LDRS591, Unit 6, Activity 6.2

Plano-Clark & Creswell’s (2015) evaluation of participants and data collection in a qualitative research report is implemented on E. Russell, Maxfield, & J. Russell’s (2017) study below:

1. The sampling strategy is appropriate and justified (2/3) – Russell et al. (2017) select a variety of leaders from “organizations headquartered in the Western United States” (p.  84) which provide perspectives from numerous for-profit sectors such as education, legal services, and finance. This proposes a well selected variety of participants. While the sampling strategy that used questionnaires was purposeful, interviews could have better served the purpose of the study; the researchers also acknowledge this by recommending the use of interviews for future studies.
2. The sample size is appropriate and justified (1/3) – Plano-Clark & Creswell (2015) state a grounded theory study should include 20 to 30 individuals (p. 336), but Russell et al. (2017) only use 14 senior level leaders for their study. Russell et al. (2017) acknowledge this is a limitation, but state,”Researchers relied on data saturation to determine the study’s sample size” (p. 85).
3. The data types are appropriate (2/3) – The open-ended questions asked on the questionnaires provide a good venue for participants to share their experience through a framework that allows the researchers to collect quantitative information, but as Plano-Clark & Creswell (2015) mention, the data collected is limited “because participants often write very little […] and researchers cannot ask the participants for clarifying information” (p. 340).
4. The data are gathered using rigorous qualitative procedures (2/3) – Although not all the questionnaire questions are provided, Russell et al. (2017) “developed a script consisting of open-ended questions to be used as the study questionnaire” (p. 84) and provide examples of the questions in the results section of the page. The benefit of the questionnaires is they can keep a good collection of their detailed questions and answers. The researchers also conducted a pilot project to refine the questions, but due to the nature of questionnaires, no follow-up questions were asked to further probe for data.
5. Data collection issues are handled ethically and thoughtfully (3/3) – Russell et al. (2017) indicate their respect of their participants’ rights by reinforcing the volunteer aspect of the participation and protecting the anonymity of their participants through their procedure. “The researchers removed any personal identifiers” (p. 85) and ensured trustworthiness by “triangula[ting] data sources from multiple participants, had another researcher preform an analysis for comparison, and presented the data as in-depth rich descriptions” (p. 85).
6. The selected participants are information rich (3/3) – As Table 2 (Russell et al., 2017, p. 85) indicate, the sampling was well rounded in age and gender from a variety of sectors in senior level leadership. The participants are a clear fit for the study.
7. The database provides extensive and credible information about the central phenomenon (2/3) – Russell et al. (2017) provide great examples of their data that include open-ended questions and answers that relate to the central research question collected via different questionnaires. It is unknown of how long the overall process took and I believe further details of the information gathered could have been provided.

References

Plano-Clark, V., & Creswell, J. (2015). Understanding research: A consumer’s guide (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.