about anonymity & that is always an important consideration. Work around can be as simple as
12/ compiling demographics in a table & not tagging data extracts or anonymising some data. To reduce threat it's important to explain to participants why you are collecting demographics - it can be as simple as - To help me understand something about the range of people taking
13/ part in this research I would be grateful if you could answer the following questions... @ginnybraun & I have a basic discussion of demogs in our textbook Successful Qualitative Research: uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/succ…
14/ For me the question shouldn't be do we collect demographics but how do we? When in data collection (eg start or end of a qual survey?), and how best to word questions. Click/tick box = easier to summarise; open ended = gets closer to how participants make sense of their
15/ identities/lives. At a minimum I usually collect age, sex/gender, race/ethnicity, disability, class, sexuality & occupation. Relationship status is also common (not marital status - ugh!), sometimes religion/belief, children... There are also more open options - what 5 words
15/ best describe your social and political affiliations?
17/ I would be grateful for any suggestions for readings in this area - especially around demogs in qual research. Searching online generated a lot of material on qualitative approaches to demographic research!

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More from @drvicclarke

28 May
1/ A thread with some tips on writing qualitative research dissertations - esp those using thematic analysis - including common problems to avoid (prompted by marking student projects). First tip - as @ginnybraun & I always say check local requirements! Broadly speaking, there
2/ are two styles of qual research reporting: 1) "add qual and stir" - default quant conventions slightly tweaked for qual: finding & filling the "gap" introduction & rationale, methodological critique of existing studies, separate "results" & discussion... 2) qual centric. The
3/ latter is far less well understood & recognised - I've had reviewers/editors insist on me reworking qual centric reports into something more conventional, examiners do the same to my students. So check what is required in your context. If a marker/examiner doesn't "get it"
Read 28 tweets
28 May
1/ To all those advocating saturation as *the* criterion for determining qual "sample" size (instead of Gender & Society's positivist qual 35 int minimum) please note that saturation has been critiqued for bloody decades as realist/positivist & not working for all qual. Here's
2/ Ian Dey in 1999 - yep over 20 years ago! - describing saturation as an "unfortunate metaphor": books.emeraldinsight.com/page/detail/gr…
3/ Here's me & @ginnybraun critiquing the use of saturation as information redundancy in thematic analysis research - arguing that saturation only makes sense in positivist/realist forms of TA. For our reflexive approach it simply doesn't work: tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…
Read 8 tweets
15 May
1/ A thread providing an overview of my & @ginnybraun's latest paper on #thematicanalysis - Conceptual & Design Thinking for Thematic Analysis in the APA journal Qualitative Psychology - I will link to an open access version at the end of the thread: psycnet.apa.org/record/2021-45…
2/ Why this paper? Because TA is closer to a method (trans theoretical technique) rather than a methodology (theoretically informed & delimited framework for research) researchers need to engage in careful conceptual & design thinking to produce coherent research.
3/ What Levitt et al. (2017) call research with "methodological integrity". Some argue TA is actually a challenging option because it necessitates conceptual & design thinking - we like to see this more positively as TA making visible the thinking necessary for quality research.
Read 16 tweets
4 Apr
1/ A thread on qual interviewing. I've been talking to students this week about to embark on their first interview so I thought I would share my tips here for anyone about to do the same! Feeling nervous/anxious about doing your first interview is normal! I am very shy/socially
2/ anxious & I take comfort in the fact an interview is a structured social encounter - you have a role to play, so does the interviewee. You will hit your stride - for most around interview 3/4. A practice run with a friend or family member can really help boost your confidence!
3/ If you have the opportunity to watch a research interview take it! There's no better way to learn. My PhD supervisors also encouraged their students to participate in research & that was so helpful to get a feel for an interview from the "inside". There are loads of different
Read 26 tweets
4 Apr
Following my tweet yesterday on the new edition of Analysing Qualitative Data in Psychology - if you're not familiar with this book here's why it's awesome - it covers 5 qual approaches - TA, IPA, grounded theory, discourse & narrative analysis. For each there is a "how to" guide
written by "experts" (e.g. me & @ginnybraun for TA, @BrettSmithProf for narrative analysis), then a doing chapter often written by a grad student/ECR applying the approach to an interview dataset - which is reproduced in the book, with further interviews on the companion website
So for the doing TA chapter @GarethRTerry shares his experience of using TA to analyse 2 interviews with ex-soldiers about their experiences of leaving the army. He starts with answering the 'many questions' of TA & reflecting on his assumptions before diving into the six phases.
Read 6 tweets
20 Aug 20
1/ Following the recent publication of a paper on online qualitative surveys with @ginnybraun @lgoatley @Elicia_Boulton & Charlotte McEvoy here's a thread of resources for qually survey research. Starting with that paper which is currently open access: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
2/ And an accompanying blog about why qually surveys are awesome: ijsrm.org/2020/08/19/onl…
3/ @ginnybraun & I first wrote about qually surveys in our textbook Successful Qualitative Research - the companion website includes egs of surveys and survey datasets for use in teaching: uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/succ…
Read 19 tweets

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