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Entrepreneurial identity is a complex concept. It has been recognised as a subjective and dynamic socio-cognitive factor which is not stable over time and is part of an iterative formation process. This chapter explores the journey of adopting, implementing and reviewing visual methods, in order to examine entrepreneurial identity, from the researchers’ perspectives. A critical standpoint is offered which explores both the benefits and challenges that presented themselves in the search for rich data.

All good social science researchers recognise that each investigative paradigm and their respective research tools (e.g. experiments, surveys, interviews, observations, questionnaires) is limited in its exploratory power but especially by its dependence on the interests, perspectives and skills of the researchers employing it. They determine the research questions pursued and the questions asked of the respondents. Constructivist researchers however, though they too focus on an area they deem deserving of research and carry their own biases, seek to explore the respondents' perspectives of those domains, what they consider important and construe from their knowledge and life experiences and why they act as they do. Participants in research also bring to the task their own orientations, including their suspicions about researchers' motives, their willingness to take part in the investigation and their personal gains from doing so. When the aim of the research is agentic change, these are critical considerations for research design, data analysis and interpretation. This chapter, after summarising the main tenets of personal and social constructivist theory, explores and evaluates constructivist methodology, illustrating benefits and limitations through examples from research practice of its tools and analytical procedures from research conducted by the authors and their doctoral researchers across and between disciplines and levels in higher education. Techniques used include repertory grids, narrative and pictorial methods used to study, inter alia, staff development issues and transformative doctoral learning. Caveats emerging from practice will be included that limit and focus appropriately the collection, analysis and interpretation of results. Finally, arguments are presented for why, when and how to adopt, or indeed to avoid, these approaches and methods within such research.

This chapter reflectively explores the idea of doing art-based research (ABR) through poetic methods for studying the experience of learning in higher education. Taking some literature on faculty development to exemplify different ways of experiencing learning, this chapter serves as a counterpoint to researching experiences of learning from a phenomenological approach. The fundamental reasoning for this is that the basic epistemological assumptions in phenomenology would limit our understanding of experiences of learning and thus, other methodological options would be worth exploring. To that end, this chapter elaborates on the relationship between knowledge production, speech and experience, all circling around the notions of research method and construction. Here, the aim is to reflect upon an understanding of research that is aligned with a dialogical and relational conceptualization of the experience of learning. Finally, an argument will be outlined that suggests conducting research as an experience. Taking from Dewey, Kvale, Law, Scheurich, Talmy and others, this exploration will present the idea of studying the experiences of learning by way of producing/devising experiences through arts. With the notion of art as experience from Dewey, the argument goes to ABR in a general sense, and poetry in particular, as a sound and coherent alternative way of researching learning as an experience. Thus, this chapter explores the possible theoretical-methodological contributions of thinking about and doing research understood as an experience through art.

Exposing the hidden lives of female public relations (PR) practitioners requires deep connection with those lives. Stories need to be uncovered, interrogated, and ultimately told, to shine a light on the lived experiences of those working in PR. The methods used to collect these stories require deep immersion in the field and the ethnographic method is ideal for this. Ethnographic research methods have long been utilised to gain insights into the lived experiences of individuals and communities. This chapter provides an understanding of the strengths and limitations of ethnographic research methods in capturing the nuances of women's experiences of working in PR.

Organisational ethnography is an established field in business studies and has been used to investigate disciplines cognate to PR, including advertising and media, but, to date, has failed to be fully explored in PR research. This chapter examines the potential for ethnography to open new areas of PR theory and considers its potential as a means of bridging the gap between PR theory and practice.

Ethnography is not without its limitations; key concerns surround objectivity, the role of the researcher, and that of the participant, and ethics. Nonetheless, this method would appear to offer huge potential for the study of PR practices; the diverse nature of the sector makes it a rich area to study.

This chapter explores the potential of this method to offer an opportunity to investigate areas such as working practices, ethics in practice, power, gender, diversity, and culture.

Health profession education has evolved to incorporate didactic instruction and experiential learning opportunities over time. Constructivism and interprofessional education are essential theoretical concepts that have shaped modern health profession education. However, transformative active learning is an approach that is particularly well suited to the needs of healthcare professionals. By integrating theoretical knowledge with practical skills, transformative active learning helps prepare students for the complex challenges they will face in their future careers and encourages them to become agents of change committed to improving healthcare practice. Saudi National Institute of Health (Saudi NIH) is one of the Ministry of Health's initiatives in the National Transformation Program 2020 to achieve the Kingdom's Vision 2030, as it supports biomedical research in the health sector in Saudi Arabia. One of the mandates of Saudi NIH is to build the research capacity through well-designed educational and training programs through the directory of education and research skills adopting active learning strategies. This chapter aims to communicate the methodological framework of the Education and Research Skills Directory of the SNIH for integrating active learning in the various training programs and initiatives aiming to promote the core learning capabilities with excellence, diversity, diversity, uniqueness, competency, and efficiency values.

Education researchers have been urged to utilize causal inference methods to estimate the policy effect more rigorously. While randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the gold standard for assessing causality, RCTs are infeasible in some educational settings, particularly when ethical concerns or high cost are involved. Quasi-experimental research designs are the best alternative approach to study educational topics not amenable to RCTs, as they mimic experimental conditions and use statistical techniques to reduce bias from variables omitted in the empirical models. In this chapter, we introduce and discuss the core concepts, applicability, and limitations of three quasi-experimental methods in higher education research (i.e., difference-in-differences, instrumental variables, and regression discontinuity). By introducing each of these techniques, we aim to expand the higher education researcher's toolbox and encourage the use of these quasi-experimental methods to evaluate educational interventions.

Sentiment analysis is a text analysis method that is developed for systematically detecting, identifying, or extracting the emotional intent of words to infer if the text expresses a positive or negative tone. Although this novel method has opened an exciting new avenue for organizational research – mainly due to the abundantly available text data in organizations and the well-developed sentiment analysis techniques, it has also posed a serious challenge to many organizational researchers. This chapter aims to introduce the sentiment analysis method in the text mining area to the organizational research community. In this chapter, the authors first briefly discuss the central role of sentiment in organizational research and then introduce the traditional and modern approaches to sentiment analysis. The authors further delineate research paradigms for text analysis research, advocating the iterative research paradigm (cf., inductive and deductive research paradigms) that is more suitable for text mining research, and also introduce the analytical procedures for sentiment analysis with three stages – discovery, measurement, and inference. More importantly, the authors highlight both the dictionary-based and machine learning (ML) approaches in the measurement stage, with special coverage on deep learning and word embedding techniques as the latest breakthroughs in sentiment and text analyses. Lastly, the authors provide two illustrative examples to demonstrate the applications of sentiment analysis in organizational research. It is the authors’ hope that this chapter – by providing these practical guidelines – will help facilitate more applications of this novel method in organizational research in the future.

The aim of this chapter is to stimulate debate and critical thinking about the relevance and effectiveness – especially for ‘non-core’ areas – of prevailing methodological approaches to entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE) research and policy development and to argue for the exploration of critical realism (CR) as a potential framework for researchers, practitioners and policymakers. I argue that prevailing theoretical and methodological frameworks are insufficient to enable researchers to adequately understand the dynamics of diverse EE or for policymakers to act appropriately on research findings. I posit CR as an alternative framework, providing a ‘lens’ through which researchers, policymakers and other ecosystem stakeholders can collaboratively explore the role of context and its interplay with agency. CR addresses the disadvantages associated with deterministic models of entrepreneurship and ‘Valley envy’ policy prescriptions, thus generating more meaningful insights for policy and practice, especially in relation to ‘non-core’ areas.

Systematic literature review (SLR) papers have gained significant importance during the last years as many reputed journals have asked for literature review submissions from the authors. However, at the same time, authors are experiencing a high number of desk rejections because of a lack of quality and its contribution to the existing body of knowledge. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to offer guidance to researchers who intend to communicate SLR papers in top-rated journals. We attempt to offer a guide to buddy researchers who plan to write SLR papers. This purpose is achieved by clearly stating how the traditional review method is different from SLR, when and how can each type of literature review method be used, writing effective motivation of a review paper and finally how to synthesize the available literature. We have also presented a few suggestions for writing an impactful SLR in the last. Overall, this chapter serves as a guide to various aspirants of SLR paper to understand the prerequisites of an SLR paper and offers deep insights to bring in more clarity before writing an SLR paper, thereby reducing the chances of desk rejection.