This article examines an important and thorny problem in interview research: How to assess whether what people say motivated their actions actually did so? We ask three questions: What specific challenges are at play? How have researchers addressed them? And how should those strategies be evaluated? We argue that such research faces at least five…

This popular text, now in its fifth edition, provides step-by-step guidance for new and experienced researchers who want to use interviewing as a research method. This user-friendly guide explains the rationale for interviewing and the complexity of selecting interview participants, important interviewing techniques, and how to work with the…

With today's technology, Extension professionals have a variety of tools available for program evaluation. This article describes an innovative platform called VoiceThread that has been used in many classrooms but also is useful for conducting virtual focus group research. I explain how this tool can be used to collect qualitative participant…

Beginning researchers get an overview of qualitative research through a concise look at the practice of conducting research and the theory and debates that keep qualitative inquiry vibrant. Ideal for introducing the novice researcher to the theory and practice of qualitative research, this text opens students to the diverse possibilities within…

The Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education (CAEE) began in January 2003 with a grant from the National Science Foundation (ESI-0227558). Two NSF Directorates, Engineering and Education and Human Resources, oversee the Center's work. The Academic Pathways Study (APS) is part of the Scholarship on Learning Engineering element of the…

A concern exists that mixed methods studies do not contain advocacy stances. Preliminary evidence suggests that this is not the case, but to address this issue in more depth the authors examined 13 mixed methods studies that contained an advocacy, transformative lens. Such a lens consisted of incorporating intent to advocate for an improvement in…

In this article, we set out to explore what we describe as the use of video in various modalities. For us, modality is a synthesizing construct that draws together and differentiates between the notion of "video" both as a method and as a methodology. It encompasses the use of the term video as both product and process, and as a data…

This article illustrates how an emerging graduate researcher's conceptions of postpositivist, feminist, and poststructural theories of educational research affected data gathering and initial analysis. These macro theories are exemplified as the voices of an educational researcher, a feminist researcher, and a poststructural researcher,…

This article provides an innovative meta-framework comprising strategies designed to guide qualitative data collection in the 21st century. We present a meta-framework comprising strategies for collecting data from interviews, focus groups, observations, and documents/material culture. We present a template for collecting nonverbal data during…

This article explores the use of walking interviews as a research method. In spite of a wave of interest in methods which take interviewing out of the "safe," stationary environment, there has been limited work critically examining the techniques for undertaking such work. Curiously for a method which takes an explicitly spatial approach, few…

The purpose of our article is to illustrate the use of mixed methods research as necessary to uncover maximum information and perspective, increase corroboration of the data, and render less biased and more accurate conclusions. This study used the case study method to closely examine the people, issues, programmes and topics related to the…

Despite growing interest in the use of anthropological or cultural research models, these approaches are not commonly understood by the higher education community. Because anthropological research differs significantly from other techniques, this paper first explains the rationale for using anthropological models to study higher education and…

The efficiency and appropriateness of the cassette tape as a data collection medium was considered in this survey. A 19-item questionnaire was mailed to 117 agricultural teacher educators who had served at foreign locations. Most of the questions solicited qualitative data about their experiences, problems, and accomplishments. Respondents were…

Using qualitative and quantitative methods in a single research project has been the subject of controversy. Purists argue that qualitative and quantitative approaches derive from different, mutually exclusive epistemologic and ontologic assumptions, and cannot be combined. Situationalists focus on methodology and assume that data collection and…

This article reports on an investigation of student teachers' learning about education for sustainable development (ESD). Phenomenographic data were collected using open proformas and interviews from student geography teachers taking the University of Oxford Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) in 2003-2004. The data analysis focuses on…