Innovation in Qualitative Research Methods:

Possibilities and ChallengesChris Taylor and Amanda Coffey

Cardiff University

Innovation mission of the NCRMTo provide a strategic focal point for the identification, development and delivery of an integrated national research, training and capacity building programme aimed at: promoting a step change in the quality and range of methodological skills and techniques used by the UK social science community; and providing support for, and dissemination of, methodological innovation and excellence within the UK (ESRC 2005b: 63).

Innovation in social research• Science and Innovation Investment Framework 2004-14

(HM Treasury and OST)• A desirable and necessary part of ensuring the

sustainability of UK social science within global knowledge economies

• HEFCE Strategic Plan (2005:5) ‘Those who produce leading-edge research, and work to disseminate and apply its findings, should expect to receive recognition and support’

• Innovation referred to 15 times in ESRC 2005 Delivery Plan; 27 times in ESRC Annual Report 2004-5

Innovation in social research - ESRC

• A necessary condition for responding to the growing and rich data that are now being collected

• A matter of survival – not only in the production of new knowledge, but also in the capacity of future generations of the academic labour market to produce this knowledge

• Training and capacity-building are seen as essential to the development of innovative research tools and techniques

Defining innovation

• DTI Innovation Report (2003)– New designs, concepts and ways of

doing things

– Successful adoption and subsequent diffusion

– (Benefits and beneficiaries)

Innovation in Qualitative Research (New ideas)

New designs• New ways of collecting or generating data • New analytical techniques • New representations of qualitative research

Methodological concepts• Generating new ways of thinking about research• Developing new methodological concepts

New ways of doing research• Working with new participants or new groups • Combining methods and methodologies • Cross disciplinary research • Responding to a changing research landscape

Innovation in Qualitative Research(adoption and diffusion)

1. Diffusion of the ‘new idea’ or potential innovation (primary innovation claim)

2. Utilisation of ‘new idea’ or innovation by early adopters

3. Utilisation of ‘new idea’ or innovation by second adopters –providing a critical mass for wide acceptance of the new idea or innovation

4. General ‘consumption’ of ‘new idea’ or innovation

Innovation in Qualitative Research(Benefits and beneficiaries)

For example…• Greater or different data• Researching new settings or populations• Greater efficiency• Greater impact• Better understanding• Improved / different knowledge(s)• Better or enhanced research relationships• Improved ethical practice

Challenges for Methodological Innovation

• Repair and maintenance (the routinisation of innovation)

• The ‘problem’ of methodological failure

• Taking risks (trial and error)

• Consumption (readers and users)

• Interdisciplinarity

• Transparency and clarity

Innovation and research capacity building

• A support culture in which experimentation and creativity are both welcomed and critically appraised

• The communication and dissemination of both ‘good ideas’ and innovations that fail

• Creating opportunities for working at and across conventional disciplinary boundaries

• The development of frameworks and protocols to facilitate methodological transparency

• Accumulating and disseminating a critical mass of exemplary work

• Collaboration with research users and consumers• Opportunities for gaining, absorbing and exploiting new

methodological practices and knowledges