Research Methods

NPT explains what makes a new practice become routine work. The four constructs, how to use them in a process evaluation, and where the framework is over-applied.

IPA studies how a few people make sense of a significant experience. The double hermeneutic, idiographic case-by-case procedure, and the four markers of quality.

Ritchie and Spencer’s framework method, step by step: charting data into a matrix, keeping cases readable across themes, and where its transparency is oversold.

King’s template analysis builds a hierarchical coding template on a subset of data, then revises it against the rest. How it differs from framework and thematic analysis.

Clarke’s extension of grounded theory replaces the core-category search with three maps: situational, social worlds/arenas, and positional. What each one does.

Labov’s structural model and Riessman’s four approaches. How narrative analysis treats form as data, what it can show that coding cannot, and when to avoid it.

Discourse analysis treats talk and text as social action. Interpretative repertoires, the action orientation, how to do it, and the difference from content analysis.

Noblit and Hare’s seven phases, reciprocal and refutational translation, line of argument synthesis, and the eMERGe reporting standard for getting it published.

The six phases, why themes are generated rather than found, what “saturation” and codebooks have to do with a method that rejects both, and how to report it.