Qualitative Study: Critique & Recommendations Norbert Jerina Javier Leung Tirana Porter Destini Robinson Cheral Wintling EDF 6464

Participants Profiles Interview Process Interview Process

 Demographics: Aging, gender, and education  Women’s movement  Community college history  Life-span developmental psychology  Feminist sociological research  Importance to issues: self-definitions, independence, power and opportunity, and racism

Critique & Recommendations The first paragraph should be shortened The first paragraph might be divided by detaching the closing sentence, which introduces the concept of equity, and combining it with the opening sentence of the next paragraph. With a few added words to connect the theme of equity with the previous questions about personal meaning, the two paragraphs thus organized would yield a slightly more inviting format for the first page. Each paragraph must have its own independent, major thought Remove the quotes from around equal rights at bottom left page 174. The third item under Importance of the Study could be broken down.

 Demographic factors  Influence school populations  Historic moments: Oppressed groups struggles for equal rights & offerings in higher education  Community college standards  Studies of women who returned to school  Topic on women returning to school is minimal  Open door policy of community college  Psychology of women  Feminist sociological research orientation

Critique & Recommendations Add break at the point where the topic shifts from reasons for selecting community college to the subject of barriers to re-entry. The sentence dealing with the subjects used in Tittle and Denker’s study seems out of place in this summary. It might have been placed at the front adjacent to the introduction of the sources, or might have been omitted as not contributing anything essential to the reader’s understanding. The topic of women reporting to school could have been expanded

Critique & Recommendations The purpose of a proposal is to explain and justify a plan for investigation, not to convert or overwhelm the uninitiated. Personal commitments should not be included in the proposal Include reasonable limitations as a stipulated part of the contract. The topic of contrasting qualitative and quantitative paradigms should not be included at the conclusion of this section

 Epistemological stance: Phenomenological in-depth interviewing  Epistemological debates: Possibility and objectivity, subjectivity, causality, validity, generazability (Patton, 20002).  Research bias: Curiosity  Philosophic position and assumptions

 Eighteen to twenty-two females: ages  Community colleges from California, Massachusetts, and New York  Returned for education in a community college  Education interrupted for 3 – 4 years, but not more than 10 – 30 years  Range of ages, ethnicities, class backgrounds, marital and family statuses, and fields of studies  Informal channel to locate participants Participants

Interview Process  Phenomenological in-depth interview (Siedman, 1983 & Sullivan, 1982).  Interview for 90 minutes – 2 days apart, but no longer than a week apart  One interview will be held at the participant’s house  Interview questions:

Profiles  Team approach: Interviewer’s words are omitted in the transcription  Manuscript is shared with the participants for validation  Final versions of manuscripts omit sensitive information  Finals versions will be completed by the responsible person who initiated the profile.

Critique & Recommendations If the references really matter, then they should have been included in a way that displays their significance. First full paragraph has a sentence 13 lines long. This needs to be edited into multiple sentences. Middle paragraph can be deleted. This discussion is really not required. The ultimate goal of the research was listed in the last sentence of the last paragraph. The goal should have been listed in the beginning of the proposal. If doing a qualitative proposal then quantitative data should not be discussed. No quantitative measures could use Cronbach Alpha. A multiple regression could be done as an independent variable. Other factors she develops could be grouped into dependent variables.

 Identify themes  Deductive analysis based on expected patterns and themes  Deductive analysis based on expected college experiences that relate to issues of equality

Patton, M.Q. (2002). Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods (3 rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.