News Archive

Communicative methodology: doing research for social impact

Overcoming inequalities in schools and learning communities is a current concern for many countries. Doing this through research requires a methodological approach oriented not only to describe and explain reality, but to look for solutions to the challenges that systematic underserved populations face in their daily lives. Aligned to the transformative ...

Show me the data: research reproducibility in qualtiative research

In quantitative methods, reproducibility is held as the gold standard for demonstrating research integrity. But threats to scientific integrity, such as fabrication of data and results, have led to some journals requiring data, syntax and prior registration of hypotheses to be made available as part of peer-review. While qualitative research reproducibility ...

Expert elicitation techniques – why are they important?

It is not always possible to collect quantitative data to estimate a wide variety of population parameters. There may be logistical, ethical or physical barriers that prevent data collection. Therefore, there are often gaps in quantitative models that need to be filled in other ways. Frequently, we turn to scientific and ...

Researching ageing: methodological opportunities and challenges

Gerontology is the study of ageing across the life course, and is a large and varied area of research, spanning many disciplines. In 2014, the median age of the UK population exceeded 40 for the first time¹. The UK population is ageing, that is, the proportion of older people is increasing ...

Can a computer do qualitative analysis?

It seems that everywhere we look, researchers are applying machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to new fields. But what about qualitative analysis? Is there a potential for software to help a researcher in coding qualitative data and understanding emerging themes and trends from complex datasets?

Firstly, why would we want ...

Identity boxes: data collection through objects

As our understanding of research and data has changed, so have data collection methods. Consequently, qualitative researchers are actively seeking to expand traditional interview and survey techniques, looking to reduce the power differential between researcher and participant and getting closer to participants' experiences and emotions. This was also the starting point ...

Response latencies as indicators of survey data quality

I’m going to begin this article by asking you to answer a survey question:

In the last 12 months, how often, if at all, have you visited a science museum or science centre?

- Once a month or more

- Several times in the past 12 months

- Once in the past 12 months

- Not ...

Do participatory visual methods give voice?

Participatory visual methods are those in which research participants are active in shaping the project as co-producers of visual knowledge. They can be traced back to two main sorts of approaches: use of visual data as stimulus in research (for example photo-elicitation) and visual data as the product of research (e.g. ...

Get what you need from your CAQDAS program with the Five-Level QDA method

Since the mid-1980s numerous software packages have been available to facilitate the analysis of qualitative data (see the CAQDAS Networking Project for reviews¹). Many researchers have successfully adopted these technologies but new users often experience challenges. Nick Woolf and I have reflected long and hard on how to teach these packages ...

It can pay to ask a simple WHAT IS question

People look to NCRM to provide answers to all sorts of questions about research methods. These questions may be quite complex, but they do not have to be. Among the more popular of  resources from NCRM are materials designed to provide introductions to particular research methods (or methodological issues) to an ...