Multisite Qualitative Policy Research in Education : Some Design and Implementation Issues / Robert E. Herriott and William A. Firestone.
The last decade has seen the emergence in the policy arena of a new form of qualitative research, one intended to strenghten its ability to generalize while preserving in-depth description. These multisite qualitative studies address the same research question using similar data collection and analy...
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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1983.
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| Summary: | The last decade has seen the emergence in the policy arena of a new form of qualitative research, one intended to strenghten its ability to generalize while preserving in-depth description. These multisite qualitative studies address the same research question using similar data collection and analysis procedures in a number of settings. To gain systematic knowledge about this phenomenon a study was undertaken of policy research projects in the field of education that were: (1) federally funded via a competitive request for proposals process, (2) involved the application of qualitative methods of data collection, and (3) compared several research sites. A two-step data collection strategy was employed. Telephone interviews were conducted with a key staff member of 25 projects. Subsequently documents were reviewed and site visits made to five projects. One important distinction among these multisite qualitative studies was the degree to which their methodology was "formalized." Formalization entails codification of the questions and variables to be studied, standardization of the data collection methods, and systematic reduction of verbal narrative to codes and categories. The variation in formalization observed across projects was substantial and seemed to result from different adaptations of academic social science to the policy research context. (Author) |
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| Physical Description: | 42 pages. |