Welcome to my Qualitative Data Analysis in Communication Research course. There is a practical reason for opening this course. In the past, when I taught “Mixed methods in communication research” course, PhD students were not familiar with the qualitative research method, although they had experience with the quantitative research method. For this reason, qualitative research methodology, especially data analysis and interpretation processes, had to be taught as a doctoral level course before mixed research methodology. And this course was opened.
In this course, we will first examine the philosophical foundations of qualitative research methodology.
Then we will go through qualitative research designs in order and see which one is used for which purposes. Then we will start to prepare a research proposal that we have created with qualitative methodology within the scope of a communication study.
While preparing the research proposal, we will first see how to conduct a more qualified literature review. In this process, we will see how to use Bibliometrix, VOSviewer and ZOTERO tools. Then we will see how to conduct a literature review using MAXQDA. Then we will finalize the research proposal into a final report.
In the next stage, we will prepare the necessary files for the ethics committee report together with our research proposal and apply to the ethics committee. After the ethics committee approval, we will start our field research. We will analyze the data we collect from the field on MAXQDA.
After the data analysis, we will prepare the final report with the findings we have obtained. In the final step, we will transform it into an article through the format of an academic journal we will determine and BAMM! We will have a great publication (inshaAllah :D)
My goal
In the context of this course, my primary goal is to help students boost their academic qualifications by combining theory and practice through an applied literature review (which may also be a research proposal) and having a philosophical understanding of research methodology.
When you complete this course successfully
- You’ll be familiar with how to design qualitative research methods.
- You’ll know the current trends in qualitative research methodology.
- You’ll be able to choose the research design, method, and technique for your qualitative method study.
- You’ll also know how to collect and analyze data while conducting research using a qualitative methodology.
- You can learn about MaxQDA, one of the qualitative research software options, and assess its basic features at https://www.maxqda.com/lang/en.
- Many academics use software like ZOTERO, Bibliometrix and VOSviewer to understand literature review fundamentals. Thus, you will learn how to use these software.
- Upon finishing your research, you will be able to generate a report and a final article.
It is crucial to pose the following specific question: Is Prof. Cıngı the suitable person to teach this course?
During my graduate school, I completed research techniques courses, but largely owing to our inability to grasp the relevance of the subject, our laziness, and the absence of methodologies used by our teachers who teach this course, I concluded my PhD thesis by looking at it and saying how others accomplished it.
Can you believe it, not a master’s degree, but a doctorate…
When I decided to pursue academic studies, I recognized that in order to conduct a high-quality academic study, I needed to be well-versed in methodology.
Without ontology and epistemology, there can be no technique. I consequently developed an obsession with research methods and have spent the last five years trying to study as many books and papers as I can find on the topic.
I spent as much time and effort as I could attending numerous online and old-school workshops and seminars about the methodology. In these workshops, Professor Aylin Yonca Gençoğlu contributed a lot to me. Thanks her.
Consequently, I personally saw that it was not possible and should not be possible to produce quality academic publications without knowing the right method, and I tried to improve myself in methodology. I conducted grounded theory and phenomenology studies. These studies were applauded at symposiums, appreciated by referees and published in academic journals. I supervised both qualitative and quantitative dissertations and acted as referees in qualified journals in the SSCI and TRDizin index.
Of certainly, my activities do not demonstrate that I am an excellent academician. I regard myself as a methodology student. Full throttle to student education, but at least I can talk about the qualitative research methodology, and we can talk about it together. Of course, It would have been ideal if you had John Creswell or Corrine Glesne in your classes, but here I’m 🙂 I’ve dealt with big blunders and failures and I tell you that I will do all my best to prevent you from making the same mistakes that I did.
How can we keep in touch?
You can contact me by sending an e-mail during our course process, via social media or by using one of the most convenient ways on the “Contact” page above. Also, I make some announcements on my Instagram profile, so you should keep an eye on that.
How will I teach the course and which studies will we read?
I will ask you to read extensively beginning with our first lesson. I will always be the one to teach the lessons. I will never assign you a topic and then expect you to present it. However, before each class, we will go over the books/sections you read.
I will request that you write a thesis proposal. You will need to work hard outside of class hours to do this. Then I’ll ask you to defend that plan in the form of a presentation.
As we mentioned above, we will need MaxQDA, ZOTERO, Bibliometrix and VOSviewer software to do the review and analysis (and of course a computer to run them).
You can download the softwares via the links below:
MaxQDA
(https://www.maxqda.com/) (This software is paid, so we can only install a 15 days trial version.)
To sum it up, you are sure to spend a lot of energy in this lesson. Keep the energy part in mind when choosing this course, if you are not sure about your energy, I definitely do not recommend you to choose this course!
What does our course contain? What do we have in our reference list to read?
You can see the course outline and references here.
For the study proposal, we will take the Erciyes University Social Sciences Institute thesis writing guide as a basis. You can download and review the guide here.
How will we do the exam and score it?
Good news, no exam 🙂 The bad news is that a tough research process awaits you. Your midterm grade will be based on your research proposal. Your final grade will be based on your final research report. The grades will be based on the quality of your proposal and report/article. If the quality of your study fits into one of the indexes below, you will receive the score for that index:
- SSCI (WOS): 100
- SCOPUS: 90
- ESCI (WOS): 85
- Ulakbim/TRDizin: 80
- Other peer reviewed journals: 75
IMPERATIVE NOTE.
According to the rules of the Institute for Social Sciences, if the plagiarism rate of your proposal or report is over 30%, your work will not be evaluated.
The featured image was uploaded by Prashant Sharma from Pixabay
