Dissertation Research

Cadyn Cathers, PsyD: Now, one of the things that you'll notice when people kind of talk about research is that there's kind of this hierarchy of people put the experiments kind of at the top of this is like the gold standard, except that it's gold standard only for answering one kind of question, What intervention has the best impact? or... What policy or what program? So if I was looking at a hierarchy of, I wanna know what's the best way to go, then yeah, experiments are on the top of that. But if I really wanna know, What's it like to be in therapy? What's it like to be adopted? What's the coming out process like? What's the experiences associated with transition? That's not an experiment. That's a qualitative study. So if that's my question, I would put a qualitative study much more at the height at the tip of that hierarchy. Then if we're looking within a qualitative kind of study, we have a couple different kind of subcategories. So what if I'm interested in looking at meaning? So... What meaning does progress have? or... What meaning does the sense of belonging have for children who are adopted? Something like that. Then in that case, an IPA may make the most sense, an interpretive phenomenological analysis, because that's about meaning-making. So I may have a particular concept. So it's not just some interesting experiences but of meaning of a particular experience. So like maybe coming out, sense of belonging for adoptive kids, something like that. What if I'm not clear on what might be a factor but I wanna kind of hear around people's experiences. So, if maybe I run a homeless shelter, let's say, and I noticed people only stay one night and then never come back. I may be curious what's going on of... What experiences are people having? And maybe I have no clue. I could make some ideas and maybe there's some safety concerns. Maybe it's too hot, too cold. I don't know, maybe there's bedbugs. I could make all sorts of hypotheses, but I can't really know until I talk to people. So maybe I talk to folks and say, How is your experience being here? Would you want to come back? That sort of a thing. And then maybe address it. So in that, if I'm trying to look at what are the themes in what people talk about, I do a thematic analysis. So notice that's quite different than an IPA that's looking at meaning. Both I'm learning from the experiences by talking to people in a qualitative way, but my methodology is gonna be quite different. What if I'm curious about people's stories? People like to put things, you know, with a beginning, a middle and an end and they like to make it like a, a linear story. So maybe I'm curious about, How do people characterize the stories that they tell if they've been abused or maybe the story of being in the shelter? And I'm curious about how do they structure those stories. Then maybe I go with a narrative analysis. And a lot of students at, at Reisss-Davis don't go with that particular methodology, but it is a common one that you might see. Most commonly, I'm seeing IPA and thematic analyses for those that go a qualitative route. So this is where honing in on what is your question really determines your outcome of what method you're gonna use.