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This paper discusses practical and methodological issues arising from a case study exploring the hopes, aspirations and learning identities of three groups of students undertaking low-level broad vocational programmes in two English general further education colleges. Working within a social justice theoretical framework the paper outlines the participative approach which was adopted as part of the research process from the initial development of interview questions to the early data analysis. It explores the advantages and limitations of the approach in the context of the broader methodology and the social justice theoretical framework arguing that, despite the intention to collaborate with the participants, the ultimate control over the study was vested in the researcher, raising questions around the nature and extent of empowerment through the medium of research. The paper draws two key conclusions. In social justice terms, the young people's contribution was limited by their lack of previous experience of any type of research and, to some extent, by difficulty with the written word. Despite this, the participative approach was effective in demonstrating value and respect for the young participants and provided an opportunity for them to make their voices heard from beyond the model of disadvantage and disengagement in which government policy seeks to confine them. Further, in purely methodological terms, the approach provided insights which could not have been obtained by 'researching on', suggesting that it provides a useful means of exploring the lives and identities of marginalised youth

It has been argued that production/operations management (P/OM)
emerged as a true functional field of management only during the 1980s.
If this is the case then one can hypothesize that P/OM research must
have changed considerably during the last decade. To test this
hypothesis all the articles published in the first ten volumes of the
International Journal of Operations & Production Management
were categorized using a framework based on research process reported.
Explains the development of this framework and presents the data
generated from the categorization process. These clearly show that
during the 1980s the content of P/OM research increasingly became of a
macro and soft nature.

This article explores what motivated participants to volunteer for a qualitative social work research project as well as the co-construction of the researcher-participant relationship. In social work research methodology literature, much attention has been given to the importance of engaging participants in democratized research relationships, but less attention has been given to the process from participants' perspectives. Often, little is known about the meanings attributed by participants to the process. Based on information from participants in a doctoral research project on psychosocial support needs in relation to assisted reproductive service use, this article considers participants' motivations to volunteer for research. Twenty-eight women were interviewed and all were asked about their motivations to volunteer; their responses highlight the mutuality of exchange and the complexity of the researcher-participant relationship. The need for social work researchers to carefully negotiate this relationship and to acknowledge and actively respond to participants' motivations is reinforced.

Given the considerable potential for participatory action research in correctional settings, this study gathered stakeholders' perspectives on involving adults in custody throughout the research process. Using mixed methods, the study identified participants' level of interest in involving prisoners in the research process to inform educational efforts to increase correctional participatory action research. Qualitative data were gathered from 94 prison administrators, Institutional Review Board throughout the Abstract section.] members, prisoner representatives, research ethicists, and correctional researchers; quantitative data were collected from 1228 correctional and noncorrectional mental health researchers, correctional and noncorrectional Institutional Review Board members, and prisoner representatives. Qualitative data revealed lack of understanding of participatory action research concepts and advantages along with disagreement about whether prisoner involvement is desirable. Quantitative data revealed that respondents were most supportive of involving incarcerated individuals in contributing ideas for future research, planning recruitment procedures, developing participant protection procedures, and disseminating information to correctional populations. Respondents least supported involving adults in custody in disseminating findings to scientific venues, designing research and protocols, interpreting data, and setting research agendas. Combined, findings indicate efforts are needed to educate stakeholders about participatory action research's value in correctional settings. This is particularly true related to soliciting prisoner voices in proactive and meaningful ways and moving beyond simply seeking input about measures selection or recruitment advice.

Despite their potential for yielding an understanding of the conceptualisation being developed, diagrams remain one of the least utilised tools in the analytical process. They have been used by interpretive investigators at various stages of the research process, for example, as artefacts to stimulate discussion in interviews, assisting the researcher in formulating ideas, refining conceptualisations in the process of theory building and communicating ideas to others. This article has two main objectives: first, to begin to explore some of the intricacies associated with the use of diagrams in grounded theory, and second, to use case study material from two separate projects, which adopted individual approaches to grounded theory, to investigate young peoples' attitudes towards physical activity; it outlines the ways in which diagrams and drawings were used differently by researchers at various stages to support the research process and ongoing analysis of data.

Materialist process ontologies, often subsumed under the term new materialism, such as the Deleuzian materialism of Rosi Braidotti, the agential realism of Karen Barad or the posthumanism of Donna Haraway, are becoming increasingly recognized in qualitative research. In this article I argue and illustrate that these theories allow for a reconfiguration of analytical research tools without using the representationalist epistemological framework these tools are often embedded in. Karen Barad's concept of 'exteriority within' is of particular help for this task. I illustrate the research practices of two research projects, which included multiple methods of data collections (interviews, observations, re-enactments), a process of analysis I call referencing and a writing technique I call rebuilding worlds.

I reflect on the impact of Open Science on all stages of the research process, paying particular attention to the practical obstacles standing in the way of Open Science implementation within and across research domains. My discussion is grounded on (1) qualitative empirical studies on whether and how researchers from different disciplines and regions are practicing Open Science; (2) collaborations with infrastructures, repositories and institutions devoted to Open Science implementation; and (3) consultations with the European Commission and various national governments on how research evaluation should be conducted in order to incentivise responsible and sustainable forms of Open Science.

AbstractWhile information and communication technologies (ICT) are prominent in educational practices at most levels of formal learning, there is relatively little known about the skills and understandings that underlie their effective and efficient use in research higher degree settings. This project aimed to identify doctoral supervisors' and students' perceptions of their roles in using ICT. Data were gathered through participative drawing and individual discussion sessions. Participants included 11 students and two supervisors from two New Zealand universities. Focus of the thematic analysis was on the views expressed by students about their ideas, practices and beliefs, in relation to their drawings. The major finding was that individuals hold assumptions and expectations about ICT and their use; they make judgements and take action based on those expectations and assumptions. Knowing about ICT and knowing about research processes separately form only part of the work of doctoral study. Just as supervision cannot be considered independently of the research project and the student involved, ICT skills and the use of ICT cannot be considered in the absence of the people and the project. What is more important in terms of facilitating the doctoral research process is students getting their "flow" right. This indicates a need to provide explicit support to enable students to embed ICT within their own research processes.

Broad analytic assessments of research areas can be invaluable for scholars because they can inform the ongoing feedback process between theory and research that is at the heart of scientific inquiry. Unfortunately, Simowitz's (1998) evaluation of diffusion analyses of conflict has several problematic characteristics that make it less useful to the research community than might otherwise be the case. The major difficulties we see in her article are: (1) the forced, idiosyncratic synthesis of the standard of scientific progress and its consequent application; (2) the excessively unilinear conception of scientific process (and progress); (3) the inaccurate understanding of some of the research on war diffusion; (4) the failure to include in the evaluation several studies and results that might have led to different conclusions; and (5) the absence of any constructive suggestion of where research on the topic of war and conflict diffusion might profitably be directed.

This paper examines two planning tools incorporating the use of a computer‐assisted qualitative data analysis software package as applied to an actual research study. The first is the 'NVivo Shell'. In creating a shell, the researcher is prompted to consider the role qualitative research software will take within the context of the project as a whole. Further, it acts as an initial framework to contemplate how the collected data might be organised and provides a way to organise it from the very beginning. The second tool is visual modelling. At a basic level, it can literally provide a map of the research process, which can be used to chart the progress of the research. With ever‐increasing complexity, it can be a way to visually represent a variety of ideas, concepts, sources, or beliefs and explore existing or potential relationships between and among them. The study used to contextualise their application is a doctoral dissertation (Robertson, 2007).