Educational researchers, like other academic investigators, are expected to carry out research in an ethical manner. This paper draws on the author's experience of conducting a research study related to social justice, which examines intergenerational dynamics and education amongst British Asian families. It discusses the importance of ethical…

Instrumentation rigor and bias management are major challenges for qualitative researchers employing interviewing as a data generation method in their studies. A usual procedure for testing the quality of an interview protocol and for identifying potential researcher biases is the pilot study in which investigators try out their proposed methods…

The emotional side of the mind, which expresses itself through emotions, sentiments and moods, plays an important role in human existence because it conditions our own way of being in the world. On this premise, a qualitative research with children was undertaken in order to facilitate the expression of the emotions. The participants were children…

An ongoing oral history project at the University of Cumbria seeks to uncover the lived experiences of people with learning difficulties who lived at the Royal Albert Hospital. A recently made video exposed the apparent distress this caused one of the participants. Ethical discussions about the project reached a point of being "stuck".…

This article examines the political project of Cultural Studies by calling for a re-examination of the cultural studies research practices. The metaphors used by cultural studies researchers are explored, as these demonstrate the ways in which researchers have sought to emphasize openness and fluidity. However, it is argued that the desire for…

This article begins by raising issues around the way in which ethical approval for research is managed in university settings, where committees often base their assumptions on a principlist approach making a number of assumptions that we consider to be contestable, such as a neat separation between researcher and researched. However, collaborative…

This paper examines what is arguably the most important issue in qualitative research--access to willing participants--specifically in the context of companies. This is of considerable importance in vocational education and training (VET) as workplaces are the site of much VET activity. While research textbooks discuss many issues in research, few…

Being a novice researcher undertaking research interviews with young children requires understandings of the interview process. By investigating the interaction between a novice researcher undertaking her first interview and a child participant, the authors attend to theoretical principles, such as the competence of young children as informants,…

This article is derived from a recently completed research study on the "Schooling Experiences of HIV+ Children in Jamaica". It is written against the background of researching children generally, and also in the context of researching vulnerable children, specifically those who are HIV+. Research carries with it various notions of power…

Two basic data sources required for research studies have been secondary and primary. Secondary data collection helps the researcher to provide relevant background to the study and are, in most cases, available for retrieval from recorded sources. Primary data collection requires the researcher to venture into the field where the study is to take…

In this article, the authors discuss the utility of combining quantitative and qualitative methods in conducting intersectional analyses. First, they discuss some of the paradigmatic underpinnings of qualitative and quantitative research, and how these methods can be used in intersectional analyses. They then consider how paradigmatic pragmatism…

Do researchers make a difference with the research they conduct? Most people would like to think so. In this paper, the author argues that much of the research conducted by researchers is guided primarily by personal interests and needs and not because of professional needs or identified gaps in knowledge. The author also argues that experiential…

The American prison apparatus is larger today than ever before. The Pew Center on the States reported in February 2008 that more than one in 100 American adults live behind bars. However, few are scrutinizing the everyday experiences of the 2.3 million people in American prisons and jails. Scholars who want to do ethnographic fieldwork in prisons…

Over the past few years, the focus group method has assumed a very important role as a method for collecting qualitative data in social and behavioural science research. This article elucidates theoretical and practical problems and prospects associated with the use of focus groups as a qualitative research method in social and behavioural science…

Contemporary researchers need to work across many cultural boundaries between ethnicities, between disciplines, between universities and industry, between professional cultures, and between various workplace cultures. While many authors have sought to characterise aspects of this boundary work, there remains little research on how researchers,…