Qualitative Methodologies

This study will adopt a mixed methods approach using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Mixed methods research is more specific in that it includes the mixing of qualitative and quantitative data, methods, methodologies, and/or paradigms in a research study or set of related studies. Qualitatively driven approaches/designs in which the research study is, at its core, a qualitative study with a quantitative data or method added to supplement and improve the qualitative study by providing an added value and deeper, wider, and fuller or more complex answers to research questions. Qualitative quality criteria are emphasized but high quality quantitative data also must be collected and analysed (Creswell, 2009).

3.1 Semi-Structured

This author then carried out and recorded 3 semi-structured interviews with local residents about their views on the MIWWTP. The constraint with this approach was finding people who would be willing to be recorded in an interview setting as many of the local residents would not be familiar or comfortable with the scenario. Local politician’s or community activists were the first persons sought after for an interview as their familiarity with public speaking and politics would overcome this issue. A number of E-mails were sent to one prominent local councillor to try and organise an interview but unfortunately this was in the run up to the elections to the Government and an interview at that time was unachievable. The next port of call was a local community activist and member of the residents association who was known personally to the author through his chairmanship the local football club. He was more than happy to be interviewed and was kind enough to put me in contact with other local residents he felt would have no issue being interviewed. Taking time constraints in to account the author contacted two other interviewees who were selected due to their residence in the area during the Mutton Island controversy although there is scope for more interviews in the future to get a broader insight into the attitudes of a larger number of local

The Adapted Framework Analysis sits within a wide-ranging family of analysis methods often termed thematic analysis or qualitative content analysis and is used extensively across the social sciences. These approaches identify commonalities and differences in qualitative data, before focusing on relationships between different parts of the data, thereby seeking to draw descriptive and/or explanatory conclusions clustered around themes.

Its defining feature is the matrix output: rows (cases), columns (codes) and ‘cells’ of summarised data, providing a structure into which the researcher can systematically reduce the data, in order to analyse it by case and by code (Ritchie, 2003). Most often a ‘case’ is an individual interviewee, but this can be adapted to other units of analysis, such as predefined groups or organisations. While in-depth analyses of key themes can take place across the whole data set, the views of each research participant remain connected to other aspects of their account within the matrix so that the context of the individual’s views is not