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Civics, as a topic of study, prompts the adoption of research techniques that can be used on any range of topics. However, the techniques chosen also have to take into account the fact that civics, as a curricular subject, and unlike mathematics or even science, is hard to define. It was this consideration that pushed the Civic Education Study steering committee into adopting research methods and perspectives more commonly found within the broad and amorphous area of “qualitative research.” In doing so, they organized a type of study that offers a model for future studies of international achievement.In this regard, the results of the TIMSS case study and video project point to the likelihood that future such studies will require more complex research approaches than previously used. Even though the presence of “authoritative intended” curricula for subjects like mathematics and science seemingly “serve as reasonable starting points” for research in these fields, a growing number of studies suggests that cultural considerations also need to be taken into account (see, for example, Lee, Graham & Stevenson, 1996; Tsuchida & Lewis, 1996; Stigler, Fernandez & Yoshida, 1996). As international studies of achievement grow more complex, and the methods used to collect and analyze data more refined, the impact of various cultural domains (school culture, regional cultural and/or national culture) will play an increasingly important role in the entire research process. To fully understand how achievement is contextualized in a given nation requires not only sets of complex data but also a range of analytical methods that draw out conflicting views, contested areas and shared beliefs.The last decade has seen the continued call for more culturally sensitive (appropriate) analysis and interpretation of international educational data, particularly achievement data. There has been a growing expectation that researchers who use such data sets will be either experts in or have access to expert advice in the nations selected for comparison. However, this trend alone will not affect the basic collection of the data. If there is to be a significant change in the type of data collected — a change that will allow far more sophisticated qualitative analysis to be conducted — then qualitative data collection and analysis cannot be simply relegated to the “descriptive” mode. Both the Civic Education Study and TIMSS have demonstrated that rich qualitative data, analyzed using methods derived from current qualitative educational research, can have dramatic effects on the orientation of the research process.The use to which data gathered by TIMSS have been put also offers insights for future projects. One alarming trend has been the tendency for media and policy groups to use TIMSS's qualitative data as evidence of the “real” conditions in a given country. This is particularly true of the video study conducted by Stigler. Demonstration clips of the videos have been widely shown on the implicit assumption that educators and policy-makers can directly use this type of “data” even when it has not been “interpreted” by scholars. While the aim of creating straightforward data free of disciplinary jargon is a good one, qualitative data are perhaps more easily misinterpreted than quantitative data. The impact of a five-minute video clip or an evocative quote from an interview transcript cannot be denied, but this impact may be misleading. All data, qualitative or quantitative, are representations of reality. Experienced ethnographers know that five minutes after the camera or tape-recorder is turned off, drastically different events may occur or conflicting statements may be made. The presentation of qualitative data, then, must be carefully framed within an explicit outline of the methods used to collect and analyze it.The greatest danger lies in assuming that all that can be done with qualitative data is to provide the cultural “context” for quantitative analyses. Unfortunately, this did occur with TIMSS. In contrast, the Civic Education Study researchers used the hypothesis-generating function of the qualitative work to challenge original hypotheses and to dramatically re-cast the project. This continued use of reflective analysis changed the Civic Education Study from a more traditional “input-output” study to one that was indeed truly process oriented. Moreover, because the Civic Education case studies were conducted well in advance of the survey and testing aspects, the Civic Education Study researchers were able to capitalize on the qualitative data in a way that the TIMSS researchers could not.Comparative education scholars have long been aware of the different cultural values attached to school, learning and teaching in different nations or among different groups within a given nation. However, recent international achievement studies have rarely attempted to analyze systematically the cultural components of achievement. Over 30 years ago, Jones (1971) hailed the first International Mathematics Study (FIMS), but nevertheless stressed that “because comparative education is concerned with cross-national or cross-cultural variability, one of its tasks ought to be the advancing of hypotheses which can be tested in either established or novel ways” (p. 153). The ethnographic case studies of the Civic Education Study offer established ways to use qualitative data to generate and test hypotheses. These approaches have been used for at least two decades in some areas of qualitative studies, but they present, for the field of comparative education, novel ways to think about the problems of comparison.The politically contested nature of civic education prompted the Civic Education Study's NPRs and steering committee to alter significantly the research process that has traditionally been applied to cross-national studies of achievement. Topics like democracy and citizenship evoke very different associations in different countries, and even between various groups within a given nation, a fact that fortunately clarifies rather than obscures the impact of culture on curriculum, teaching and expectations for competence. The experience of the civic education researchers suggests that the use of qualitative data for hypothesis generation and the use of a reflective research process that links qualitative and quantitative data have significant promise for the study of achievement in any subject. In addition, continued recourse to highly integrated studies that utilize a range of research methodologies promises to bring comparative studies of achievement to a new and higher level of usefulness.The Civic Education researchers incorporated a range of qualitative techniques, innovative uses of technology, and extensive literature reviews, and were highly sensitive to the impact of methodological decisions on the kinds of data collected and the interpretations arrived at. Despite the tremendous amount of material reviewed and summarized, as well as the incredible cultural, social and political diversity represented by the participating nations, the work of these researchers not only is providing crucial insights into the actualization of qualitative methods on a large scale but also is offering “comparativists” and “qualitative researchers” alike a wealth of information.

The contributions of qualitative research to the study of behavioral–emotional disabilities, mild intellectual disabilities, and learning disabilities (the three types of high-incidence disabilities) are relatively recent and far from abundant. This chapter discusses qualitative, or “naturalistic” research by briefly examining the methodology used in such inquiry, reviewing many of the available studies concerning those with high-incidence disabilities, and providing implications from the existing empirical literature. It is not recommended that qualitative research takes the place of quantitative research in special education, but well-designed and executed naturalistic studies can contribute additional knowledge that is worthwhile to the field.

The study of strategy is the study of how firms gain and maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It is an examination of both the types of strategy that appear to be most successful in a given situation, as well as the organizational resources, systems, principles, and processes that create, transform, and carry out strategic action in competitive arenas. Since its development as a distinct disciplinary area, strategy research has focused primarily on large, cross-sectional studies of quantitative data gathered through questionnaires, archival sources such as financial reports, and commercial data bases such as PIMS and COMPUSTAT. These analyses have focused on, and revealed, patterns of strategy content, formulation processes, and competitive interaction that exist across firms within a given competitive context and that explain variations in performance across firms. These results have led to the development of several basic theoretical frameworks that help us to understand and predict competitive activity and organizational performance.

In recent years, there has been an extraordinary accumulation of qualitative research in special education. However, as yet, there has been little accumulation of the understandings gained from these studies. This omission has important implications for knowledge development, the utilization of findings in practice, and providing implications for policy. In this chapter, we review and discuss perspectives and procedures from other fields with respect to aggregation of qualitative data. Additionally, we propose a specific method for the meta-synthesis of qualitative research in the area of special education. This synthesis would not be a numerical compilation of outcomes, as in traditional meta-analysis, but would treat individual research reports as “informants,” and employ procedures, such as analytic induction and the constant comparative method to develop higher understandings across individual cases. Such efforts are thought to be essential to reaching higher analytic goals and also to enhancing the generalizability of qualitative research. It is argued that meta-synthesis efforts could do much to promote the impact of the shared understandings gained from individual qualitative research efforts.

Selecting the methodological approach is a critical decision as it largely determines the effectiveness of the research. Encapsulating the research approach as a chapter in a thesis is often a challenge to many young researchers, despite the abundance of guides on PhD thesis writing and on the various approaches to research methodologies. However, most guides are descriptive and fail to provide appropriate illustrations of a methodology chapter especially in qualitative research. In a qualitative methodology chapter, key factors are the assumptions, theoretical lens, and worldviews on the topic, making qualitative methodology chapter less definite, more subjective and lacks a conventional model. This chapter addresses the need for qualitative research samples and aims to advance the understanding of writing a qualitative research methodology chapter by providing essential guidelines. The guidelines are drawn from an actual qualitative research methodology chapter of a PhD thesis in the field of tourism and social cohesion.

Cross-language qualitative research has gained momentum worldwide; yet, there is still a lack of consensus to guide researchers in ensuring the trustworthiness of the research. Several methodological dilemmas related to language differences between researchers and participants should be carefully addressed. Therefore, this study aims to (1) review qualitative literature addressing cross-language, (2) produce a list of methodological criteria and recommendations from the reviewed literature and (3) evaluate systematically published cross-language qualitative researches using the list.

This study employed a summative content analysis of 35 published curriculum and pedagogy researches from 2000–2018 that viewed language differences as methodological issue. A list of 20 criteria or recommendations was constructed and used to evaluate the selected researches.

The findings revealed that majority of the researches lacked understanding of language differences between researchers and participants causing multiple inconsistencies in reporting methodological issues. Failure to address these methodological issues could risk the trustworthiness of the data and the overall rigor of the research.

This study highlights the importance to minimize methodological issues related to language differences. It is hoped that the list of criteria or recommendations proposed by this study could support other cross-language qualitative researchers in overcoming these methodological dilemmas.

The authors seek to show the extent and nature of qualitative research in international marketing in IMR (International Marketing Review) and then aim to understand and explain developments in this area. They explore the global coverage of extant qualitative work in IMR and reflect on the thematic focus, theoretical purpose, research design and transparency of methods prevailing in these studies.

The authors identify and content-analyze 79 qualitative international marketing-focused articles published in IMR from 1990 to 2010.

The analysis revealed several areas that can assist researchers in identifying gaps to be filled by future qualitative international marketing studies. These include: global coverage needs to be further developed; an increase in the number of comparative studies, yet insights from three or more countries remain scarce; extant qualitative studies seem to explore ten key themes; there is a growing trend in theory elaboration studies; interviews are still the most popular data collection method, yet the repertoire of methods is expanding; there is an upward trend in higher transparency in the description of data collection and analysis, but this needs further development.

The paper fosters the development of qualitative research in international marketing by: highlighting the value of qualitative research for advancing theory in this field; inspiring international marketing scholars to learn more about qualitative methods; and offering guidelines to researchers that seek to advance this field.

Informed decisions about sampling are critical to improving the quality of research synthesis. Even though several qualitative research synthesists have recommended purposeful sampling for synthesizing qualitative research, the published literature holds sparse discussion on how different strategies for purposeful sampling may be applied to a research synthesis. In primary research, Patton is frequently cited as an authority on the topic of purposeful sampling. In Patton’s original texts that are referred to in this article, Patton does not make any suggestion of using purposeful sampling for research synthesis. This article makes a unique contribution to the literature by examining the adaptability of each of Patton’s 16 purposeful sampling strategies to the process of qualitative research synthesis. It illuminates how different purposeful sampling strategies might be particularly suited to constructing multi‐perspectival, emancipatory, participatory and deconstructive interpretations of published research.

The study aims to explore the case study method with the formation of questions, data collection procedures and analysis, followed by how and on which position the saturation is achieved in developing a centralized Shariah governance framework for Islamic banks in Bangladesh.

Using purposive and snowball sampling procedures, data have been collected from 17 respondents who are working in the central bank and Islamic banks of Bangladesh through face-to-face and semi-structured interviews.

The study claims that researchers can form the research questions by using “what” question mark in qualitative research. Besides, the qualitative research and case study could explore the answers of “what” questions along with the “why” and “how” more broadly, descriptively and extensively about a phenomenon. Similarly, saturation can be considered attaining the ultimate point of data collection by the researchers without adding anything in the databank. Overall, this study proposes three stages of saturation: First, information redundancy. Second, referring the respondents (already considered in the study) without knowing anything about the data collection and their responses. Third, through the NVivo open coding process due to the decrease of reference or quotes in a certain position or in the saturation position as a result of fewer outcomes or insufficient information. The saturation is thus achieved in the diversified positions, i.e. three respondents for regulatory, nine for Shariah scholars and officers and five for the experts concerning the responses and respondents.

The study has potential implications on the qualitative research method, including the case study, saturation process and points, NVivo analysis and qualitative questions formation.

This research defines a case study with the inclusion of “what” and illustrates the saturation process in diverse positions. The qualitative research questions can also be formed with “what” in addition “why” and “how”.