Posted: February 17th, 2015

STRUCTURE FOR THE QUALITATIVE ASSIGNMENT REPORT

Assignment guide 1

APA REFERENCING STYLE
First thing to do is read through the 5 transcripts several times to familiarize yourself with what each participant is talking about, try to code and make out 4 themes from the transcripts.
STRUCTURE FOR THE QUALITATIVE ASSIGNMENT REPORT
Research topic: How women who have become mothers relatively, recently reflect on the transition, and on how they decided they were ready to have children.
Introduction: Start your introduction with vague experiences of modern motherhood, trying to set a context for the research you are actually presenting. This should include a thorough review of literatures and should outline the main issues regarding the topic, what you know about the transition to motherhood in UK and Western societies, use them to illustrate and discuss the research question but highlight early in your introduction what are the experiences and/or issues surrounding modern motherhood specific to the themes you found in your transcripts that you are going to discuss.
Research question: ‘An exploration of the experiences and/or issues surrounding modern motherhood’. Use your themes to answer the research question. You are not expected to say everything the women have said, you just try to pick out 3 ideas (themes) that are relevant and indebt and back them up with literatures
Abstract: summarise the content of your report as concisely as you can. Allow at most two sentences each to cover the following; (your research problem, why the problem is important & worth studying, your data & methods, your main findings & their implications in the light of other research.
Method: *NOTE YOUR METHOD SECTION SHOULD BE A BIT SMALL* you should include a section that provides your reader with information about your participants, theoretical background to the approach that you have used, any analytic (sometimes called coding) strategies that you have used and the procedures followed.
•    Theoretical background: In this section, explain the approach you have taken to the investigation of the research issue, paying due attention to why this particular approach was suitable. In order to introduce, justify and discuss your chosen methodology, you need to explain your method of data collection (which is interview) and your method of data analysis (which is thematic analysis). You should include a theoretical rationale for your chosen approach and explain how it is appropriate to the aims of your study and to the phenomena under investigation. However, do not describe in detail the process of data analysis in this section.
•    Participants: In this section, provide some demographic details about your participants, for example, age & sex. Inclusion criteria (which is women who have child(ren) under the age of three, over the age of 18years, they are able to speak & read English & have the capacity to give their own consent, and women who had a planned pregnancy and the child does not have any disabilities or developmental disorders). In this study where there are relatively few participants, it is usual to include a brief biographical paragraph for each participants. This reflects a move away from describing the participants ‘en masse’, and instead, recognises who the participants were, and the unique contribution of each participant to the research. You should also explain how you chose and contacted your participant (e.g. purposive sampling).*please note I interviewed just one participant which the last paragraph said I should explain how I chose and contacted*.
•    Material: This section should include a description of any materials that you may have developed and used (e.g. consent forms, interview schedules, demographic questionnaire, information sheet, debriefing sheet). Copies of key documents should be clearly labelled and included in your appendices and cross referenced.*please note I used all the listed materials mentioned and I have them with me if you wish I can send them to you so you can attach as appendices*
•    Procedure: In this section, you should explain how you developed any data-collection materials (e.g. interview schedule), explain what instructions and information participants were given, and explain your data collection process. Do not present this section as a bullet points or as a list, you should use narrative style.  You also need to demonstrate that your research has been conducted in accordance with the British Psychological Society’s Ethical guidelines. You need to select those ethical issues that are relevant to your study and explain in detail how you have addressed these. This section should be written in a narrative style, not as a series of bullet points or responses to prescribed set of ethical questions.
•    Analytical strategy: Includes details about the practicalities involved in the processes of data treatment (e.g. note-taking, developing a coding frame, transcription, etc) and your analysis of data. Provide details for the reader to understand how you developed your codes, themes or interpretations and should be included in your appendices and crossed referenced. If you are using thematic analysis, which of course you are using, a detailed account of how you developed one of your themes is helpful in assessing your work.
•    Analysis and discussion: Your analysis and discussion should be combined together. Your analysis should be narrative. In the analysis section, talk about the themes and give the quotations, for example, if you say this is the issue or experience, then give 3 quotations that actually supports your quotation.You are advised to develop three or four themes for the analysis section. There is no ‘hard and fast’ rule for the number of quotations to use per theme but typically around three or four is appropriate and sufficient. These should be numbered and line numbers included. It is intuitive to write your analysis section in such a way as to allow you to move gradually from the descriptive (e.g. identifying key issues on the basis of common themes), to the interpretative (e.g having identified the key issues, you may then be able to make links between them, to give some sense of their context, and to discuss any interesting contradictions or underlying consistencies), you can introduce new ideas into your discussion. However, if you are developing your account this way, you will need to ensure that you link and develop your points as you write. It is always a good idea to signpost your analysis with a succinct opening paragraph at the beginning of this section. For example, if you are presenting four themes in the analysis, briefly identify and name them here so the reader knows what is to follow.* An analysis should be supported with a number of good quality verbatim quotations from data source. Always provide details of the location of your chosen quotations (e.g. pseudonym/name of the participant, a transcript and line number). It is important that your argument is credible and persuasive. The first and most important requirement of a persuasive account is that there is appropriate evidence with which to support it. Secondly, try to make your analysis transparent. Thirdly, ensure that your interpretation is not too far away from the data.
•    Presentation of quotations: when presenting your analysis, it is important that the quotations that you use are presented correctly within recognised format. It is also important that your quotations are numbered and presented systematically. Every quote should have a purpose.
•    Reflexivity: the reflexivity paragraph should be attached as an appendix to the report. It would be included as a small part of the assessment.
•    References

Read up any qualitative journal article for a better understanding of reporting.
Appendices including the following;
Interview schedule
Participant Demographics Questionnaire
Information sheet
Consent Form (blank)
Transcripts
Table(s) of themes

*Note you must include one copy of each transcript as appendices to your assignment. These can either be the copies of transcripts which you have worked on or ‘clean’ unworked ones, and these can be submitted as hard paper copies or electronically (as files on a CD). You are strongly advised to include a table of themes for each participant as this helps to demonstrate the transparency of your analysis*.

*Note the word count is 3,500. This does include extracts but does not include references nor your reflexivity paragraph (please include this as an appendix rather than in the body of the report). You may be penalised if you exceed the upper limit by more than 10%.*