Research update #10: Qualitative research training

After another long hiatus, we finally have another update for you! The life of a tenure-track professor is complicated, and sometimes projects fall to the "wayside" when there is not a set deadline or pressure from an external source. So, in order to inject new "life" into the analysis of this project, I decided to attend a workshop on a particular research method. The method is in the family of methods called qualitative methods. These methods are different than quantitative methods in that they focus more on the words and the qualities of what someone said, rather than counting up the number of times someone said something, or giving a score to someone's input based on a survey or a questionnaire. We chose qualitative methods for this project because we felt it was the best way to honor the unique stories that we knew we would hear from you all.

The workshop is offered by a company called ResearchTalk. The session I (Megan) attended was here: http://researchtalk.com/qualitative-data-analysis-camp-november-2016/. I am grateful for this workshop because it gave me time to step back from other demands and just sit with the interview transcripts from your interviews and start to sift through them to find the meaningful themes and results. I look forward to sharing some preliminary results soon!