Attentive workshop participants.

Two Schools have come together to organise a workshop in qualitative methods to impart knowledge on the best ways to design and interpret data.

The School of Business and the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences organised the 10-day Qualitative Methods 1 and 2 - Intensive Short Course in Applied Social Research as part of the Mid-Year Short Course Program.

The program was broken into two parts: “Qualitative Methods 1 – Essentials of Qualitative Research Methods (Introductory Level)” was aimed at providing participants with little or no experience in qualitative research methods with theoretical grounding and practical skills.

“Qualitative Methods 2 – Application and Analysis of Qualitative Research Methods (Intermediate Level)” was aimed at enhancing the skills of participants, emphasising on computer-assisted data analysis.

The program’s Co-Convenor, Professor of Public Health, Pascale Allotey, explained that high quality social research was largely producing rigorous evidence on harmful habits, for example smoking, poor diets and the lack of physical activity.

“We also need to conduct the kinds of research that allow us to evaluate interventions that improve our health and change behaviours,” she explained.

Prof Pasale Allotey said research should allow for interventions that improve health and change behaviours.

Associate Professor Dr Christina Lee said among the project's goals was to introduce theories of high quality research.

As part of the workshop, participants were required to visit eateries at Sunway Pyramid to observe unhealthy food consumption.

The teams, she said, produced interesting data on the demographics of people who went to different types of restaurants, the strategies that they had observed food vendors using to encourage people to increase their intake of junk food, and the social interactions around food, like mothers eating their children’s leftovers.

“Although this sort of evidence in itself is not complete, learning how to collect rigorous and systematic observation data opens up lines of inquiry and informs better designed surveys to begin to explore the extent of particular problems,” said Dr Allotey.

The workshop focuses on qualitative methods in social research (analysing text, conducting interviews and focus group discussions, use of photography and video, life histories, community-mapping) and how these work together with other forms of research like quantitative methods, which include surveys, to provide a more detailed understanding of society’s problems in order to address them.

Associate Professor Christina Lee of the School of Business hoped participants would find the course useful.

“The two disciplines (business, and health and sciences) may be different, but in terms of qualitative research methods, they are quite similar,” Assoc Prof Christina, the program’s co-convener, told participants.

The project goals, she added, was to introduce qualitative research methodology and the theories and practice of doing high quality research.

Dr Vicki Little of the School of Business said that participants gained insight about how to develop research strategies that uncover how the social world of business works.

Dr Vicki Little hoped participants would take back what they learned from the course to their departments.

“At the end of the course we were getting very insightful questions, to the point where we had to stop and think deeply about some of the research projects – mostly our own – that we were talking about,” Dr said.

“We are sure the participants will take this back to their departments, and that the overall quality of debate and the research in those departments will benefit,” she added.