Qualitative Teamwork Issues and Strategies: Coordination Through Mutual Adjustment

Abstract

Multidisciplinary research teams that include faculty, students, and volunteers can be challenging and enriching for all participants. Although such teams are becoming commonplace, minimal guidance is available about strategies to enhance team effectiveness. In this article, the authors highlight strategies to guide qualitative teamwork through coordination of team members and tasks based on mutual adjustment. Using a grounded theory exemplar, they focus on issues of (a) building the team, (b) developing reflexivity and theoretical sensitivity, (c) tackling analytic and methodological procedures, and (d) developing dissemination guidelines. Sharing information, articulating project goals and elements, acknowledging variation in individual goals, and engaging in reciprocity and respectful collaboration are key elements of mutual adjustment. The authors summarize conclusions about the costs and benefits of the process.

Collaborative Analysis of Qualitative Data

“…• Insider/outsider (Bartunek and Louis, 1996) • Interdisciplinary (Tartas and Muller Mirza, 2007;Lingard et al, 2007) • Different methodological approaches (Frost et al, 2010) • Academic-practitioner (Hartley and Benington, 2000) • Academic-lay person (Enosh and Ben-Ari, 2010;Lamerichs et al, 2009) • International (Akkerman et al, 2006;Arcidiacono, 2007;Bender et al, 2011;Marková and Plichtová, 2007;Tartas and Muller Mirza, 2007) • Senior-junior (Hall et al, 2005;Pontecorvo, 2007;Rogers-Dillon, 2005) In what follows, we first introduce why collaborative data analysis is interesting from a methodological point of view, informed by the epistemological stance of perspectivism. Expanding this discussion, we then explore five potential methodological benefits of collaborative data analysis.…”

“…If coding (see Thornberg and Charmaz,Chapter 11,this volume) and analysing are private activities, there is a risk, or at least a suspicion, that the resulting analysis may be unconstrained or unsystematic (Ryan, 1999). Collaborating on the coding process is said to enforce systematicity, clarity and transparency (Hall et al, 2005). Similarly, having a second researcher as 'auditor' is a form of accountability, preventing researchers from making unjustifiable leaps of the imagination (Akkerman et al, 2008).…”

“…In the literature there is an impression that collaborations are rarely well supported or rewarded by academic institutions (Lingard et al, 2007). Hall et al (2005) report an impression that there was never enough time given to analysis, but instead their limited time was devoted to the urgent practical task of conducting the next set of interviews. Erickson and Stull (1998), seeking to account for the failures of a large team to write up fully their collaborative ethnographies, describe how individuals' competing commitments undermined their commitment to collaborative writing.…”

“…For some teams, explicit written, signed agreements were found to be useful means of achieving clarity of understanding. Hall et al (2005) wrote a 'publication agreement' outlining the rights and responsibilities of all team members in relation to the data, authorship and publication. Arcidiacono (2007) describes a 'collaborative contract' which served primarily to clarify questions of 'ownership' of data among a large international team, and secondarily to establish collaboration etiquette regarding timelines and communication.…”

Students’ Perspectives on Bullying

“…When comparing our concepts, we at large developed shared concepts because we found large overlaps in our findings. Our team analysis was performed through constant comparisons of codes and concepts (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) where we aimed to produce a shared and agreed interpretation of our data through "coordination through mutual adjustment" (Hall, Long, Bermbach, Jordan, & Patterson, 2005). In this way we engaged in processes of "joint focus and dialogue among two or more researchers" (Cornish, Gillespie and Zittoun, 2014, p. 79).…”