Research Proposal; qualitative, interpretive study-Topic: studying friendships which were initially developed online and then moved to face-to-face.

 Build a qualitative, interpretive study for a Qualitative Research Methods Course in a Communication Studies program. 

 Topic: You are a researcher studying friendships which were initially developed online and then moved to face-to-face.

But you will need to:

develop research questions
discuss the forms of data you will collect (e.g., face-to-face semi-structured interviews, observations, etc.)
discuss how you will collect your data including recruitment procedures, if necessary, discuss how you will analyze your data thematically while ensuring trustworthiness.

If you want to do a mixed method approach you must explain how in detail. Be very specific and detailed. Provide citations to justify your choices. Use key terms. Justify all choices. 

 4 pages with 5-6 citations- 

APA

I will provide the sources, and you can cite any of the following to build this study-

*you can use sources outside of this list but try to stay in the field/discipline of “communications” as sources. 

 General Qualitative Research Sources:

Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. W. (2013). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (3rd ed). SAGE Publications.
If you have access to this source great if do not have a pdf of it 

 

Cheseboro, J. W., Borisoff, D. J. (2007). What makes qualitative research qualitative. Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 8, 3-14.
This article will provide an overview of qualitative research and five common characteristic of all forms of qualitative research. It will also provide a table of interpretive vs. positivist approaches. 

 Qualitative Research Questions Sources
How to write qualitative research questions [3:54]
Kimberly Baker | Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dZr9z76_aw
Qualitative vs Quantitative Research Questions
Retrieved from: http://unstick.me/qualitative-vs-quantitative-research-questions/
Interpreting Themes and Trustworthiness
Owen, W. F. (1984). 

Interpretive themes in relational communication. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70, 274-287.
This article not only explores interpretive themes in relational communication involving relationship type and commitment but offers a simple way to find themes. Many researchers cite to this article in their Method section to provide support for their own thematic analysis. Owen discussed the use of repetition, recurrence, and forcefulness to find themes in the data.

Shenton, A. (2004). Strategies for ensuring trustworthiness in qualitative research projects. Education for Information, 22, 63-75.
This article provides an overview of verification. Verification is the term qualitative researchers use to make sure their findings are valid and reliable. The word “trustworthy” results means that the data and finding can be “trusted” due to the use of verification procedures.
Best Practices for Interviewing
Retrieved from: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/education-research/evaluation/tools-and-resources-for-evaluation/interviews/best-practice-for-interviews/
Analyzing social media resources
Webb, L. M., & Wang, Y. (2013). Techniques for analyzing blogs and micro-blogs. In N. Sappleton (Ed.), Advancing Research Methods with New Technologies (pp. 206-227). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
This article provides actual techniques for analyzing internet data. Although it focuses on blogs and micro-blogs, the techniques can be applied to any internet data such as on social media.
Webb, L. M., & Wang (2014). Techniques for sampling online text-based data sets. In N. Hu & Kaabouch (Ed.), Big Data Management, Technologies, and Applications (pp. 95-114). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
This article provides techniques for sampling online data. They are the same sampling techniques used in all forms of data but geared towards online data and offer ways to make a sample manageable.

Testa, M. R., & Sipe, L. J. (2013). The organizational culture audit: Countering cultural ambiguity in the service context. Open Journal of Leadership, 2(02), 36. Retrieved from: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1614&context=refereed
This article provides an example of an organizational cultural audit which is basically an ethnography of an organization’s culture but looks for specific items like heroes and rituals. It is interesting for academics who study organizational culture as well as to consultants who conduct organizational culture audits. This is a good example of what is involved in such work

Visual Analysis
Andalibi, N., Ozturk, P., & Forte, A. (2017, February). Sensitive Self-disclosures, Responses, and Social Support on Instagram: the case of# depression. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work and social computing (pp. 1485-1500).
There are few articles that undertake an analysis of visual data in our field. These researchers analyze both text and images.