Maxwell’s Chapter 2: Setting Goals

When we talk about goals we mean motives, desires and purposes. Goals answer two main actual functions: Guide the design decisions, and justifying the relevance of the whole study (page 23).

According to the author there are three main kinds of goals in a proper study.

Personal goals refer to the things that matter to the researcher in a subjective way. Trying to avoid or ignore them is whether futile or just counterproductive. When researchers try to hide their personal goals to others, they often feel that only they are failing to live up to the goal of scientific neutrality (page 25). On the other hand, the lack of personal goals would cut a major source of insights; therefore it’s highly recommendable to systematically monitor the researchers’ personal goals, their subjectivity (page 28). Most importantly, the lack of personal goals would severely diminish the motivation of the researcher, which plays a major role in any long distance race such as a research study. Another important feature of personal goals is how they help to answer the question “Why do I want to do a qualitative study?”. It is a key question to check the compatibility and pertinence of other goals, the research question and the actual activities involved in doing the qualitative study all together (page 26).

Practical goals such as administrative or policy goals are focused on accomplishing some need or specific objective. Maxwell argues that the research question has to ask directly about how to accomplish those practical goals. The researcher needs to frame the research question in ways that help the study achieve the practical goals. This issue, along with the intellectual goals will be developed in Chapter 4.

Goals that Qualitative Research Help you Achieve

Quantitative and qualitative research methods have different strengths and logics. A key difference between the two approaches is the distinction between “variance theory” and “process theory”. Quantitative research tends to see the world in terms of variables and statistical relationships between them. Process theory however tends to see the world in terms of people, situations, events and the process that connects these. This process implies an inductive approach and emphasis on descriptions rather than numbers (page 30). These elements influence the king of intellectual goals most convenient for a qualitative research method; such as the meaning of certain events or experiences, the features and influences of contexts on people, the processes by which events take place, the identification of unanticipated phenomena, and developing causal explanations for them (page 31).

The author also points out that researchers need to recognize the innate difference between qualitative and quantitative research methods: quantitative research tends to focus on whether there is a direct correlation between variable x and y, whereas qualitative research technique the researchers explore to which degree variable x play a role in causing y. Regardless of the differences of techniques, both approaches need to identify and situate threats to validity. (Page 31, the author further discusses this topic in Chapter 6)

Another goal that qualitative research helps you achieve is generating results and theories for the service of the people you are studying and future researchers. The results have to be clear, credible and understandable. Furthermore, the research should strive to achieve to improve the existing practices, protocols, or policies regarding the field/topic you are studying and not just reiterate the facts of the relationship between two variables. This technique is called “formative evaluation” (Page 32). It is more important to comprehend the processes that happen in your research and how the participants of your research understand it, than to excessively compare and contrast the situation of your study to others to establish a comparison (Page 32). Lastly, it is important to engage in grassroots and community-lead action with the participants to further create allegiance and solidarity with the community you are doing the work with.

To help us put the discussion of research goals into context, look at Example 2.3 – “Deciding on A Dissertation Topic” on page 33. This example describes the process one doctoral student took with regards to deciding on a topic for her dissertation. The issues the student, Isabel, took were her motivation to pursue her study, the responsibility she felt on making the research. She also expressed that she chose to disregard other people’s opinion on her to keep her centered and focused on her research.