My research design is qualitative, and more specifically it is a phenomenologica

My research design is qualitative, and more specifically it is a phenomenological study which I believe is the best approach by which I can give a voice to local combat veterans facing mental health challenges. Giving a voice to individuals is best done through a phenomenological study as it explores the lived experiences of those that have navigated a given phenomenon (Groenewald, 2004; Neubauer, Witkop, & Varpio, 2019). Groenewald (2004) highlights purposive sampling as the most logical approach to selecting subjects when conducting a phenomenological study. This makes sense because, as Groenewald (2004) also notes, in a phenomenological study it should be the phenomena being studied that should more so inform if not drive the selection of study subjects. In the case of my dissertation, an exploration of the veteran attitudes towards telemental health during the Covid-19 pandemic, it only makes sense that only individuals that are veterans and have been receiving telemental health during the Covid-19 pandemic be included in the research pool. To best garner the lived experiences of the selected subjects my intent is to conduct one-on-one in-person interviews. When in-person interviews are not possible I would attempt to conduct interviews over the phone.
The methods section must explain what a phenomenological study design is, and why/when it is used. I plan on interviewing 10-15 rural US military combat veterans that have received telemental health for their PTSD, anxiety, depression counseling during the covid-19 pandemic. .
Here is what is expected in the methods section:
CHAPTER THREE: METHODS
Overview
The Overview may begin with a brief restatement of the nature and purpose of the study. It must clearly and concisely describe the contents and organization of the chapter. The purpose of Chapter Three is to present the procedures, research design, and analysis for the present research study. That is, it provides the reader with the details of what will occur during the execution of research. Descriiptions in this chapter should be comprehensive and in sufficient detail as to permit the replication of the study. Chapter Three contains several subsections; they are listed below.
Design
In the Design section, the planned type of study (e.g., qualitative) and research design (e.g., phenomenology, case study, ethnography, grounded theory, or historical research) should be identified. Identify (a) why the study is qualitative, (b) why the general design is appropriate, and (c) why the specific type of design was selected. Additionally, the research design type should be fully defined (with a brief history of the research design type) with citations. Further, a concise rationale for the research design and a concise descriiption of the implementation of the design should be included. The purpose and the research design should be consistent with the research questions proposed as well as the procedures described. Be sure to also identify and describe the specific approach within the approach. For example, if selecting a phenomenological study, be sure to identify what type (e.g., hermeneutic, transcendental, consensual, etc.). If conducting a case study, identify whether it is a single instrumental, collective, or intrinsic case study. Be sure to provide a clear rationale, linking the design to your purpose. Throughout this section, refer to primary qualitative research texts for the proper design descriiption and use them to support your rationales.
Research Questions
Restate just the research questions from Chapter One – no literature.
Setting
Depending on your design, you may choose to title this section “Site” or “Setting.” In this section, the setting (or the site) of the study should be described (e.g., geographic location, school system, the course, etc.). Just as you should be purposefully selecting your participants for a qualitative study, it is also important to provide a rationale for your site selection. Convenience alone is not sufficient. Only important features which have bearing on the present study should be included. The following questions should be addressed: Why was this setting (site) chosen for this project? What does the organization look like with regards to leadership, organizational structure, etc.? Describe it with details. Pseudonyms for both individuals and institutions should be provided in this section as well.
Participants
In the Participants section, the sample pool, the sample size, type of sample (e.g., theoretical, purposive), and sampling procedures (e.g., convenience, snowball sample, maximum variation, etc.) should be clearly explained and each decision should be supported by research citations. Demographic information (age, ethnicity, gender, etc.) should be described in narrative or tabular form. If using a published survey or questionnaire to identify or describe participants, be sure to gain permission to use and explain here how the survey was developed and how validity and reliability were established. If generating your own, you need to address face and content validity and describe any piloting procedures used. This is not considered a data collection method. Given the nature of qualitative research, pseudonyms should be provided. Support all practices from research literature with citations. The number of participants will most often range from 6-15 or higher.
Procedures
In the Procedures section, the steps necessary to conduct the study are outlined. This includes, but is not limited to, information about securing Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, eliciting participants for the study, gathering the data, and recording procedures.
The Researcher’s Role
In this section you must clearly and thoroughly explain your role as the “human instrument” in the study. You must be straightforward about your relationship to the participants, your role in the setting or research site, and any bias or assumptions you bring to the study that may influence how you view the data or conduct your analysis. Your role must also be articulated in light of the chosen design and the implications of this role on the data collection and data analysis procedures must be addressed.
Data Collection
A critical aspect of qualitative inquiry is rigorous data collection techniques. For most qualitative designs, the only required data collection method is interviews. Others are also often used and may include, but are not limited to, observations (participant and/or direct), document analysis (e.g., archival records, journals, letters, etc.), artifact analysis (e.g., photographs), and researcher field notes/theoretical memos. Discuss the data collection strategies in the order in which they will be conducted (and order the sub-sections for each individual strategy below in the same sequence) and explain why you have chosen this particular sequence. These data collection procedures should follow the recommendations of established qualitative researchers in the field (e.g., Erlandson, Harris, Skipper, & Allen, 1993; Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Merriam, 1988; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Patton, 1980, 1990, etc.).
Interviews
At the outset of each of the sub-sections for the individual data collection strategies, you should identify the data collection strategy, fully define it in the context of qualitative inquiry (with citation), explain the data collection strategy in layman’s terms (if appropriate), and justify its appropriateness for your research. Discuss any logistics (when/where/how/with whom will data be collected, recording, etc.) and explicate which of your research questions will be answered by this data collection strategy. It is important to demonstrate that interview (and focus group) semi-structured questions are generated from and grounded in the literature on your topic. Your questions should be included in a numbered list with an item-by-item discussion of each question and its basis in the literature. Here is an example as it must appear in your paper:
Standardized Open-Ended Semi-Structured Interview Questions
1. Please introduce yourself to me, as if we just met one another.
2. Please walk me through your worldview development timeline.
3. Of the formative experiences you identified on your timeline, which would you say were the most significant?
4. What made them significant?
5. Is there something else you would like to add to your timeline that you haven’t already written down?
6. Experts suggest that a person is often not aware of his or her worldview and its influence on his or her life and choices. On a scale from one to five, with one being very unaware and five being completely aware, how aware are you of your worldview?
7. Describe your worldview.
8. Ideally, part of becoming an adult involves the process of examining and evaluating one’s worldview. Where are you in that process?
9. How does your parents’ worldview compare to yours?
10. Think about a friend who also has a Biblical worldview. What formative experiences do you think they would want to tell me about?
11. Tell me about the struggles you’ve experienced– since graduating high school– as you have worked out your worldview.
12. What questions, if any, came up for you as you developed a Biblical worldview?
13. If you were a parent of a 19-year-old, how would you help her as she develops a Biblical worldview?
14. Imagine you’re being interviewed at a youth conference, in front of thousands of Christian young people. What would you want to tell them to expect to experience as they develop their worldview over the next few years?
15. I’d like to ask you a question that will prompt you to put everything together, so to speak. Reflecting on your lifetime of experience developing a Biblical worldview, what advice would you give to Christians your age as they develop their worldview?
16. This next question is unique in that it will invite you to look ahead. How do you expect your worldview to change or develop over the next several years?
17. We’ve covered a lot of ground in our conversation, and I so appreciate the time you’ve given to this. One final question… What else do you think would be important for me to know about the development of your worldview that I haven’t asked you about?
Questions one through five are knowledge questions (Patton, 2015), and are designed as follow-up questions to the worldview development timelines that will have been previously created and submitted by the participants. These questions are intended to be relatively straightforward and non-threatening, and will ideally serve to help develop rapport between the participant and me (Patton, 2015). The questions will be adjusted as necessary for each participant, based on the data included on each individual timeline.
Fowler (1981) suggested that for adolescents, the formation of complex systems of values and beliefs is primarily a subconscious task. Only after one progresses out of synthetic-conventional faith does a person begin to develop a deep awareness of one’s faith. With this new awareness comes the capacity to consciously reflect on one’s faith and to make intentional choices about what to include in a workable system of meaning. Furthermore, Sire (2015) concluded that components of a person’s worldview may be consciously or unconsciously held. Therefore, it is important to ask questions that will help participants reflect on their level of awareness of their own worldview and on the progress they have made in examining and evaluating their worldview. Questions six through eight are designed for these purposes.
Question nine invites the participant to reflect on his or her worldview as compared to his or her parents’ worldview. Several studies suggest that there is a strong correlation between an individual’s worldview and that of his or her parents (Brickhill, 2010; Kimball, Boyatzis, Cook, Leonard, & Flanagan, 2013; Perkins, 2007). Probing about parent worldviews will help to discover a more complete picture of influences on worldview development. Since research suggests that family is such a significant factor in worldview development, it is likely that participants will mention their parents in some way in the context of their timeline. If participants have already discussed parental influence, this question may not need to be asked.
The tenth question invites the participant to take another person’s perspective, which is often helpful in gaining new insights (Patton, 2015). It is also a non-threatening question, allowing the participants to talk more in-depth about the phenomenon of worldview development, without requiring them to be highly vulnerable. However, it is hoped that the question will lead to keeping the interview moving along in an engaging fashion and yielding valuable data. This is particularly important given the nature of the question that follows.
Question 11 is the first question that will likely require a relatively high degree of vulnerability, and for this reason, I chose to not ask it until the interview is well underway. Ideally by this time in the interview, a good rapport will have been established (Patton, 2015), and therefore the participant will be willing to share more intimate details about his or her struggles in developing a Biblical worldview. For several researchers, personal struggle is an important component of worldview development (Bryant, 2011; Fowler, 1981; Mayhew, 2012; Mayhew, Seifert, & Pascarella, 2012).
Questioning truth seems to be a key element of the passage from an adolescent faith to an adult faith (Fowler, 1981; King, Clardy, & Ramos, 2014). Question 12 is designed to elicit some of the questions participants may have asked as part of the process of developing their worldview. I will be particularly attentive to the concept of cognitive dissonance that such questions can cause (Bryant, 2011; Ciarrochi & Heaven, 2012; Fowler, 1981). I will also be prepared to probe further with the participants in order to gain additional data about how they felt about and how they responded to questions that were suggested by becoming exposed to alternate worldviews held by others (Mayhew, 2012; Mayhew, Seifert, & Pascarella, 2012).
Questions 13 and 14 are designed to put participants into role-playing contexts, which can help the participants to think more deeply about their own worldview development by
inviting them to step outside of themselves and become an observer, or co-researcher (Patton, 2015; Creswell, 2013). Questions 15 and 16 put the participant in the role of expert on worldview development, which is yet another way to elicit different and valuable data. To encourage maximum value from these questions, I have crafted them to include prefatory statements, which will help to transition the participants into the role of expert (Patton, 2015).
Question number 17 is a one-shot question (Patton, 2015), designed to give the participant one further opportunity to offer valuable insight. This one-shot question also serves as the closing question (Patton, 2015), giving the participant freedom to add to what has already been said, keeping him or her in the role of expert on his or her own life and story. From my experience in asking thousands of such questions as a life coach, I have found that these one-shot, parting questions often yield a tremendous amount of valuable information, when the interview or discussion could very easily have been otherwise shut down.
— End example—
By explaining in detail the purpose of each question, you not only establish the validity of your questions, but also establish the basis for your discussion of findings in relation to the literature in Chapter Five. After developing the questions, discuss in your Procedures that you will get experts in the field to review, and then pilot the interview with a small sample outside of your study sample to ensure clarity of questions and wording. The anchoring in the literature and the expert review should be conducted prior to your proposal defense; the piloting needs to be done after you receive IRB approval to collect data.
Surveys/Questionnaires
All surveys and questionnaires must elicit qualitative, not quantitative data. If using a published survey or questionnaire, be sure to gain permission to use it and explain here how the
survey was developed and how validity and reliability were established. If generating your own, you need to address face and content validity and describe piloting procedures.
Document Analysis
Document analysis may be applied to a variety of sources including, but not limited to legal documents, records, meeting minutes, letters, diaries, etc. Every effort should be made to incorporate primary, as opposed to secondary sources. Identify and describe the specific documents collected. Provide a specific rationale for why each type of document was selected.
Observations
If conducting observations, develop and include in the appendices your observation protocol (examples are provided in most qualitative research texts), and be sure to address both descriiptive and reflective field notes. Be sure to discuss whether observations will be scheduled or unscheduled, and whether you will be a participant or non-participant observer. Identify frequency and duration of observations.
Data Analysis
In this section the data analysis procedures should be identified and a concise rationale for each type of analysis should be provided. Be sure that your analysis procedures are aligned
with your research design. For example, open, axial, and selective coding are appropriate for grounded theory studies, but not necessarily for other designs. As another example, if conducting a transcendental phenomenological study, be sure to order the primary sources for this design (e.g., Moustakas, 1994) and describe these design-specific procedures in depth. Be sure to use the primary resources on your topic to guide your development of this section. While secondary sources (e.g., course textbooks) provide good overviews of different research designs and analysis procedures, they typically lack the detailed procedural information needed to write Chapter Three. You need to provide enough detail that someone can replicate your study by following procedures outlined in this chapter. Further, as your study may involve multiple forms of data collection in order to achieve triangulation, you need to discuss how you will analyze each set of data and then synthesize findings across all three (or more) sets of data. Some form of coding, along with bracketing and memoing, are tools commonly used to organize data and identify recurring themes for many qualitative data analysis strategies. If you are employing these tools while you analyze data, be sure to discuss them here (fully defined and cited). Additionally, if you will use a Qualitative Data Analysis Software (QDAS) such as ATLAS, NVivo, Ethnograph, or MaxQDA, discuss that in this section as well. Surveys and quantitative instruments cannot be analyzed in accordance with analysis procedures for textual (qualitative) data. If utilizing quantitative instruments, be sure to clearly address how you will analyze and then integrate or triangulate the quantitative findings with the qualitative.
Trustworthiness
Trustworthiness addresses credibility, dependability, transferability, and confirmability. Each topic must be covered in detail under its own APA Level 2 subheading. In each subheading, fully define the aspect of trustworthiness (credibility, dependability, transferability,
or confirmability) addressed and discuss its importance (with citations). Then, identify the methods whereby you propose to achieve each aspect of trustworthiness (triangulation, direct quotes, enumeration, member checks, prolonged engagement, etc.), fully defining each method (with citations). Methods for increasing trustworthiness include, but are not limited to, triangulation, member checks, prolonged engagement, negative case analysis, peer/expert review, external audit, etc.
Credibility
Credibility refers to the extent to which the findings accurately describe reality. Credibility depends on the richness of the information gathered and on the analytical abilities of the researcher.
Dependability and Confirmability
Dependability and confirmability are similar to reliability in quantitative studies and deal with consistency, which is addressed through the provision of rich detail about the context and setting of the study.
Transferability
Transferability is another aspect of qualitative research that should be considered; it refers to the possibility that what was found in one context is applicable to another context.
Ethical Considerations
Any ethical considerations or implications of the research should be discussed. These might include data storage (e.g., locked filing cabinets and password protection for electronic files) and usage, influence, confidentiality (e.g., use of site and participant pseudonyms), and any other potential issues that might arise and how they will be addressed.
Summary
Provide a chapter summary. The Summary provides a strong conclusion to the chapter.