Strategies of Inquiry

I have made slow progress on my project this week. Busy busy. I have not had a chance to read as much of Creswell as I wanted up until this afternoon. I've also had a difficult time chasing down my first interviews. I had to reach each one by phone and do an "oral presentation" of the project and then send them the Consent form. I finally caught up with them all. Each was very willing and helpful--for which I am very grateful. I suppose this kind of leg work to catch research subjects is part of the typical aspect of a study. Now I have to chase them down to do the actual interview.

I want to continue my refining and framing of my study via Creswell (one month late). In his section on Research Design he goes on to talk about "Stategies of Inquiry" as well as methods. The three stategies are quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. I'm starting to feel constrained by this taxonomy: it is either-or or both either-or (1 or 2, or 1 and 2). What about three? How about 1.5?

But then I am feeling out what each stategy of inquiry means and is about. Qualitative is much more open and exploratory while Quantitative seems to be about establishing cause-effect relationships. I'm still working out what the heck is my strategy. Is it a true mixed method? I'm using mixed methods (survey-quant and interview-qual), but am I really testing a theory to establish a cause-effect relationship? I can tell I need to learn more about surveys. My overall objective in the study, I believe, is descriptive. In a way, this is almost a kind of ethnography. There is this phenomenon (writer's reviews)--how do all the constituents of the tribe use and think of this thing. Let's rephrase it: There is this activity called "learning." Writer's Reviews as reflective pieces of writing do something inside that activity. What do the members of the learning community think it does and believe it does from their experience? What place does this think have within the activity? I'm not sure activity is the best frame to use, but it is getting me to think in broader terms.

If my study is a mixed method study, then it could be labeled as what Creswell calls a "sequential" study "in which the researcher seeks to elaborate on or expand the findings of one method with another" (16). Sequential it seems to me has two approaches--one that triangulates the same thing, and another that is evolutionary in nature. What I mean is that what is being studied evolves through the sequence. Triangulation seems to be a matter of testing the same result in another way. I'll coin some terms--Mixed method sequential triangulation and mixed method sequential evolution.

My Sequence (sequential evolution)
Step One: Comp Program Administrator Interviews
From the initial interviews, I hope to generate the ideas and perceptions of reflection's role in the writing program.

Step Two: Survey
The survey will then test how those intended roles of reflection exist within the attitudes and experiences of instructors and students in the program. (Oh my! I said the word "test.") I guess I am going to use the survey in a quantitative way, but I don't see it as exactly establishing cause-effect. The "testing" within the survey goes deeper though because of the distributed delivery of instruction within the TTU comp program.

What the survey tests:
1) Do the views of instructors match those of the program administrators?
2) Further--do the views of document instructors differ from the views of classroom instructors?
3) How do the views of the program administrators and instructors (CIs and DIs) match or differ from the attitudes and experience of students?

I know I need to use a different term than "match," but I can't think of it right now.

Step Three: Follow up interviews
I don't know exactly what the surveys will reveal. Based from what I think I see in the surveys, I will generate interview questions (that are open-ended) to explore possible findings from the surveys more deeply.

Ah hah! This last interview follow-up is a sequential triangulation.

This sequence makes sense to me, but it is hard to put it into the strict quant and qual box or now the mixed box. I think this confusion on my part is more a reflection of my lack of experience and knowledge that anything about these approaches.

Next time Purpose Statement.