"Fear not those who argue but those who dodge"

As another week goes by, I look back and reflect on my continual understanding on the rules of the game and think of how this can be applied to my project.

Strong qualitative research requires a good design, with the purpose of convincing the audience of your research and providing a plausible argument for what you have done. I am working on the design for my research at the moment, where I anticipate to conduct comparative focus groups. But I still need to argue the case for why I am choosing focus groups, and justify it with past studies and citations from the literature.

One thing that I have learnt, evident through my ever-transforming thesis topic, is that the researcher has to be flexible and respondent to change. Similarly, a qualitative research design will keep changing, so I am learning to keep an open mind and ensure that I am adaptive to any developments in my research. It seems like I was quite naïve entering into the research game- It turns out you don’t just pick a topic and run with it. Rather, the development stage is one that is quite lengthy, because the end result is only as good as the research question that directed the study. If you plant bad seeds, you won’t get a good tree!

Also, the research question directs the study so it is important to determine a research topic early on in the process and identify a relationship for what it is you will be investigating. This is where I am currently at- pouring through past studies (in particular their limitations and direction for future research) to identify gaps in the literature and derive a topic*. At times it can feel like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but the needle is in there somewhere and with hard work and determination you will find it.

In developing the topic, you must justify why it is interesting, and the methodology should be chosen based on its ability to obtain the data that answers the research question. Therefore, you need to be able to link your evidence to a claim and give explanation for why you are doing it. Which comes back to the notion of the argument- As long as you can justify your case you will be able to make your cause plausible. I sometimes take the same approach when arguing with my parents, but they don’t seem to like it as much…

*You must be cautious about criticisms you make on prior studies though- You don’t want to go offending the original researcher as they could be the one that ends up marking your thesis.