HSRV311-26S1 Qualitative Research Methods Assignment Questions | University Of Canterbury

Answer THREE (3) questions from the following:

1. Methodologies

You are preparing a research project on the broad topic of gender and mental health in the workplace. You propose to explore the experiences of women diagnosed with a mental illness who are/have been subjected to workplace emotional abuse in New Zealand workplaces. The proposed study seeks to understand, describe, and critically analyse how particular discourses might contribute to and shape the employment experience of these women.

Key questions driving the research include:

• what organisational, procedural, legislative, media and other structural narratives influence the women’s experiences?
• How are constructions of bullying and emotional abuse influenced by labels of gender and psychiatric labelling?

Drawing on your course readings only, outline the methodological approach you will use why you have made this choice; identify how you will collect data; discuss any potential challenges you will need to consider in designing and undertaking this research study.

2. Ethics

You are going to undertake a 12-month ethnographic study to investigate the role of drug checking services for harm reduction for people who use illicit drugs. The study is titled: “On the Margins: An Ethnographic Study of Drug Checking Services and Harm Reduction in Practice”. The study will use observation and in-depth semi-structured interviews to collect data. You will be embedded within a mobile drug checking service to observe how drug checking services operate in practice at festival, nightlife and community settings. It is expected that participants for in-depth interviews will come from diverse ethnic and social backgrounds and ages. You will recruit representatives from drug checking services, law enforcement, policy and health agencies, as well as people who use illicit drugs. The study seeks to understand how drug checking services are experienced, understood, and enacted by participants involved in illicit drug use and harm reduction efforts. Specifically you seek to understand:

• How illicit drug users engage with and make sense of drug checking services?
• What meanings and values are attributed to these services by professionals across health, law enforcement, and policy sectors?
• How harm reduction practices are negotiated in social settings.
• What tensions or alignments exist between public health, legal enforcement, and user perspectives?

Drawing on course literature only and materials (EG the University of Canterbury HREC application form), reflexively consider a couple of key ethical concerns identified in the HREC form and your literature – discuss why you will be required to address these concerns and how you propose to do so.

• You can access the HREC application form for reference at this link: https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/study/study-support-info/study-related-topics/humanethics#applications
• Note: You are NOT required to complete the form

3. Focus Groups

You are going to undertake a research study titled ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’? An Exploration of Young Women’s Drinking Practices. The study question seeks to explore, ‘what social processes shape young women’s participation in and perspectives on underage drinking’. You will use a grounded theory approach and have decided that focus groups should be your main research method for collecting data. A key aim for the study is to understand how young women make sense of and engage in underage drinking within peer and social contexts. Participants will be young women aged 14-17 years, and you will undertake the research within 4 cities and surrounding rural areas of: Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.

Drawing on course literature only, critically consider the choice of focus groups for your data collection method, the ‘fit’ with the methodology, study question and aims. Briefly outline how you will plan and undertake the focus groups and consider any potential challenges you might encounter when using this method for the study.

4. Community Research and PAR

You have been asked to help an out-reach support service for street sex workers to plan and undertake a research project. They are concerned that numbers attending/using their services have decreased while instances of poor mental health and physical wellbeing have increased since the beginning of the economic recession. They would like to develop/improve their outreach services to better meet the mental and physical health needs of street sex workers (whose needs are often not met by conventional health services) in the context of the current economic recession.

Drawing on your course literature only, consider why and how PAR would be a good fit for this research study; outline the key aims to achieve for this project; note the key components of this methodological approach and how they can meet these aims. Outline the key steps to undertake this research project (assume that you already have ethics approval for the study); identify the methods to be used for data collection and why these methods have been selected; identify any potential challenges you will need to consider in undertaking this research and how you might negotiate these challenges.

5. Documents

You are undertaking a critical discourse analysis (CDA) study titled “Crushing Cars, Constructing Criminals: The Politics of the ‘Boy Racer’ Discourse”. The study question asks how ‘boy racers’ are discursively constructed in news media and policy documents, and what these constructions reveal about broader societal attitudes toward youth, risk, and ‘deviance’. Document analysis will be the sole method of data collection for the study.

Key aims for the study include:

• To critically examine the language and discursive strategies used to portray ‘boy racers’ in news reports, newspapers, and policy documents.
• To explore how these discourses reflect and reproduce societal norms, ideologies, and power relations related to youth cultures and social control.

HSRV 311 Human Services Programme End of Course Online Test 2025 – 5 –

• To assess the role of media and political institutions in constructing moral panic narratives around young drivers.

Drawing on course literature only, critically consider the choice of document analysis as a data collection method for the study, the ‘fit’ with the methodology, study question and aims. You will also select two documents as an example of data that you intend to collect for this study (provide links at the end of the reference list.) Discuss the choice of documents and initial analysis observations.

6. Negotiating Gender and Culture

You are going to undertake a grounded theory study exploring: How young refugee men negotiate their sense of identity and masculinity in the context of displacement and resettlement.

Key aims of the study include:

• To understand how young refugee men construct their identities and understandings of masculinity during the resettlement process.
• To explore the social, cultural, and structural factors that shape these identity processes, including experiences of displacement, integration, discrimination, and community belonging.
• To identify the strategies these young men use to manage tensions between cultural expectations (from their country of origin) and those of the host society.

Drawing on course literature only, consider any cultural and gender-related challenges that are important to anticipate and navigate with care when conducting research with young refugee men on identity and masculinity, especially given the intersection of displacement, trauma, and gender norms.