Introduction

This review aimed to answer the question of how many interviews are enough for one qualitative research? The question ‘how many interviews are enough for one qualitative research is persistently controversial among qualitative researchers in social science. For this frequently occurring question especially among novice practitioners, the majority of scholars are opted to say no universally guiding rule to decide on a required number of sample for qualitative research rather ‘it depends’. But, this also raises another insight among researchers urging them to look for different things, i.e., on what circumstance would be making a decision about the required number of respondents depend? Though we lack one guideline dictating researchers how to decide on the number of sample size, the majority of researchers agree on one reasonable answer this is ‘it depends’. Indeed, in our work, we endeavor to identify, on what it depends? We also attempted to figure out or indicate the commonly referred range of sample size in qualitative research. Generally when we sum up our review work, the decision on “How many” is depended on several factors among which the following are some; the focus of the research, the type of research question, available resource and time, institutional committee requirements, the judgments of epistemic community in which a researcher is located, the nature of the selected group, the domain of inquiry, the experience of the researcher with qualitative research, and so on. Specific to number 20-60 is the most frequently observed range of sample size in qualitative research which of course is determined by the aforementioned factors.

Qualitative social science research is fundamentally embedded in grounded theory concerned with how the social world is interpreted, realized, understood and experienced, or produced. Qualitative investigation seeks answers to their questions in the realistic world. They congregate what they see, hear and read from the people and places and from events and activities and their main purpose are to learn about some aspects of the social world and to generate new understandings that can be used by that social world. The main objective of this study is the interpretation of social world especially of cultures and people’s life-ways rather than seeking causal explanations for social-cultural practices. Nevertheless, in very rapidly changing information dominated globalized world, innovative traditions of the perception of emerging local and global contexts and realities need to be exposed and accepted as well as practiced in qualitative social science research. Janapriya Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Vol. III (December 2014), page: 54-61

The most important role for organizations to renew and improve themselves falls to their managers. This also applies to school administrators. Today, development and change are inevitable in all aspects of life and, like all organizations, educational institutions must make use of the highest technology, such as the Internet and computers. Computers, technologies and other developments in the field of telecommunications can be one of the key factors for the educational reforms to be undertaken in our country. It is believed that technology will play an important role in the restructuring of schools. Therefore, school principals who know how to exploit technology in management and apply it to managerial processes will be more privileged to create more effective schools. This study aims to reveal the views of school principals about the use of technology for effective school management in educational institutions. Nowadays, the intensity of qualitative research in social sciences is increasing gradually. In this study, it has been preferred to use qualitative research method, as well. Phenomenology design was preferred in order to reveal the emotions, thoughts and knowledge of the school administrators in depth. Participants of the study were determined by purposeful sampling. The participants consist of 14 school administrators, seven of whom are school principals and seven of them are assistant principals working in private and public schools in Sivas city center. The data of the study were collected by semi-structured interview forms developed by the researchers. The data of the research was analyzed by content analysis. It was understood that the participants had positive views on technology and the use of technology in management. In the research, different results were obtained in terms of technological competencies of school administrators and using technology in management. In the study, it was found that school administrators mostly use technology for routine but facilitating and time-saving tasks such as student services, personnel services and office work. When evaluated in terms of using technology in managerial processes, it was concluded that the managers participating in the study could not use the technology effectively.

Qualitative Research In Social Sciences:, Methods, Ethical Considerations, Participant Observation And Interviews

The News of the Week article that reports on Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) questioning the need to fund social science research at the National Science Foundation is alarming and shortsighted (“Senate panel chair asks why NSF funds social sciences,” 12 May, p. [829][1]). Social science research is at the fundamental core of basic research and has much to contribute to the economic viability of the United States. Twenty years of direct and jointly funded social and ecosystem science research at Colorado State University's Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory has produced deep insights into environmental and societal impacts of political upheaval, land use, and climate change in parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Beyond greatly advancing our understanding of the coupled human-environmental system, the partnership of social and ecosystem science has brought scientists and decision-makers together to begin to develop solutions to difficult problems. Insights from the social sciences about the vulnerability, sustainability, and resilience of social and environmental systems have greatly increased our understanding of the complex interactions of the world on which we depend. The contributions of social and ecological science for data analyses associated with spatial relationships, transfer of goods and services, valuation, and decision-making processes have improved our understanding of how human activities are altering environmental systems worldwide. These findings have become the core of policy and development decisions used throughout the world. It is critical that the NSF support social science funding and that, as budget decisions are made, the social science allocation should move forward equally with increases as in other basic and applied research. Failure to do so will further hinder U.S. competitiveness in the future and will slow transfer of knowledge and usefulness to the public. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.312.5775.829a

The Society of Behavioral Medicine (SBM) Leadership Institute provides leadership training for mid-career behavioral medicine scientists. As an institute fellow, I explored the experiences of social scientists working in healthcare settings. Exploratory research to describe the experiences, barriers, and facilitators social scientists face working in a healthcare delivery and research system. Our research questions were exploratory, focused on understanding (a) the experiences of social scientists working in a healthcare delivery and research system, (b) barriers that social scientists face working in a healthcare delivery and research system, (c) perceived value of sociological and anthropologic methods to clinicians and other health researchers, and (4) to understand the landscape of organizational models that feature social scientists as part of a larger scientific enterprise. We developed a plan for needs assessment activities. We conducted a design workshop of social scientists (n = 11). Using human-centered design methods, we elicited experiences and asked participants to develop a prototype model where social scientists could find career fulfillment with minimal structural barriers. We found that social scientists feel a strong sense of pride in their social science training and passion for the work they do. They reported occupying multiple disciplines at once, including multiple promotion and reputational expectations. Participants commonly reported that they themselves, as well as collaborators, viewed social science work, particularly qualitative research, as supplemental to quantitative work. Participants described perceptions that social science research is less rigorous or requires less training compared with other disciplines. Participants identified several contextual factors that influenced the perceived value of social science research in healthcare, including the focus of external funding priorities on larger clinical questions, organizational structure, and tangible leadership support of social science. The SBM Leadership Institute created a space for preliminary research into an area that could improve the experiences and research impact of social and behavioral scientists.

Over the years the research endeavours in social sciences have been directed towards producing profound discoveries about humankind and the society they live in. Now-a-days qualitative research has been flourishing in many fields of the social sciences. Rapid social change and the resulting diversification of life scenarios are increasingly confronting social researchers with new social contexts and perspectives. There is a specific relevance for qualitative research to the study of social contexts and life situations. This has lead to the development of several social theories and social research methods which have still continued to develop in order to understand the diverse social problems. The challenge for social scientists and researchers worldwide is to continue in the search for a unified consensus on what methodology is to be adopted for research for meeting the emerging diverse needs of humankind and the society. This thought has led to the proliferation of pluralism or multi-method research in which the researcher synthesizes multiple research methodologies in order to study social problems in a holistic way. This concept of pluralism in research has to a greater extend subverted methodological tribalism which had existed till the recent past. This paper focuses on the philosophical assumptions as guidelines to research paradigms have influenced the development of social research theory and social research methods towards pluralism. This paper intends to explore pluralism in qualitative Social Science researches as it may be applied methodologically and philosophically. In this context, the paper heeds a thought on refocusing pluralistic qualitative research in terms of its needs and demands based on the level and depth of the study undertaken. Key Terms: Qualitative research, methodological pluralism, research paradigms, philosophical assumptions

BackgroundManual cough counting is time-consuming and laborious; however it is the standard to which automated cough monitoring devices must be compared. We have compared manual cough counting from video recordings with manual cough counting from digital audio recordings.MethodsWe studied 8 patients with chronic cough, overnight in laboratory conditions (diagnoses were 5 asthma, 1 rhinitis, 1 gastro-oesophageal reflux disease and 1 idiopathic cough). Coughs were recorded simultaneously using a video camera with infrared lighting and digital sound recording.The numbers of coughs in each 8 hour recording were counted manually, by a trained observer, in real time from the video recordings and using audio-editing software from the digital sound recordings.ResultsThe median cough frequency was 17.8 (IQR 5.9–28.7) cough sounds per hour in the video recordings and 17.7 (6.0–29.4) coughs per hour in the digital sound recordings. There was excellent agreement between the video and digital audio cough rates; mean difference of -0.3 coughs per hour (SD ± 0.6), 95% limits of agreement -1.5 to +0.9 coughs per hour. Video recordings had poorer sound quality even in controlled conditions and can only be analysed in real time (8 hours per recording). Digital sound recordings required 2–4 hours of analysis per recording.ConclusionManual counting of cough sounds from digital audio recordings has excellent agreement with simultaneous video recordings in laboratory conditions. We suggest that ambulatory digital audio recording is therefore ideal for validating future cough monitoring devices, as this as this can be performed in the patients own environment.

Australia employs an evidence-based approach to public health policy, emphasizing disease prevention, health promotion, and healthcare access that is informed by relevant research. However, implementing effective policy can be challenging due to the complexity of various public health issues. Social and behavioral factors significantly impact individual and community health outcomes, necessitating a deeper understanding of their interrelationships. Social science theories and methodologies provide critical insights into the complex relationships between individuals and society. This perspective paper highlights the critical role of qualitative social science research in shaping public policy by offering rich, contextual insights that quantitative data alone cannot capture. This article examines the benefit of incorporating qualitative social science research in a New South Wales (NSW) local health district's pursuit of evidence-based approaches. Through five case studies, we demonstrate how qualitative social science research has been instrumental in addressing key public health challenges, particularly in managing zoonotic diseases and pandemics, ultimately informing and shaping public health policy.

Health and human behavior: areas of interest common to the social and medical sciences.

Drugs, sex and social science: Social science research and health policy in Australia

This is the first issue of a new journal, entitled Qualitative Studies. We hope that this new journal will become a central forum for discussions of qualitative research in psychology, education, communication, cultural studies, health sciences and social sciences in general. Qualitative Studies is peer-reviewed and publishes papers in English and the Scandinavian languages in any of these areas. We are interested in papers that discuss qualitative methods, their promises, problems and philosophies, and also papers that apply such methods in concrete qualitative studies. We aim to publish two issues a year, but since Qualitative Studies is an open access and web-based journal, we can allow ourselves some flexibility in this regard, and for example choose to publish additional special issues, if such options arise.
 
 Qualitative Studies is associated with the Center for Qualitative Studies at Aalborg University in Denmark (www.cqs.aau.dk). But we hope that potential authors from other universities in Denmark and the rest of the world will take an interest in Qualitative Studies as an outlet for their work. In preparing this first issue, we have received a fair amount of manuscripts, many of which are still under review, but in order to show that Qualitative Studies is alive as a journal, we have chosen to publish this first issue with four articles, two of which are in English and two of which are in Danish.
 
 Together, these articles show the scope of themes and approaches that we hope will flourish in Qualitative Studies. Abbey and Zittoun offer a semiotic analysis of interview processes, Kristensen analyses power dynamics as reflected in people’s everyday lives, in casu modern traffic, Klausen reports a study of parkour, an art of urban movement, and Frimann & Jantzen present a cultural-poetic analysis of a short interaction sequence at a gas station. All articles integrate theory and empirical material in fruitful, albeit very different, ways. We hope that this will inspire future contributors to Qualitative Studies. As a journal its mission is on the one hand to discuss qualitative methods, but equally important to be a forum for the publication of qualitative studies that contribute to our knowledge about the human, social and cultural world.
 
 We wish to thank the anonymous reviewers, whose generous comments have helped improve the quality of the manuscripts and also our editorial board.
 
 We look forward to seeing how Qualitative Studies will develop!
 
 The Editors,
 Svend Brinkmann, email: svendb@hum.aau.dk
 Lene Tanggaard, email: lenet@hum.aau.dk

Background: Axillary cording or axillary web syndrome (AWS) is a condition that may manifest after surgical interference in the axillary lymph nodes. AWS can cause significant impairments and has been treated with physical and occupational therapy. Little is known about the pathophysiology of AWS or about the therapeutic interventions that are most effective. The purpose of this study is to explore the perspectives and preferred interventions of physical and occupational therapists from a particular region, experienced in treating AWS. Methods: Qualitative methodology was used to explore the practices of 7 therapists with experience treating AWS. The participants were interviewed and their intervention techniques video recorded for content analysis. Results: Five physical therapists and two occupational therapists from one region were interviewed and their intervention techniques video recorded. Results showed that the therapists differed in opinion on the pathophysiology of the condition but shared many similarities in treatment approaches. Video recordings captured specific techniques that can further inform therapeutic practice. Conclusions. AWS is a condition seen in women after surgical treatment for breast cancer. Unlike previous literature accounts, the participants in this study do not think that the condition spontaneously resolves. Intervention can successfully manage the condition and restore functional, painfree use of the upper extremity. AWS is a condition that should be recognized by all therapists and additional study should be done to determine precise pathophysiology and best practices in intervention.

Application of configurational approach and fuzzy set theory on social and behavioral science variable models needs more attention. Few social science researches have employed configurational methods of research to empirically investigate a research question. On the front of exploring unique and innovative ways of investigation, this paper discusses the application of fuzzy set theory in social sciences. The study primarily takes a model of emotional labor and employee well‑being as a case example to depict how configurational models are developed. The study examines emotional labor and well‑being, not as predictor or criterion variables, but rather as conditions and outcome. The study also distinguishes between correlational and configurational method of research and adopts a descriptive approach by taking five research papers that examine social and behavioral science constructs from a configurational approach. Scarcity of literature in the crossover between the mathematical models and social sciences, particularly for the respective variables, call for a study that can clarify the initial queries surrounding fuzzy set models and pave the way for future empirical studies. The research concludes that utilizing mathematical models like fuzzy set theory, configuration and qualitative comparative analysis in social sciences can break monotony and bring newness in approaching as well as addressing a research query. This paper draws attention towards exploring new avenues in research methodologies. Application of newer methods would not only increase the rigor and precision of research findings but also assist in approaching a research area from multiple angles thereby enhancing the research quality.

Rethinking energy studies: Equity, energy and Ivan Illich (1926–2002)