I love qualitative research. For me, the best part about qualitative research is talking with participants face-to-face. Sure, we can talk to people on the phone or by video chat software, but nothing conveys the immediacy and vitality of their lived experience like sitting across from them, looking into their eyes, watching their hands, noting their posture, as they thoughtfully answer our questions. In the era of COVID-19 and social distancing, when we can’t interview our participants face-to-face, what can we qualitative dissertators do to ensure we collect robust, rich, deep, thick data?

Accept the new normal

For those who had their hearts set on doing face-to-face in-person interviews, it’s time to grieve a little and get busy. No matter how much we might want to be together, we can’t right now. Your interview participants don’t want to breathe your air, even if you are willing to breathe theirs. You still want that doctorate, don’t you? Accept the new normal and move on.

Some of you might already have planned to conduct live interviews using a remote method—telephone or video chat. If that’s you, you can charge into this brave new world without breaking stride. However, if your dissertation proposal required you to have sit-downs with your participants, maybe over a cup of green tea in a university conference room, you will need to adjust your approach, because times have changed. Drastically and quickly.

Experiment with new ways to talk to participants

As an introvert, I’m perfectly happy working alone in my cave. However, even I need human contact once in a while. Connecting by telephone fulfills that need, although not perfectly. When I was collecting data for my dissertation research, some years back, I talked to ten people about their experiences with the phenomenon I wanted to explore. I conducted one follow-up interview by phone. I much preferred the in-person interview experience; plus, I think the data from the in-person interviews were deeper and richer than the data collected by phone. It’s easier to probe participants’ answers when we see them squirming or fidgeting. Subtle behaviors are missed when we can’t see faces and gestures.

In addition, I am a visual learner. That means I need to see faces when I’m communicating. In fact, I can’t hear as well if I can’t read lips and body language. In this new era of communicating during a pandemic, I’m learning to connect by video chat. It’s the next best thing to being there live.

I’ve tested several platforms, including Zoom, Google Hangouts, Google Duo, Wire, and Skype. (I’m not cool enough for an iPhone, so I haven’t used Facetime.) I’m sure you have more experience chatting by video than I do, so I’ll leave it to you to choose your preferred platform. So far, I prefer Google Hangouts and Wire. What is your preference?

Adapt to your participants’ preferences

When we are doing interviews, our preferences don’t really matter that much, do they? We need to adapt to the preferences of our participants. It’s hard enough to get people to talk with us for an extended interview. Getting them to download, install, and launch a platform they haven’t used before is a heavy lift, especially when we usually aren’t compensating them for their time.

Before you set up your interviews, test several different platforms yourself. Offer different options to your prospective participants. Help them set up and launch their preferred platform.

Make sure you can see and hear adequately. Identify audio and video recording capabilities. If you are new to collecting data by video chat, test your procedures with several people first. You may need to get some extra gear—for example, an external recording device, a better microphone, and a lot of disk storage space if you plan to record the video.

Identify the limitations of your data collection approach

Collecting data by telephone and video chat has inherent limitations. Obviously, your telephone participants must have access to a phone. Most people these days have phones. You can probably adapt your data collection plan without too much trouble.

For video chat, your prospective participants need Internet access and some sort of video chat platform. They don’t need a computer. Most video chat platforms function well on smartphones. Finding Wi-Fi could be challenging. In my area (Portland, Oregon), the Multnomah County Library continues to offer W-Fi, even though the libraries are temporarily closed. You, as the interviewer, should be working from a system with a large monitor, if you want to be able to see faces and body language.

Some groups are just plain difficult to reach, even in-person—for example, seniors, addicts, the homeless—reaching them now may be impossible in this new age of social distancing. Interviewing members of these groups will require some ingenuity and creative technology.

Pay attention to the data collection practices of the U.S. Census Bureau, when its researchers finally decide how to reach those hard-to-reach groups. Maybe you can adapt their approaches to collect the data you need.

Prepare to start over

It’s not your fault this pandemic happened now. It’s definitely inconvenient, to put it mildly, and we wish it hadn’t happened, but it did. Pretending it isn’t happening (my default) or blaming someone or something is not productive. Disasters happen. I thought it would be the earthquake that threw us for a loop, but nope, it was a virus.

We hope disasters don’t happen to us, but here it is. Your task is simple. As you are doing what you have to do to endure this lock-down, decide how much you are willing to compromise your concept and your data collection approach. I hope you don’t need to redo your entire concept. However, if you want that Ph.D., you may need to start over.

Imagine all the new research opportunities

One way I’m coping with my fear and grief is by imagining how I would study this experience. Assuming I survive, of course. You may find yourself needing to revise your dissertation approach, maybe rewriting your proposal entirely. I’m sorry if that is your challenge, but you can do it.

A friend of mine was working on her master’s in international business when the Berlin wall came down. Rather than revising her theses and adjusting her data collection approach, she quit her master’s program. I hope you don’t do that.

Plan for a future

The pandemic we face now is possibly the most disruptive force we will experience in our lifetimes. If we survive this, imagine all the facets of human behavior that need to be studied. For social scientists, every moment of this unfolding disaster is a dissertation waiting to be written. Please grieve, regroup, and get busy. The world needs your research now more than ever.

Navigating our dissertation journey requires a lot of planning. Most of us have massive handbooks, daunting rubrics, and detailed templates to guide us through each document milestone, from concept and proposal through manuscript and defense. However, planning requires a Jedi mind trick I call detaching from outcomes. We are used to planning everything in our lives, from budgets to babies, but we sometimes forget we don’t control what actually happens. Nevertheless, we still need to plan.

Failing to plan (probably) is planning to fail

“Failing to plan is planning to fail” is an aphorism attributed to Benjamin Franklin. In my ruthless pursuit of robust scholarship to support this blogpost, I scanned the “apothegms and proverbs” in the U.S.C. Publishing Company’s 1914 excerpts from Poor Richard’s Almanack. The Almanack is a collection of Franklin’s sayings, written between 1732 and 1738 under the penname of Richard Saunders. For more, click here.

I lost myself in the list of pithy aphorisms but did not find a quote about planning to fail. (It was certainly entertaining reading, though. One of my favorites: “The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but still ‘tis nonsense” [Item no. 502]. Ouch.)

Social sciences dissertators, especially those who attend doctoral programs at for-profit online universities, are besieged with rules. These rules help us plan our academic strategy. However, at for-profit universities, learners often don’t get enough guidance from Chairpersons and other mentors. (I say this based on my experience as a former doctoral learner at a for-profit online university and as a current academic editor). Thus, handbooks, rubrics, and templates are essential to the dissertation planning process.

Some examples of planning

Even before I passed my comprehensive exams, I started planning. First, to get a handle on the massive project in front of me, I went through the dissertation handbook and made a list of all the tasks required to complete each milestone document and task, from concept paper through defense and publishing. Next, I identified the subtasks under each document milestone. Finally, I set up an Excel spreadsheet, entered all the tasks, and estimated how many days each task would take.

Here is one of my many timelines.

In the early months, my timing was ridiculously wrong. As each term progressed, I revised my timeline, and eventually, it became quite accurate. Without that timeline, I would not have realized I was on track to run out of time in my program. Crisis averted, thanks to planning.

As an artist, I’m all about visualizing things. I can spend all day visualizing, but not a lot of time getting things done. I’m a dreamer, less of a doer. I know this is my weakness, though, and I mitigate it with planning. Here is one of my many attempts to visualize my research study.

This plan, neatly executed in PowerPoint, was a total pie-in-the-sky dream, a hallucination of a ten-month mixed methods study lacking any basis in reality. Hey, we all start somewhere. Not only did I fail to include turnaround time for my many reviewers but I also assumed I would have little need to revise my writing—because it would naturally be perfect. I was wrong on both counts. My reviewers enjoyed at least fourteen days to return my latest train wreck, sometimes more, and I needed much longer than I anticipated to make the (ridiculous) revisions they demanded.

Detaching from outcomes

I learned a valuable lesson from this iterative process. Submitting and revising, submitting and revising—the seemingly endless cycle eventually drove the arrogance out of me. I learned to write my best work, submit with a realistic amount of hope, and detach from the outcome. I learned not to assume my writing was so stellar, my idea so ground-breaking, my research approach so unique, that they would have to grant me immediate approval, showering me with accolades and dissertation of the year rave reviews. Dream on!

Finally, I realized I had to let go of my unrealistic expectations if I wanted to earn the Ph.D. After I got over feeling personally bludgeoned by the submission and rejection process, I began to hone my detachment skills. This personal improvement effort is now standing me in good stead as I submit queries and receive rejections from agents who could help me publish my first novel.

Showing up for the work

It’s easy to submit once and loftily detach from the outcome. One rejection is tolerable. We’re tough—we can take it—once. However, the persistence to repeatedly take it on the chin and bounce back up to keep fighting separates the professionals from the dilettantes. Thanks to the hammering I received from writing my dissertation, I am now equipped (and mostly willing) to enter my writing into the broader arena and let the universe decide the outcome.

I admit, receiving rejection after rejection is disheartening. However, all those rejections are evidence that I’m in the game. I’m not on the sidelines. I’m showing up for my work. I’m learning that it doesn’t matter how discouraged I feel sometimes; all that matters is doing the work. I consciously try to compartmentalize my discouragement so I can get on with the business of writing. Feeling disappointed is only useful if it spurs me toward positive action.

Letting go of perfection

A component of detaching from outcomes is a need to let go of perfectionism. Perfectionism stifles creativity; moreover, perfectionism can hinder realistic planning, thereby bringing our forward momentum to a standstill. I have a perfection monster screaming inside me at times. I’ve learned to acknowledge my desire to be perfect, laugh at the monster, and move on.

Writers rarely write perfect first drafts. The first drafts of my dissertation milestone papers were wretched on multiple levels: scholarship, methodology, APA style, grammar . . . you name it, I butchered it. After my dissertation was approved and published, I found myriad grammar errors. I discovered I had typed a shocking number of my dois wrong because I didn’t know then that I could copy and paste them from the pdf files I was citing. Sheesh. Talk about humiliating.

Now I know to focus on making progress rather than bludgeoning myself with the impossible goal of achieving perfection. Hey, we are all human, by nature imperfect. If we already know everything, what’s the point of doing research or sharing what we’ve discovered with the world?

Summary

I encourage you to honor your dissertation journey by making a plan and showing up for your writing. Practice detaching from your desire to achieve perfection. Perfectionism is a waste of your precious life energy. Instead, submit your best, learn from your mistakes, keep writing, and let go of outcomes. The life lessons we learn from the tedious, frustrating dissertation journey may not be evident while we struggle to reach the finish line, but I promise, you will reap the benefits for the rest of your writing career.

Sources

Franklin, B. (1914). Poor Richard’s Almanack (pdf version). Waterloo, IA: U.S.C. Publishing Company. Available through Google Books: https://www.google.com
/books/edition/Poor_Richard_s_Almanack/o6lJAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 (Original work published 1732–1738)

Category: Planning

How do we do qualitative interviews in the era of social distancing?