Events This Week
At the Library

• Message from the Head Librarian
• Keep Your Library Card Privileges
• Library Lessons : Qualitative Research Designs
  • Lesson 1:  Grounded Theory
  • Lesson 2:  Ethnographic
  • Lesson 3:  Narrative Research
  • Lesson 4: Section IV of your proposal
• Circulation Desk
• Next Week at the Library

A Message from
the Head Librarian

Welcome to your ninth week at the library.  We are closing in on the final weeks of chapter readings in our text.  This week we will discuss 3 qualitative designs and next week we will finish up with mixed methods and action research.

I am completing my feedback on Section II drafts today and tomorrow. Some of you have already received feedback while others should expect it sometime this evening or tomorrow. As you continue to work on Section III and IV this week then please review my feedback on the previous sections to insure you are moving in the correct direction. So far I have had a few Section II drafts that seemed to go in a different direction than the Section I turned in. Once you turn in your final draft I would expect that all Sections flow together nicely and are all focused clearly on the same topic - I should almost be able to predict rather accurately what your research questions and purpose are going to be from simply reading Section I. I should also be able to predict what your lit review will cover from reading Section I - this has not always been the case.

Given the short semester, it is necessary for me to have quizzes and a rough draft due this week. I know the burden this places on time and so I have made this week's quizzes OPTIONAL. This means you do not have to complete them unless you find you have the time or want to check your own comprehension. For those who do complete them, you will receive some extra credit points.

I have had a few inquiries again about how to get back to previous instructions etc. As a reminder, you can always access any of the previous weeks as well as future weeks of this course using the schedule (events calendar) page. If you are having trouble locating something feel free to send me an email.

As a reminder, I would like to strongly urge EVERYONE to utilize the rubrics in the feedback sheets I provide you for each Section as a guide for writing that Section. Also, I would like to strongly urge everyone to read the sample proposal provided from previous students in the course. In reading rough drafts, it is clear to me that some of you are utilizing both of these resources as a guide and it is also clear to me that some of you have probably never glanced at these documents. 

You should have been working diligently on Section III so that you can begin to focus on Section IV and have these two sections ready to turn in in this week. Then you will have a few weeks to work on creating a final draft of your research proposal and studying for your final exam.

As noted, you need to be sure to have a copy of your instrument in the Appendix for Section IV and your final draft. The final proposal has no additional requirements than those which have already been outlined in Sections I through IV.  There is no length requirement - it should be as long as necessary to cover all elements in each section.  There is no maximum on references - your minimum has already been outlined by the number of empirical articles required. The main thing will be improving on weaknesses noted in each draft and then combining everything into a single document.  This will require some changes from previous drafts such as the fact that you will have more than one Appendix in the final proposal so you will need to note APA style for multiple appendices.

You might notice that there have usually been fewer questions on the past few quizzes.  This is due to the introduction of short answers to the quizzes.  The introduction of the short answers serves several purposes. These questions are more appropriate for assessing some of the content of these chapters as well as they will prepare you for such question formats on the final exam.  The final exam will be comprehensive.  In a few weeks I will distribute a list of objectives that may assist you in studying but you should be able to pretty much predict what will be on the final given the content of the quizzes. As a reminder, please review the time noted for the final exam to be open.  There will be NO EXCEPTIONS to this.

The short answers take a bit longer to grade for the quizzes so please be patient on me getting those final grades. For the short answer questions the answer provided will show the ideal answer or all the answers possible.  You will not necessarily have to have the exact wording that is in the answer but it should be of the same nature.  Of course, if it only asks for one difference between 2 designs (for example) then the answer will list multiple differences that could have been correct but your answer will only need to include one difference in order to receive full credit.

This week the APA tidbit is a small one that guides the use of brackets and parentheses in your narrative.  In fact, there are only two things to remember: (a) use brackets inside parentheses and (c) reverse when using mathematical material.  See page 86 of the APA manual for specific directions and examples.

Our goals this week are to:

• Describe the different designs for conducting grounded theory research
• Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of grounded theory
• Describe key characteristics of grounded theory designs
• Describe the steps of conducting grounded theory research
• Identify types of ethnographic designs
• Describe key characteristics of ethnographic designs
• Describe the steps in conducting ethnographic research.
• Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of grounded theory
• Identify types of narrative designs
• Describe key characteristics of narrative designs
• Describe the steps in conducting narrative research.
• Work on section IV of your research proposal.

Don't Forget Your
Library Card!

Task #1:
Complete the Library Patron Feedback Form

Contact the
Library Staff

Need Help?

Have a question but can't find the answer? Here are some options:

• Check the FAQ page to see if your question has already been answered.
• Email the Head Librarian (Dr. Curda) .
• Email the Assistant Librarian (Melissa).
• Check with the other library patrons.

Now let's move to our Library Lessons
for This Week!