As we completed our second assignment, we have also started to grapple with the notion of identifying a right question to ask and exploring how that question might be treated with different cultures of inquiry. Simple? I am not so sure. Attempting to answer that question can eventually lead you down a path, an unexpected path perhaps. Is it the right path? Is there a right path? Will the answers be different if one applies different culture of inquiry? Does it matter? Should the question that you ask be one for which you can anticipate the answer? The answer that you want? So many questions, yet asking the right question does not seem simple at all.
My reflexion about this topic came from reading articles on phenomenology, on bracketing and the application of the phenomenological method. According to Willig (2007) "a phenomenological approach to research acknowledges that the researchers play an active role in the construction of the research findings...their choice of research question all influence what can or cannot emerge from the research." (p.214).
This statement clearly left me with more questions than answers. With my behavioral quantitative background, I have always been taught that research attempts to prove or disprove a theory. That a question is essentially a hypothesis that you have about a certain issue and that you may or may not have a sense of what the research might yield. Not so, with the qualitative approach it seems. The notion that there can be no end point to the research that you are undertaking puzzles me. That the end point is not a definitive answer but perhaps the start of greater exploration is interesting, to say the least. It seems that qualitative research is more about trying to understand an issue than to actually prove a point.
I think I am going to like this.
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