Panel Discussions 1 (OL): Pragmatic and Contextually Driven Applied Research

This panel will describe the paradigm and contextually driven decisions made by four investigators when choosing and designing their qualitative research projects, two of which are part of a mixed methods research design. Each presenter will describe the theoretical and empirical rationale anchoring their research questions, the qualitative research design selected to address the questions, the ethical considerations each method may pose, and the analytical, interpretational, and data integration process. All of these studies are pragmatic, contextually driven, and illustrate design and unit of analysis decisions that influence the parameters of the contextual richness that can be obtained with each design (Ayres, 2003). The premise that methodological choices are intricately connected to philosophical assumptions (Cameron, 2011), data collection and analysis, and pragmatic realities guides the presentations. The panel will invite the audience to engage in and reflect on the complexity of the phenomena studied in these presentations and in their own research, advantages and disadvantages of the methodological approaches used, investigators’ common and different assumptions, and shared and unique challenges to executing this work.