Phenomenology

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Phenomenology
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Research Question

• How do students in a freshman engineering
  fundamentals class describe the experience of
  academic cheating?
• Context bound
• Personal experience based
• Structure or essence of term

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Data Collection

• Most common depth interviews
• Other possible approaches reflective essays,
  open-ended survey items, projective techniques
  such as posing scenarios, showing videotape clips
  to elicit responses

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Sampling

• All students in class
• If sample, based on applicable strategy
• Students who are information rich cases
  (students who have cheated)
• Maximum variation (gender, GPA, etc.)
• Snowball or other strategy
• Purposeful
• Small Ns

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Analysis

• Search for patterns in statements across cases
  that lead to characteristics that are not part of
  the phenomenon and those that are, distinctions
  with other related terms
• Recursive coding until essence is captured across
  cases
• Specialized text analysis software Nvivo or
  others

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Case Study
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Question

• What happened in
• the case of Mickey Mouses plagiarized term
  paper?
• the cases of the Seven Dwarfs plagiarized term
  papers?
• Specific instance(s) or context
• Multiple lenses, holistic view

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Data Collection

• Variety of choices, including
• Document analysis (Disney U policies on cheating,
  drafts of papers turned in, etc.)
• Interviews (with Mickey, the Dwarfs, their
  teachers, administrators at Disney U, etc.)
• Observation -if event has not occurred yet-
• (go to Disneyworld and watch as Mickey and the
  Dwarfs compose their term papers)
• All focus on as many aspects of the case, or
  cases, that will give the story

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Sampling

• Those documents, people, places, etc. that are
  likely to be relevant to the question

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Data Analysis

• Pattern analysis, usually first by organizer such
  as chronology, viewpoint of specific actors,
  etc. then by theme
• Single case(s) (Dopey, Sneezy, etc.)
• Also, cross-case analysis, if multiple (Patterns
  across the Dwarfs)

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Grounded Theory
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Question

• Is there a relationship between characteristics
  of the instructional activities in our curriculum
  and the amount and kind of cheating that occurs?
• Relationship between variables
• Operational definition of terms

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Data Collection

• Thick description of instances of cheating
• Thick description of instructional activities
  that were associated with them
• Obtained from documents, interviews, observation

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Sampling

• Cases that had been reported to Student
  Misconduct last year
• Or, other cases that can be accessed
• Within Engineering School
• Related to instructional activities of school (as
  opposed to external exams, parking tickets, etc.)

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Data Analysis

• Open coding (data that answer, What is this
  about?)
• Axial coding relationships between codes
• Search for characteristics that are associated
  across cases
• Selection of core category and testing of
  patterns and refining to accommodate data
• Statement that captures cases and describes
  context