Designing a Study You Can Defend
Multiple sources of evidence can strengthen a case study, but there is no universal rule requiring a fixed number of sources. Learn when interviews, documents, observations, and other evidence are necessary, how they contribute different kinds of knowledge, and why collecting more sources does not automatically establish triangulation or credibility.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Triangulation requires more than collecting interviews, documents, and observations. Learn how to design meaningful comparisons across evidence, investigate disagreements, avoid false corroboration, and establish what different sources can legitimately support.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
A case study can be descriptive without being merely a descriptive report. Learn how to distinguish rigorous descriptive case study research from an institutional narrative, identify when analysis is insufficient, and strengthen the relationship between research questions, evidence, and findings.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
A phenomenological research question investigates the meaning, character, or structure of an experience rather than merely asking participants what happened or what they think. Learn how to recognize genuinely phenomenological questions, distinguish competing research purposes, and refine questions that are too broad or methodologically inconsistent.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Studying lived experiences does not automatically make research phenomenological. Understand the methodological distinctions between investigating people's experiences and conducting phenomenology, including how research questions, analytical procedures, and intended findings determine the appropriate design.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Phenomenological participants must be selected for their relevance to the experience being investigated, not merely because they belong to a particular population. Learn how to establish defensible eligibility criteria, distinguish direct experience from secondhand knowledge, and screen participants without predetermining the findings.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
There is no universally required number of participants for phenomenological research. Learn how methodological traditions, experiential depth, sample specificity, and analytical strategy influence sample size, and how to develop a defensible justification without relying on arbitrary numerical rules.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
A study does not remain phenomenological simply because it investigates lived experiences or uses interviews. Learn how to recognize when phenomenological research has shifted toward qualitative description, why that distinction matters, and how to correct methodological inconsistencies without treating qualitative description as an inferior design.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Researchers can adapt selected grounded theory techniques without conducting a complete grounded theory study. Learn which analytical practices can be used independently, what methodological commitments are lost when they are separated from theory development, and how to describe a grounded theory-informed analysis accurately.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Theoretical sampling allows emerging analytical categories to guide what evidence grounded theory researchers collect next. Learn how it differs from initial purposive sampling, how it supports constant comparison and theory development, and how to make defensible sampling decisions as the research progresses.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Grounded theory researchers can establish an initial recruitment target, but a fixed final sample size may conflict with theoretical sampling. Learn how to justify participant numbers, plan ethically approved recruitment flexibility, and distinguish a provisional target from a theoretically adequate sample.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Grounded theory depends on a continuing relationship between data collection and analysis. Learn how early coding, constant comparison, analytical memos, and theoretical sampling shape subsequent evidence collection, and why collecting all data before analysis may weaken the logic of a grounded theory design.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Coding interviews into themes does not necessarily constitute grounded theory. Understand when a study has moved away from grounded theory's theory-building logic, how thematic analysis differs, and which methodological description best fits the research actually conducted.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Spending time in a school, workplace, or community does not automatically make a study ethnographic. Understand how fieldwork differs from ethnography, what cultural interpretation contributes, and how to describe observational research accurately.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Ethnographic fieldwork has no universal minimum duration. Learn how to determine whether your time in the field is sufficient, what prolonged engagement contributes, and when shorter, focused ethnography may be methodologically defensible.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
An ethnographic group is not necessarily a fixed community whose members share identical beliefs. Learn how to define the social world under investigation, establish appropriate field boundaries, and justify who and what belongs within the study.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Ethnographic field settings rarely remain completely stable. Learn how to respond to unexpected changes, decide when to adapt the research design, document methodological decisions, and distinguish valuable field developments from threats to the study's credibility.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Observation can reveal what people do, but not necessarily why their actions are meaningful. Learn when ethnographers need interviews, documents, and other evidence, and how to integrate these sources without assuming that more methods automatically produce better research.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Not every qualitative question about experiences is a narrative research question. Learn how to formulate questions that genuinely investigate stories, temporal relationships, identity construction, and the meanings people develop through narration.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
The participant is not automatically the unit of analysis in narrative research. Learn how to distinguish people, stories, events, and narrative episodes, and select the analytical focus that best fits your research question.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
A narrative study can involve only one participant when intensive examination of that person's story addresses a clearly defined research question. Learn how to justify the design, establish analytical depth, and avoid overstating what one narrative can establish.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Narrative research does not automatically require repeated interviews. Learn when one interview can provide sufficient narrative evidence, when longitudinal engagement is necessary, and how to justify the timing and structure of narrative data collection.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Narrative research and life-history research both examine stories of human experience, but they differ in scope, contextual emphasis, and analytical purpose. Learn how to distinguish these approaches and select the one that best fits your research question.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Qualitative research does not always need to follow phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, or another named tradition. What matters is whether researchers can explain their methodological assumptions, justify their procedures, and demonstrate coherence between their research questions and findings.
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Designing a Study You Can Defend
Selecting participants for qualitative descriptive research requires more than recruiting people who are available. Learn how to establish eligibility criteria, choose a sampling strategy, determine sample adequacy, and justify whose experiences are represented in your findings.
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