Interpretive Inquiry Project
Guidelines for Project Report
Purpose: The purposes of the Inquiry Projects are:
? To complete all steps in carrying out a small interpretive inquiry project
? To try out the use of qualitative research strategies
Guidelines for Project Report:
The purpose of the final paper is to essentially write a research report focusing on the attached interview transcripts and the assigned readings to examine how Asian-American youth label themselves, how they interpret and make sense of their self-identification labels, and how this may be associated with their immigrant status (generation), discrimination experiences, and their sense of biculturalism). Methods and methodological issues are expected to be discussed in greater detail than is typical in most research papers as this is a qualitative research methods class. This discussion should include not only descriptions of methods/strategies you used, but also a discussion of how these strategies address or attempt to resolve issues that are central to qualitative research. In essence, you will need to describe what you did at each stage of the process, and explain why you did what you did.
Guidelines to structure the writing:
– Formulating research goals and objectives: Exploring how Asian American youth experience and describe the meaning of multiple identities ? a phenomenological study
– Developing a conceptual framework (for this, please use meaning making and multiple ethnic identities as constructs)
– Deciding on a research design: for this research paper, please focus on a phenomenological study, as described by Creswell?s ?Qualitative inquiry and research design? (2013, 3rd edition) to unpack how Asian Americans experience and describe the meaning of cross-cultural identities. How do the youths identify themselves versus how others describe them? What is the meaning making on how they are seen versus how others see them?)
– Selecting a sample
– Coding (the codes that were used are the following:
self-identity labels ? national origin, multiracial, multiethnic, mixed, American, PanEthnic, Hyphenated American
Parents? identification of target youth – national origin, multiracial, multiethnic, mixed, American, PanEthnic, hyphenated American)
– Analyzing data ? Make explicit the process of analysis that you are using to look for patterns and draw conclusions. You may be using analytic memos (discussed in detail by Corbin and Strauss? 2008 ?Basics of Qualitative Research? and/or the ?tactics? (e.g. noting patterns, clustering, making contrasts/comparisons) and ?tools? (e.g. charts/matrices, networks, diagrams) discussed in Spradley?s 1980 ?Participant Observation? and Strauss. Plan/process of analysis must be included in the research paper.
– Integration and Presentation of findings
Remember to go through the process of analysis and drawing conclusions, even though you feel you haven’t collected enough data. It is important to go through this exercise for practice, while making sure you recognize that the conclusions you draw (your "findings") are tentative at best, due to limitations of time and lack of thorough analysis.
Some specifics:
1. Ground your questions and conclusions in relevant literature. Please use the attached readings as references.
2. Structure the organization of the paper to the steps above.
3. Explain what you did and why at each step.
4. Give examples of the tools and strategies you used – either incorporate them in the paper or include them in an appendix (samples of catalogues of data sets, field-notes, reflective notes, memos, coding paradigms, charts or diagrams ? select few, not all.)
5. Remember that as a reader I will want to see evidence of how you drew and verified conclusions from your data.
In addition to the attached literature, other approved references include:
– Corbin, J. & Strauss, A. (2008). Basics of Qualitative Research. Sage Publications (3rd ed.)
– Spradley, J. (1980). Participant Observation. New York: Harcourt.
– Creswell, J. (2013). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design. Sage Publications (3rd ed.)