QUALITATIVE ASSIGNMENT -

You will complete a qualitative assignment that supports your upcoming research project and is relevant to the research design you are pursuing in their proposal.

ASSIGNMENT BACKGROUND - You are required to build an NVivo Project that will support your upcoming capstone Research Project (in a subsequent term). To accomplish this, you will need to download, install, learn and use the software package NVivo11 Pro from QSR International. The NVivo Series of lectures in this course instruct you in each of these steps.

Step 1 - Watch and follow the NVivo Series lectures. Start with NVivo 1.1 Download and install NVivo.

Step 2 - Continue to watch and follow each item in the NVivo Series lectures, throughout the term, each week of the course.

Note: this requires you to:

Watch each NVivo series lecture and either

Perform each move as it is performed and explained in the lecture and/or

Pause the video, then perform the action, then return to the video.

Continue to do this process (perform while watching / pause and perform / replay and perform) as often as needed to be confident of being able to perform each step without the video.

Step 3 - Initially, the NVivo Series lecture videos will have you performing the actions with the software in a Sandbox project. This is a practice project you create (note: it is not marked), and can contain any (inoffensive, please) content you care to use, including - but not restricted to - the sample materials provided by the University from QSR International.

Step 4 - Very early in the Series, you will be asked to create the NVivo Project that will support your Research Project. This is the NVivo Project that will be marked as the "Qualitative Assignment". At different steps along the process of learning NVivo, you will move back and forth between your Sandbox and your Research Project.

ASSIGNMENT OVERVIEW - This is an individual assignment. Students are encouraged to collaborate and support one another, but your NVivo Project is the basis of building your individual Research Project - it will therefore be entirely personal and uniqueto you and your Research Project. Do not be concerned if your project looks nothing like your peers' projects. Each student will have a completely different, discipline-appropriate, research topic and question. Therefore, each student will have a unique Research Project and parallel unique NVivo Project to support it.

Note: NVivo11 Pro is a database. Your submission of this assignment will NOT be a Word or Microsoft document, but will be the submission of your entire .nvp file (ie: your database file).

LEARNING OBJECTIVES - This assignment focuses on student's ability to:

Plan, design & manage a research project

Select, define and refine a research topic to a specific research objectiveor question

Identify the research gap that justifies the research project as a valuable contribution

Identify and articulate an appropriate research methodology for conducting the research

Keep a detailed record of field notes, observations, project developments, research thinking, analysis and synthesis in a research journal and research log

Perform literature searches and select appropriate literature to support the research project for purposes of

• Introducing, defining and refining the topic
• Justifying the research gap
• Building hypotheses or propositions or research questions (as appropriate to articulated chosen methodology)

Identify a variety of data sources and data media appropriate to the research project for the purposes of

• Literature review
• Data gathering
• Supporting methodology and method choices

Analyse various types of data including

• Literature, (such as journal articles, books, other forms of written data)
• Social media, (such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)
• Webpages
• AudioVisual data (eg: YouTube, interviews)

Use qualitative / interpretive analysis to conduct coding that

• Identifies patterns and themes in data
• Identifies critical issues in data
• Selects and identifies critical references and quotes to be used in thesis support

Use various forms of analytical data interrogation, in particular a range of

• Queries
• Visual exploration methods

Use various methods (including visualisation, sophisticated coding, and queries) for data synthesis

Use and export outcome from various tools and methods (including journal, visualisation, sophisticated coding and queries) for write-up; and for presentation and communication purposes.

Use CAQDA software (in this specific instance, NVivo11 Pro) to support and manage research efforts.

ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS -

Watch all NVivo Series video lectures.

Perform each action taught in the NVivo series, (first in the Sandbox, when confident in your real project).

Build your project week-by-week.

Although none of your NVivo work will be assessed until you submit your whole project in week 11, you need to be working in it constantly and developing your project iteratively between NVivo and your Research Proposal throughout the whole term.

There is no particular order of build required, and much of the work will be iterative, with cyclical returns to different stages as you progress, the order you should (loosely) be building your project is as follows:

1. Decide your research topic and choose a name (that may change).

2. Create an NVivo Project and give it your Research Project name (that may change).

3. Create a Research Journal and a Research Log (or a joint Research Log & Journal) and keep continually up-to-date with multiple entries per week.

4. Create a folder structure (which might change and rearrange as your project develops) for the management of your project.

5. Import critical literature which you have identified as valuable to the building of your research project's definition, literature review, introduction, and other needs.

6. a. Update Research Log & Journal

7. Import other data that will support your project, including images/graphics, datasets (if appropriate), social media, websites, videos or audio files

8. a. Update Research Log & Journal (ad infinitum, each step of the way)

9. Use EndNote and import relevant materials (articles & their metadata) from EndNote to support your project

10. Classify data sources using classification, attributes and values

11. Identify patterns and themes in your literature (and data, if available), using coding procedures

12. Classify nodes and cases using classification, attributes and values

13. Identify relationship types and relationships (both natural and abstract) as they become evident

14. Run various queries at different stages of project progression to support identification of themes; analyse, and interrogate data

15. Save various queries results as nodes or sets as appropriate to your project's needs

16. Use some of the visualisation methods (mind maps, concept maps, project maps, graphs and charts, cluster analyses, etc) as appropriate both for further exploration and analysis and for synthesis of data

17. Ensure that your Research Log & Journal have been

18. a. kept constantly up-to-date

b. with every entry time-and-date stamped

c. logging your actions and tracking your progress

d. articulating your thinking process and decisions

e. recording the changing shape of your research project and how the work you are doing in NVivo supports and inter-relates with the development of your Research Proposal (and prepares you to conduct your actual Research Project).

19. Rename your NVivo file for submission.

Attachment:- Assignment File.rar