These notes are courtesy of Professor David Butz, Brock University, St. Catherine's, Ontario. They are an outline of his comments in the session "Writing Proposals and Finding Funding for Qualitative Research in Geography" at the Denver Meetings of the AAG, April 6, 2005. Many thanks to David for allowing us to post these helpful hints.

Main challenge: making qualitative research, with its attributes of open-endedness and exploration, fit standardized forms and assessment conventions.

·       Clarity and detail of research design… but first among these is clarity

o      Narrative: tell the story of your proposed research, one step at a time; allow readers to follow your logic

o      Categories: distinguish different types of data, or different ways of gathering data, and associate them with specific research questions or parts of your research problem

·       Find the appropriate language to describe what you want to do

o      Substitute “research design” language for “methodology” language

o      Don’t use language associated with quantification (trustworthiness, credibility v reliability, validity)

o      Avoid deep epistemological issues… justify implicitly, by explaining why data gathered as you intend helps to answer your research question

·       Beware of formulating research problems that require impossible things of qualitative methods

o      Depth v breadth; specificity v generality; limited representativeness

o      Interpretive and substantive theory v predictive and formal theory:

§        Interpretive theory: explanation of existing phenomena or relationships

§        Predictive theory: prediction of future events or relationships

§        Substantive theory: explanation of one empirical set of phenomena or relationships

§       Formal theory: explanation of all empirical sets of phenomena or relationships with certain similar characteristics

o      Lived experience; local and specific knowledges; exploratory theory

·       Avoid questions of “bias” by locating “arguments/positions” in the theoretical set-up… in the pre-design stage of the proposal

o      Theoretical/political positioning ® research problem ® research design

o      Move “axe grinding” to the theoretical set-up

o      “how does?” v “does?”

o      have a thorough theoretical set-up

·       Use triangulation to avoid charges of “cherry-picking”?

o      Triangulation adds trustworthiness and credibility to design and data

o      Use simple quantitative techniques to provide a general context for qualitative insights