1. QUESTION

This is what professor is looking for week 9 also respond to this post

Part I

What You Expected to Learn From Conducting Your Interview:

I honestly expected to learn about how religion or religious practices kept this participant from recidivating. I expected a detailed account of the strategies the participant employed in order to abstain from partaking of the behaviors that contributed to his former recidivism.

What You Learned From Conducting Your Interview:

What I learned was that the participant had attempted to use religion as a tool to abstain from his undesired behaviors and was unsuccessful. However, he reported that when he accepted another religion’s doctrine (Christianity) he was able to abstain. What I did not have an opportunity to gain an understanding of, was the differences between the two religions and their influence on the participant’s recidivism. That is, the participant attempted to apply the practices of Islam to his life as a means to convert his behavior that led to his imprisonment and recidivism to jail. However, he said that it was not until he accepted Christianity that he was able to abstain from the undesired behaviors. This suggests that a conversion took place. While I can postulate that I have a priori knowledge of this conversion, I cannot conceptualize this conversion scientifically because I do not “know” what the difference in the two religions mean in regards to promoting abstinence from jail. If I had to do this over, I would like to ask about the differences between the two religions, and what it was exactly about Islam that disallowed the participant to abstain from undesired behaviors, and what it was about the newer religion that promoted abstinence. There is the unanswered question of what changed? I guess I am not too surprised because “change/conversion” did become a code.

Change in Interview Questions:

1. What aspects of your religion promote abstinence?
2. What areas of your life changed when you decided to use your religion as a tool to prevent recidivism?

Part III

Question You Posed to Methodology Forum and Answer You Received:

I intend to do a case study using about 12 participants who meet very specific criteria. However, if I am unable to recruit 12 participants who meet this criteria, do I just note that and use what I can get? How is that handled? – Was not answered.

Question You Posed to Ethics Forum and Answer You Received:

What is the most important ethical thing to consider when reporting results of qualitative research?

Answer: The main thing is not to introduce your own bias…to report it neutrally.

Sheila-

Good work on the post.  You did an excellent job in Part I and it is possible that changes in your interview questions could make a difference. But I am not clear what you mean by abstinence.  You need to be very specific in interview quesiotns so the participant knows what the parameters are for answering the question.  Your second interview question is a leading quesiton because it presumes that areas of a participants life did change.  If a participant says, “Nothing changed in my life” you do have information but it is quite limited.  The only way out of this conundrum is to make sure that your sample is individuals who used religion as a tool to prevent recidivism but in order to do that it would need to align with the research-based problem you are addressing.

The moderator for the qual methods office hours was not able to connect with the web cam and apologized.  She will be there in November and I would like for you to go in on the next date it is offered.  I know how I would answer your excellent question (make sure you work with your dissertation chair/methodolgist to brainstorm recruitment strategies and then set a period of time for recruitment and stop when you have reached your deadline and use the N you have) but it will be interesting to hear what Dr. Spillett says.

There is some revising that is needed for Part II and it would be good if you were able to post it as part of the discussion.  You are on the right track.  When we develop themes we state the theme in our own words and then provide information from the interview that illustrates the theme.  Please review the themes in the Beck article.  There were 11 themes that emerged during Beck’s analysis of data.  She illustrated in tables how she went from key statements to themes but it is the actual write up of her themes that showcases how we present our themes. 

Lynde

Dr. Lynde,

Thank you for your feedback. I changed my purpose “…to gain an understanding of the influence religion has on African American ex-convicts who have used religion as a preventative tool against recidivism” (Hameen, 2015) to fit my updated problem. I think that was last week’s post, so it’s relatively new. And, I understand what you mean about number two being a leading question if it were outside of the scope of the purpose stated. I apologize; I did think about whether I needed to explain what abstinence meant in this context, and then I did not. Abstinence was used because I could not identify another antonym for recidivism or staying out of jail, or ceasing the behaviors that could land the participant in jail again.

I will work on part III. What I believe you are saying is that I am missing the write up; is this correct? I made a separate table for each theme and then described them under…should I just combine the tables, or just do the write up as Beck did with “theme 1, theme 2, etc…?” I will revise. I did wonder if something was missing…sorry about that.

This is what week 8 discussion needs to include

Part I

Transcript 1.docx 

1. Coding Used in Mini Project/Interview:

I originally decided to code using ATLAS.ti; I fell in love with the ability to use its visually enhanced capabilities…until I realized that Nvivo, though not as visually appealing, was far superior in ease of use. So, I scratched the whole project and started over using Nvivo. I developed nodes based on a word query of the 13 most frequent words.

2. How You Determined the Codes You Used:

The codes were derived from the research question. The language that the transcript produced, that, subsequently led to the most frequent words being coded was congruent with the research question. This made it very easy to determine which words to use.

3. When You Developed Your Coding Structure:

I developed my coding structure after I obtained the transcript, and again after I started coding. Once I began coding, the structure changed to include the areas that I had previously overlooked, but now seem significant.

4. What You Learned About Coding Your Data:

I had to relearned quite a few things. I started off using ATLAS.ti, and ended up completing the coding using Nvivo. Some things were not readily apparent as emerging codes until I started the process of querying. For instance, the word “change” emerged as a code, and I had not considered that in my research question, or in choosing a theoretical framework for my study, even though the focus is on how ex-convicts use their faith or religion as preventative tool to stay out of jail, I overlooked the process of their conversion or change.

5. Whether You Hand-coded Your Data and/or Used Software:

I used Nvivo. The process was rather quick; I did waste a few hours learning ATLAS.ti only to return to my first qualitative love (Nvivo). Once I was finished coding, I admit that I did create an association between a couple of the nodes just to show the relationship between them.

Part II

1. What You Learned About Being a Researcher Conducting Your Interview :

I love it. I had forgotten what coding felt like; the uncertainty of one’s own analysis. Though, there is the software that can do what I can do much faster. One thing I will say about the software is that it reads the transcript unlike I would read it. That is, I would automatically omit fillers, and conjunctions, but Nvivo codes everything.

2. Ability to Use the Data to Answer the RQ:

Here is where the analysis comes in. Coding is wonderful in that allows one to make connections between themes and codes, but that’s about all Nvivo can do. For the rest, I turned to Patton (2015) who said to “note and record emergent patterns and possible themes…add confirming cases to deepen analysis and possible disconfirming cases to test thematic ideas” (p. 523). This turned me back to the research I had gathered. For instance, since religion as a preventative method, emerged as a theme, I could confidently say that this was congruent with findings by Walters-Sleyon (2013) who stated that “…religion fundamentally caters to the inmates’ holistic well being…” (p. 53). Walters-Sleyon continued with saying that this “…recognition is poignant in the process of restoration because it establishes the grounds for…elements integral to restoring the offender in the process of adequate reintegration” (p. 53). This is huge, and suggests that religion as a preventative method against recidivism works to include essentials necessary for complete reentry into society.

3. What You Would Do Differently in a Future Interview:

I would probably try to make sure I develop very open questions so that the individual still covers the information requested by the question, but doesn’t feel so confined that they omit important data. I think I did that, but I would just like to practice better awareness in the future.

References

Patton, M. Q. (2015). Qualitative research & evaluation methods (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications

Walters-Sleyon, G. (2013). Studies on Religion and Recidivism: Focus on Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. Trotter Review, 21(1), 4.

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