Part A
Russell, Maxfield and Russell (2017) used a qualitative grounded theory research design. They developed a questionnaire using open ended questions completed online and stated language was used that wouldn’t bias the participants answers. It was an online questionnaire completed in 30 minutes. Overall the rating according to Plano-Clarke and Creswell (2015) scale for evaluation the research design in a qualitative research report was 2.4/3 (p. 203). The overall design set up was reasonable. I was left questioning whether the design really answered the question of the overall study and wonder if the results could be attributed to leadership in general or specifically servant leadership. The example question ‘how does it affect you as a leader when your followers succeed’ (Russel et al., 2017) also raised the question about the term follower. In other disciplines a leader would be asked about their employees, reports or direct reports. The word follower has different tone, meaning and responsibility attached to it.
Part B
The participants and data collection procedures look good. A rating of 2.6 (Plano-Clark & Creswell, 2015, p. 350) overall for this section reflects the solid group of validated leaders from a wide variety of non-profit sectors as summed up in Table 2. It only had two out of 14 women perhaps reflecting the divide in real life. This is not commented on as perhaps something to dive deeper into.
Part C
High marks to the researchers for the data analysis and overall findings, scoring 2.6 (Plano-Clarke & Creswell (2015), p. 378). Of great interest was how the data was explored. Watson et al. (2017) read through the data, took notes and wrote memo’s. They used a tiered process to sort using constant comparisons. They hand coded and color coded different attributes giving plenty of time to read and reread the survey answers.
The coding process first identified overarching open codes consisting of single words and short phrases. The open codes revealed specific relationships resulting in axial codes. The axial codes converged to form the selective codes, reaching saturation to reveal and relate the core categories that allowed for the study’s theoretical development with attributes. The theoretical findings are presented in the results section of the article. The researchers then interpreted the theoretical finds, reporting the in the discussion section (Russell et al., 2017).
Russell et al. (2017) found two attributes with validation as a leader and freedom from management. They reasoned the theoretical finding that leaders realize personal benefits from serving the needs of followers. I still question whether they answer the question for leadership in general as I feel the link to servant leadership specifically is weak. It could be argued that the attribute of freedom from management reinforces the idea that followers, or most employees, like to be trusted with responsibility and don’t like to be micromanaged.
Part D
I have a much better appreciation for qualitative research. This week’s reading in Plano-Clark and Creswell (2015) revealed many parallels with marketing work. If the section was changed to ‘What type of qualitative data do marketers collect?’ (p. 357) the content would be similar. Marketers use focus groups, and various types of interview to collect data which informs how to educate or market a product. The section on procedure for qualitative interview had many parallels with good sales calls that employ using good open-ended questions to understand better what would be useful for a customer.
Do you think that pure qualitative research has a lot of parallels with marketing research?
References
Plano-Clark, V., & Creswell, J. (2015). Understanding research: A consumer’s guide (2nd ed.).
Boston, MA: Pearson.
Russell, E. J., Maxfield, R. J., & Russell, J. L. (2017). Discovering the self-interest of servant
leadership: A grounded theory. Servant Leadership: Theory and Practice, 4(1), 75-97.
Retrieved from: http://www.sltpjournal.org/uploads/2/6/3/9/26394582/06russell_vol_4_issue_1.pdf
This isn’t a substantive comment – I am so impressed by your “Part C” and your understanding! I appreciate being a fellow student, and hope I can benefit from your knowledge and understanding.
I just checked Part C. The middle paragraph was a direct quote from Russell et al. (2017). I was trying out the APA rule of in text quotations >40 words that don’t need quotations, and are indented. On my draft this paragraph was indented. When I cut and pasted the blog, the layout didn’t stay. I should have checked that before publishing. I will be changing that now. Thanks for your comment.
Hi Charlie Mable,
Great question! Market research uses both traditional qualitative and quantitative research methods and analyses. The difference between market research and academic research is usually the goal/outcome.
Academic research is usually conducted by professorial/scholarly types and tends to be focused more on exploring and explaining theories/phenomenon rather than producing something practical that can be used in the real world (this is not always the case).
Market research, on the other hand, is searching for answers to applied questions that are derived from a business context. For example, companies might interview their customers, suppliers, distributors, industry experts to get answers to a specific question. The goal of this type of research is very applied in nature.
Dr. Strong
Hi Charlie,
I will confess that I do not know what marketing research is, but I would look it up and come back to you.