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Enhancing Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research with Technology

Q&A with Shalin Hai-Jew

By IGI Global on Jul 16, 2014
Dr. Shalin Hai-Jew is one of IGI Global's most prolific editors and contributors. She works as an instructional designer at Kansas State University (K-State) and teaches for WashingtonOnline (WAOL). She has taught at the university and college levels for many years, and reviews for several publications including Educause Quarterly and MERLOT’s Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. Dr. Hai-Jew's newest title, Enhancing Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research with Technology, scheduled to release at the end of September, explores the integration of new digital tools into the research process, in light of the expensive nature of quantitative research. Dr. Hai-Jew recently took a minute to discuss more on this book and her research with a Q&A session.


Enhancing Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research with TechnologyQ: What was the inspiration for Enhancing Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research with Technology?

For me, inspiration usually comes from mundane daily-life realizations. As an instructional designer, part-time faculty member, and researcher, I use a variety of technologies daily for my work. It was clear that certain types of data could only be acquired with the uses of particular technologies and methods. I was spending time doing data extractions from social media platforms and using this data to draw graphs. I was supporting a data analytics package (for which our campus had a site license) designed for qualitative and mixed methods research on campus. I was using tools to create data visualizations from text corpuses. I was using an online survey tool for a modified e-Delphi study as well as a range of more basic survey-based research. Then, too, I would be accessing various data repositories for literature reviews and general learning. In the final stages of the research cycle—when a work goes to publication—that work is usually archived in electronic or online spaces. Truly, there is no aspect of the research cycle that technology does not touch or influence.

Simultaneous to all this, I was taking graduate-level courses that showed me just how differently qualitative and mixed methods research is practiced in various fields and domains. Research methods and tools evolve based on the needs of researchers who ask the hard questions and then co-design the methods to get at what they want to know in rigorous and thorough ways. Researchers will borrow each other’s methods and ideas across domains. They will innovate as needed for their local needs.

Those two main threads of interests—the applied technologies and the qualitative and mixed methods research—came together in this book. When the call for chapter proposals went out in mid-2013, it was clear that this topic resonated with other researchers and authors.

Q: Why qualitative and mixed methods research?

When people generally think of research, they may think of lab-based work with rigorous controls; they may think of the need to reject the null hypothesis at a sufficient p-value and other high-level statistics indicating relationships. Things have changed theoretically and practically. There are severe limits to what may be set up in a lab and tested. The “in vivo” work (“within the living”) enables researchers to view the world itself as a living laboratory, with its own insights. There are certain types of information and knowing that can only be attained using qualitative and mixed methods research approaches. Further, there are benefits to seeing how the subjectivity of the researcher may affect research findings and to try to control for those subjectivities with a variety of research methods and technologies. All said, human fallibility and subjectivities are part of the equation, even with more traditionally quantitative methods (which explains the thicket of laws, oversight, methodologies, and tests for validity).

Q: How common is it for researchers in academia to use technologies to enhance their qualitative and mixed methods research? Why?

Interestingly enough, the application of technologies to conduct or enhance qualitative and mixed methods research is not a foregone conclusion and is not uncontroversial. There are fears of a kind of technological determinism, that the particular technologies themselves might skew the research findings or the human coding of data. There are concerns that researchers may not sufficiently understand what is going on in technologies (as a “black box”) because of some of the high level math in some of the tools. There are concerns that some tools may not enable an external way to validate (verify) or invalidate (falsify) the findings; in other words, researchers may have to rely on the technology itself to check the tool’s claims in a kind of circular or closed approach (which is not optimal).

Virtually all researchers seem to use some technologies for their research work. They train into the uses of these tools as graduate students and then add to their professional skillset over time. There are many who use equipment and tools that are highly complex and specialized. What this book covers though are more general tools, so there is transferability in terms of the learning.

Q: What sorts of technologies are addressed in this book? Were there technologies that you wanted to address but did not?

The technologies mentioned were mostly widely available commercial and proprietary packages, but there were some open-source tools as well. At least one work “chained” a number of tools for particular (raw) data and (processed) information.

Enhancing Qualitative and Mixed Methods presents technology-enhanced research and research-related methods and technologies (because methods and technologies cannot often be separated in a meaningful way). Some of the chapters address going online to directly elicit information from people. The chapters share about conducting online focus groups, online ethnographies, online Delphi studies, and video conferencing interviews. One described a cultural analysis conducted in a 3D virtual immersive space. Several works describe data extractions from the Web or Internet: the conduct of a network structures analysis based on the Web, capturing the gist of electronic identities based on Twitter Tweetstreams and user accounts, the analysis of text corpuses from big data, and the sampling of public sentiment through related tags networks on a content-sharing social media platform. One chapter describes the transcription of qualitative interviews using a dedicated technology. Several chapters illuminate the uses of data analysis software packages for coding data and analyzing data. Another elaborates on the application of e-journaling to mitigate researcher limitations and subjectivities. One chapter describes information collection and analysis from an industrial environment. One author introduces a fresh research method, which he dubs the discount focus subgroup method. Another team applies process inquiry for an information technology context. There are other works as well.

While these chapters contain a variety of technological tools, there are a few dozen others I could rattle off the top of my head. There’s always the potential to address other software programs. This book scratches the surface of what is possible.

Q: What would be a follow-on work to Enhancing Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research with Technology?

A follow-on work would address an even wider range of technology-enhanced research methodologies and tools. I wouldn't want to suggest that this book is comprehensive in any sense of the word here. There’s a lot going on in the world of research.

Thank you so much, Dr. Hai-Jew, for taking the time to collaborate on this! Best of luck with your forthcoming book and continuing research.


Shalin Hai-Jew works as an instructional designer at Kansas State University (K-State); she teaches from a distance for WashingtonOnline (WAOL). She has taught at the university and college levels for many years (including four years in the People’s Republic of China) and was tenured at Shoreline Community College but left tenure to pursue instructional design work. She has Bachelor’s degrees in English and psychology, a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Washington (Hugh Paradise Scholar), and an Ed.D in Educational Leadership with a focus on public administration from Seattle University (where she was a Morford Scholar). She reviews for several publications — Educause Review Online and MERLOT’s Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, and is editor of several IGI Global titles, including Remote Workforce Training: Effective Technologies and Strategies, released in February 2014.

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