READING QUALITATIVE RESEARCH TOE
Ritchie & Lewis
Stages of discussion in interviews and focus groups:
Introduction:
- easy, opening questions; more surface level, background and contextual information,
definitional questions
Core part of interview or group discussion:
- questioning and discussion is more in-depth
- more from circumstantial to attitudinal/evaluative/explanatory questions
- more from general to more specific
- follow chronological order
Winding down:
- questions looking to the future, suggestions
A well-designed topic guide will provide flexible direction to fieldwork process and essential
documentation of a central aspect of the research. The use of topic guides in qualitative
research is strongly recommended and careful investment in their design is needed.
Designing topic guides:
- the purpose and nature of a topic guide
- establishing subject coverage
- an example topic guide
- the structure and length of the guide
- language and terminology
- specification of follow-up questions and probes
- making the guide easy to use
Incorporating other research instruments and materials
- collecting structured data
- using case illustrations and examples
- enabling and projective techniques
o vignettes
o card-sorting
o giving information or showing written material
o mapping emergent issues
o projective techniques
- fieldnotes
Content mining questions
- amplificatory probes
- exploratory probes
- explanatory probes
- clarificatory probes
question formulation
- using broad and narrow questions
Ritchie & Lewis
Stages of discussion in interviews and focus groups:
Introduction:
- easy, opening questions; more surface level, background and contextual information,
definitional questions
Core part of interview or group discussion:
- questioning and discussion is more in-depth
- more from circumstantial to attitudinal/evaluative/explanatory questions
- more from general to more specific
- follow chronological order
Winding down:
- questions looking to the future, suggestions
A well-designed topic guide will provide flexible direction to fieldwork process and essential
documentation of a central aspect of the research. The use of topic guides in qualitative
research is strongly recommended and careful investment in their design is needed.
Designing topic guides:
- the purpose and nature of a topic guide
- establishing subject coverage
- an example topic guide
- the structure and length of the guide
- language and terminology
- specification of follow-up questions and probes
- making the guide easy to use
Incorporating other research instruments and materials
- collecting structured data
- using case illustrations and examples
- enabling and projective techniques
o vignettes
o card-sorting
o giving information or showing written material
o mapping emergent issues
o projective techniques
- fieldnotes
Content mining questions
- amplificatory probes
- exploratory probes
- explanatory probes
- clarificatory probes
question formulation
- using broad and narrow questions
