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1.Introduction/Frame
Since 2020, pandemic responsiveness prompted urgent shifts toward online qualitative data collection approaches, yet few researchers have offered detailed discussions that reflect on how and/or why they adjusted in-person data collection techniques for online shifts. Even as the urgency of such online shifts has largely passed, it is clear that online and virtual qualitative research modes are here to stay. With the past several years of experience to guide, now is the time, we contend, for qualitative researchers to invest far greater intentionality and reflexivity than most of us were able to invest at the height of the pandemic-initiated online scramble. This methodological paper is thus aimed at examining ways to responsively revise and reflect upon data collection procedures for online contexts. We draw from the lived experiences of four researchers who evaluated their online data collection practices, galvanized by evidence from peer-reviewed research.
Qualitative research provides deeper understandings of the human experience, and is multisensorial in its inquiry (Rieger et al., 2021). While qualitative research explores nuances of the human condition, society’s evolution to commune through digital platforms has challenged scholarship to reassess the quality, rigor, and ethics of online qualitative methods’ abilities to capture the contextual impressions and experiences of participants (Chia, et al., 2020; Cox & Milner 2022; Greene & Park, 2020; Isetti, 2022; Rahman, et al., 2021; Vaughn et al., 2022; Vindrola-Padros et al., 2020; Yoosefi Lebni, 2023). Suggestions and challenges ranged across applied fields such as health care (Hayat, 2021; Jairath, 2021; Vindrola-Padros et al., 2022) and education (Fan et al., 2024 Karakaya, 2021; Mishra et al., 2020; Mortazavi et al., 2021; Rapanta et al., 2023). Detailed data collection response approaches to overcome online transition obstacles had global reach, and were often contextualized by country, such as being specific to India (Banerjee et al., 2022), Indonesia (Mulyono, 2021), Iran (Yoosefi Lebni, 2023), Malasia (Chia, 2020), or Mexico (Cisneros-Cohernour, 2023). Some scholarship focused broadly on the transition to qualitative data collection (Coffey & Kanai, 2023; Frömming et al., 2023; Newman et al., 2021; Perry, 2023; Rahman et al., 2023; Roberts et al., 2021; Tremblay et al., 2021; Vindrola-Padros et al., 2022), while other articles narrowed to specific aspects of online data collection sources such as embodied mapping (Rieger et al., 2022; Vaughan et al., 2022; Zaragocin & Caretta, 2021), focus groups (Lathen & Laestadius, 2021), interviews (Chia et al., 2022; Heiselberg & Stępińska, 2023; Opara et al., 2023; Tomás & Bidet, 2023), online journals (Rudrum et al., 2022), or researcher reflexivity (Greene & Park, 2021). In short, the methods literature that emerged from the pandemic provided focused, contextual, and mode-specific guidance, with far less available in terms of overall considerations based on lived experiences.
Like Roberts, et al. (2021), our research pulled from knowledge based in qualitative research practice from our own studies. Unlike their study, at the start of the COVID pandemic era, our study pulled from the experiences of four researchers conducting different educational research studies and their research notes from across the pandemic from the start of their online qualitative data collection transitions in 2020 through the start of 2024. Thus, this article has a greater temporal depth as well as reach across multiple researchers instead of one research team pulling evidence from a single study and a single research approach.
2.Research Question/Objectives
The following research questions guided this project: (1) How did qualitative data collection change when research rapidly shifted online? (2) What were essential elements to consider from in-person to online qualitative data collection practices? The goal was to inform qualitative researchers of key concepts to consider in adjusting to online data collection based on a fusion of the literature alongside retrospective experiences from professional practice. Our inquiry identified several core areas to consider in reconceptualizing data collection approaches for online/hybrid contexts.
We limited our focus and data collection to recent COVID online transition contexts, as opposed to information about online data collection prior to COVID. Since continuity mattered in terms of what should continue in addition to what has changed, we also at times included intentionally designed theoretical and methodological approaches published prior to the pandemic toward achieving balance.
3.Literature Review
Our review of the relevant literature revealed an ever-emerging body of work regarding changed data collection procedures for online versus prior primarily face-to-face qualitative research (Newman et al., 2021; Roberts et al., 2021; Tremblay et al., 2021). Our review of literature, coupled with our own lived experiences as qualitative researchers during the pandemic, led us to four key categories of interest: embodiment, reflexivity, sociocultural contexts, and the researcher role/boundaries.
3.1 Embodiment
After the declaration of a pandemic, research followed other social trends to find ways to persist and retain its rigor within almost exclusively online contexts. Researchers have examined some of the constraints of online research in qualitative inquiry and found that overtly and mindfully incorporating tenets of embodiment may serve as avenues to respond to the tangible and visual limitations of online qualitative data collection (Coffey & Kanai, 2023; Park, 2023; Perry, 2023; Vaughn et al., 2022). Embodiment within qualitative research examines the lived experiences of individuals with special attention to their expressions of body and spirit including their physical presence, mental and emotional being, and connections to others and their environment (Helps, 2023; Zaragocin et al., 2021). Specifically, Alves et al. (2023) explored embodied methods within online data collection that helped to foster agency among participants and researchers toward cultivate a space for them to serve as co-constructors of knowledge in the process.
Rieger et al. (2022) noted that embodied research resists the reliance on prescriptive qualitative procedures that may constrain the meaning-making process of online qualitative research. Alternatively, they suggested that online qualitative data collection can be collaborative between the researcher and the participant, resulting in the participant and the researcher collecting and developing knowledge in concert with one another.
By recognizing and understanding that the participant is an equal partner in the construction of knowledge, the researcher can push against hierarchical relations of power that are often commonplace in scholarship (Linabary & Corple, 2019). On their work exploring the extant literature of online embodied research, Helps (2023) argued that like psychotherapeutic relationships, researchers must tune into their “emotional postures” to ensure interactional work between the researcher and the participant (p. 146). Helps (2023) suggested that researchers must be aware of how their own body is grounded to guide research discussions as a means “to know the other...focusing both inwards and outwards to make meaningful connections” between the researcher and the participant (p. 154).
Feminist epistemology highlights the criticality of articulating embodied ways of knowing across interdisciplinary scholarship (Barbour, 2018). Zaragocin et al. (2021) applied an action-oriented approach in their work on the geographical knowledge construction of participants and their bodies. Results showed that by having participants recognize their bodies as territories, the participants were able to draw knowledge from their physical selves, voices, and experiences to coproduce validated knowledge.
3.2 Reflexivity
Reflexivity is characterized by thoughtful and conscious self-awareness in research. It involves a continuous evaluation of subjective responses, intersubjective dynamics, and the research process, necessitating a shift from an objective view of data collection to an acknowledgment of actively constructing knowledge through an understanding of what the ‘I’ knows and how the ‘I’ knows it.
The modern technological landscape enables new intellectual possibilities by fostering innovative expressions of identity, collaborative working, commercial and political strategies, art production and distribution, and configurations of social interaction. Online research, encompassing methodologies such as digital ethnography, networked anthropology, and in-depth interviews conducted through platforms like Zoom, WhatsApp, or Skype, presents a shift in paradigms (Frömming et al., 2017). Burton (2021) emphasized that while online research introduces new affordances, it can also replicate existing systems of power and harm observed in offline counterparts. To navigate this landscape, researchers must adapt the concept of reflexivity to the online domain.
Greene and Park (2021) and Cox and Miltner (2022) contribute essential insights into reflexivity within the context of online qualitative data collection, navigating the challenges presented by a global pandemic and technologically advanced environments. This synthesis underscores the integral relationship between transparency, intentionality, and critical self-examination in maintaining reflexivity throughout online research endeavors.
The reflections of Greene and Park (2021) highlight the dynamic nature of reflexivity, particularly crucial for both emerging researchers and graduate faculty members engaged in remote course activities during a pandemic. A central theme is transparency about researchers' positionalities, exemplified in Greene's and Park’s research design focused on teachers' experiences amid COVID-19.
The advantage of studying the familiar is emphasized, calling for a balance between insider and outsider perspectives through reflexive methodologies like three-part logs and humility (Berger, 2015).
Cox and Miltner (2022) extend the discourse, emphasizing the transformative potential of technologically advanced landscapes in online research. However, they highlighted the potential replication of power dynamics and harms observed offline, necessitating reflexivity. Despite advancements, Cox and Miltner (2022) acknowledged the complexities in online research, particularly in gaining access to communities and addressing microethics. Reflexivity, according to these authors, demands vigilant attention to the impact of researchers' thoughts and actions on participants and the research process.
3.3 Sociocultural Contexts
Online social chat preceded the most recent pandemic. Thus, many social practices have bled into research contexts. Guidelines for data collection therefore necessitate increasing research-oriented professionalism to counterbalance often casual social or classroom-styled video chat practices. Especially for researchers who conduct university-level postsecondary research who are also educators, classroom-styled practices formed the foundations of data collection online transitions, even though collecting data differs drastically from teaching an online platform course (Cisneros-Cohernour et al., 2023; Hayat et al., 2021; Mishra et al., 2020; Mortazavi et al., 2021). Some guidance regarding online climates of care and responsiveness applied to both teaching and research, yet needed differentiation in application (Archambault et al., 2022; Banerjee, 2022; Karakaya, 2021; Kaufmann & Kallade, 2022; Mulyono et al., 2021; Rapanta et al., 2020; Robinson et al., 2020). These currents tended to include research with the centered foci on online pedagogical changes as opposed to methodological reflection about how to research in online contexts. Another frequent trend within the research narrowed its focus to organizational scholarship, which helped support researchers and their roles during online transitions (Gibson, 2020).
Additional aspects of the sociocultural literature regarding online data collection focused on digital accessibility and participants’ digital literacies. In some cases, categorization of participants’ abilities was highly pejorative, working against many affirmative tenets embedded in social cultural methodological understandings. For example, one such study offered a typology of four types of online research participants including “digital outcasts, illiterates, sceptics, and natives” and suggested segregated data collection practices dependent upon participants’ researcher-assigned typology classification as part of community-based research (Hannemann et al., 2023, p.1). Other guidance offered suggestions aligned to specific sociocultural groups in more support-based equity language, such as Lathen and Laestadius’ (2021) guidance specific to online focus group research with lower socio-economic status African American adults. Still other researchers extended sociocultural approaches to develop pandemic-responsive data collection techniques such as online journal entry responses entries (Rudrum et al., 2022).
3.4 Researcher Role and Boundaries
The final category of literature we explored had to do with the benefits-and consequences-yielded by online and hybrid data collection modes. The benefits were well-documented: the use of video conferencing for online interviews was purported to be as effective as in-person interviews (Heiselberg & Stępińska, 2023; Namey et al., 2020; Thurnberg & Arnell, 2021), increased access to participants, minimized expenses (Gray et al., 2020) and study time, and maximized access to participants at times convenient to them (Heiselberg & Stępińska, 2023).
In some cases, the heightened flexibility yielded by the emergency response to communication in a pandemic world was celebrated, and calls for pragmatism to drive research designs and methods were plentiful (Jairath et al., 2021). Though the logistical aspects of online data collection were within most professionals’ existing skillsets, the less-visible and lesser-documented foci of such approaches were challenges (Gray et al., 2020). And while some of these fell to participants, most notably access to and comfort levels with technology, shifting to online and hybrid modes of data collection at times resulted in several challenges for researchers. Many of these challenges paralleled some of the benefits. For example, with the increased accessibility for participants to join in a mode that suited their availability and convenience came a new responsibility on researchers to maintain procedural flexibility and appropriate balance, especially in multi-mode hybrid situations, wherein some participants opted for fully online data collection while others preferred in-person--or in multi-touch studies where participants fluctuated across modalities of data collection within the same study.
Next, the increase in temporal accessibility for reaching participants based on their convenience present boundary challenges for researchers. This can present in a few ways. First, with respect to time accessibility, it may be that virtual data collection allows for talking with study participants after work hours, at their convenience (Gray, et al., 2020); for most researchers, these times are also after hours, though. Second, with respect to location/space accessibility, the researcher may never know what to expect in terms of where they might be meeting with a participant (in a public space, driving, in a bedroom, at poolside, etc.). While these scenarios may also be experienced by the researcher in other areas of our professional lives (colleague meetings, classes, etc.), in a research situation, ethics and power dynamics require a different level of care and thought (e.g., Wolcott, 2002). A related challenge that requires additional consideration is privacy issues related to online data collection (Jairath et al., 2021), particularly when the participant is in a public space or Zooming in an area where others can overhear the conversation, which is generally beyond a researcher’s control.
4.Methods
Because our review of the literature was catalyzed by our pandemic-era data collection hallway conversations, we entered into this work with specific foci. Two of this manuscript’s authors reflected on issues of limited overtly reflective and instructive information about changes when data collection rapidly went online specific to data collection at the height of the pandemic. We searched the academic literature for these and were left with absences. This project was thus initiated from a pragmatic perspective as we extended and deepened our seeking from the literature on guidance regarding aspects of our research approach that we wanted to refine as the urgent shift to online data collection slowed, but the need for this type of work remained. We also undertook reflection upon our own methodological practice through our memos and fieldnotebooks, which resulted in a collection of successfully applied, grounded in experience practices or SAGE practices, which formed a foundation for this work. Our approach was as pragmatic as our goals, for this reason.
We began by cataloguing the issues we encountered during the pandemic and by conducting informal searches utilizing Google Scholar and our institutional library’s general search to identify and refine appropriate search terms that allowed us to engage with the extant qualitative methods literature. We next grouped our initial search results into four key categories of interest to guide and refine our literature search. These were embodiment, reflexivity, sociocultural contexts, and the researcher role/boundaries, as delineated in the review of literature (above). Though we initially set out to delimit our included literature to only publication dates of 2020 forward, in our initial searches, we noted the value of guidance that preceded the pandemic-era literature and included such literature when it aligned closely with our categories. Additional inclusion criteria included methods-focused discussions exclusively addressing qualitative methods, and scholarship that included guidance both on methods and methodology, as we were seeking guidance not just on what to do, but also on why. We opted not to delimit by discipline or context beyond this.
Each author took one of the four categories in their review process, and then we verified each other’s work in teams of two. This process was iterative as we returned to the literature multiple times as our understandings and curiosities continued to evolve.
In addition to the literature search, we reflected upon our methodological practice, applying evidence from our own experiences. While some team members pulled predominantly from the literature, others dug into their field notebooks, research team notes, and reflections to integrate their pandemic-era online data collection practice. We engaged population check in some cases where we were not a member of a population to check claims with members of a population. As opposed to member checks, where the researchers check with a participant in a study, population checks seek guidance from the larger population samples derived from or applied to within a study. Especially when drawing on reflections about studies from over a year before in applied rather than study-specific contexts, it seemed less burdensome to participants and better aligned to our purpose in this paper to conduct population checks. The applied results derived from a commingling of collegial inquiry, the academic literature, experiential reflection of collecting data during the pandemic, and revising field and research team notes.
5. Applied Results: (Re)examining SAGE Practices Contextualized to Online Data Collection
The applied results began with a retroactive and reflective cataloguing from the pandemic-era online data collection from the authors’ research notebooks compared with prior procedures and SAGE practices from their pre-pandemic face-to-face data collection.
The researchers use the terminology Successfully Applied, Grounded in Experience practices, SAGE practices, over best practices or wise practices because both commonly used sayings raise questions regarding best for whom and wise according to whom. The researchers define SAGE practices as being grounded in experiences linked to transparency about who has used these practices, with whom, and how. SAGE practices ground in authentic professional practice referencing methodological approaches and techniques that have been successfully applied over time. Our investigation identified eight essential SAGE practice areas for qualitative researchers to (re)consider in reconceptualizing data collection approaches for online/hybrid contexts.
5.1 SAGE Practice 1: (Re)examining Online Data Collection Differences in Proximity and Amplification of Facial-Emphasis Communication
Our researcher field notes indicated differences in proximity and amplification with online, facial-emphasis communication as compared with face-to-face data collection. In our practice, this change was especially well matched for neurodivergent and D/deaf participants, which may or may not generalize to all participants with these identities nor to other disabilities. Our experiences with both neurodivergent and D/deaf participants in studies included perceptions of contentment and greater ease in communication with the online interviews due to the heightened emphasis on facial expressions. The researchers recognize that there is a great deal of diversity within Disability populations. For example, some deaf participants indicated that the embedded transcription proved an asset; whereas for some Deaf participants the de-emphasis of hands in the typical online face-cantered platform necessitated added attention to an upper body view to allow for signing. In a population check with a researcher who is a fluent in ASL Heritage Signer, the researchers also found that the increased facial emphasis in online interviewing helped increase access to head motions providing grammatical markers and morphemic mouth movements, which change the meanings of signs even if the signs are the exact same hand shape, palm orientation, and placement.
5.2 SAGE Practice 2: Strengthening Awareness of Truncated Corporal Visuality in Online Contexts
Strengthening awareness of truncated corporal visuality in online contexts, requiring lowered inferencing and higher-detail descriptions, alongside increasing on-the-spot member checking intrinsically tied with SAGE practice 1, in that when online platforms hyper-emphasize the face, they hypo-emphasize the remainder of corporality. Thus, online data collection often resulted in a mixed bag continuum of better and worse contextualization for differing populations over a forced duality of good for/bad for divisions. It matters that these nuances of both better and worse not get flattened in oversimplistic yet neater declaration of the state of online data collection.
5.3 SAGE Practice 3: Increasing Fluency and Agility with Digital Tools
The need to be knowledgeable and nimble with a variety of digital tools (e.g., video conferencing platforms such as Zoom) for facilitation of data collection is fairly obvious. However, less obvious is the need to stay current on tools that support the practical matters of research: apps that assist in scheduling with participants (e.g., Calendly, Bookings) or support electronic data management and analysis (e.g., MaxQDA, NVivo). We found, as one example, that some scheduling apps display participants’ names openly as other participants scheduled-an obvious confidentiality concern. Equally important, is understanding the nuances-and quirks-of various systems of, for instance, transcription, especially since so many video-conferencing platforms have built-in captioning and transcription. Yet, the efficiency and accuracy of these built-in tools are wide ranging. Indeed, though many such digital tools have become household names, data collection requires a different level of user agility, for transparency with participants and for compliance with institutional review board policies and procedures for human subjects research.
5.4 SAGE Practice 4: Increasing Mindfulness of Temporal Need for Visual Data Over Audio-Only Data
Our researcher notes indicated the increased need to be mindful of if and how long researchers may need visual data, such as recorded interviews, over audio-only data. We found we were able to delete video recordings sooner if all members of the research team strengthened awareness of truncated corporal visuality in online contexts and engaged in lowered inferencing and higher levels of detail descriptions embedded into the transcripts through use of increased observer comments. We also found that requiring transcripts to contain these types of deep descriptions resulted in all research team members increasing on-the-spot member checking within interviews.
5.5 SAGE Practice 5: Enhancing Researcher Reflexivity Regarding Transcription and Field Notes
The more detail added to transcription from field notes, regardless if they were researcher-created or especially if they originated from a computer or transcriber generated pathway, the less need there was to retain video recordings beyond ten days. Two rules of thumb that typically transfer across research field sites for observer comments, often detailed as [O.C.] in both fieldnotes and embedded transcription notes, were especially important for online contests were aim for (1) lower inferencing and (2) greater detail.
5.6 SAGE Practice 6: Increasing Research-Oriented Professionalism to Counterbalance Casual Social or Classroom-Styled Video Chat Practices
Most educational researchers also teach in some capacity and navigated the tumultuous waters of teaching in online environments across the pandemic.
There are, undeniably, substantial differences between teaching in online and hybrid environments and researching in online and hybrid environments, particularly when it comes to sensitive issues or vulnerable populations. Though we may have first- or second-hand knowledge of a surprising teaching situation involving the location of or visual appearance of a student on the other side of the Zoom camera, the power dynamic is very different in a research situation. As one real-life case-in-point, one author of this manuscript hosted an interview in which the participant signed on poolside in a bathing suit. When the researcher prompted whether additional time to change or relocate would be helpful, the participant declined, noting her comfort with the situation. In such a situation, what happens when the researcher is not so comfortable? While the authors affirm that people may dress however they wish, this was unexpected for a one-on-one video interview. Conflating interviews with other types of online video chat proved hard to avoid, especially as Zoom communications became further and further engrained in everyday life. Setting an expected dress code for interviews fell far beyond the researcher's comfort zone. That said, so did interviewing someone one-on-one in a recorded video in minimal clothing. Two of this manuscript’s authors problematized this aspect particularly in our roles as women researchers and teachers. We discussed how much we valued freedom for women in tension with our admittedly gendered tendencies that we had been enculturated to prioritize the comfort and needs of others above our own. We realized that this held especially true in trying to accommodate power differentials between our roles as researchers and others’ roles as participants. This was further complicated by considering gender match ups and heteronormativity. Thus, while uncomfortable to interview in one instance, a woman in a bathing suit, the same researcher admittedly may have been more uncomfortable had the participant been a man in a bathing suit.
5.7 SAGE Practice 7: Maintaining Procedural Flexibility and Balance Regarding Potential Hybrid Data Collection
In the researchers’ experience, the hybridity came in the form of a mix of modalities across the same participants in the same study, typically dependent on the participants’ availability and convenience. In other words, across a three-interview protocol, a participant interviewed in person for one data touch point, but online via Zoom in another. This level of researcher flexibility is largely unprecedented, as most of the population has come to expect unscheduled shifts to remote meetings/classes because of even a minor illness. In many cases, these increased expectations on researchers to be nimble and flexible in their planning can be frustrating. As one example, one of the researchers scheduled multiple in-person interviews on the same day at a field site that required a several-hour drive; upon arrival to the field site, the researcher received a request from one participant to shift the modality to a Zoom interview. As the field site was a public space, this required some quick thinking to find a private enough space with wifi to host the meeting on the fly.
5.8 SAGE Practice 8: Increasing Temporal Accessibility vis-à-vis Boundaries
Online data collection allowed for increased availability for participants. However, this often extended researchers’ hours spent on data collection. Temporally and geographically, this caused a spreading out of interview times.
Often, instead of a more traditionally narrow yet dense temporal collection at a field site, within specific tightly grouped timeframes, there was temporal spread with other non-research related online activities inserted in-between data collection. This was especially true when interviews were the data source. Thus, the mapping of when and where data collection occurred looked differently after data collection moved online, becoming more temporally dense, more heterogeneous in terms of a multiplicity of other activities mingled alongside data collection, and with greater geographic distance from field sites. Additionally, often data collection in online contexts embedded this task within the researchers’ homes.
Especially when topics and participants’ stories were weighty, issues of ethical care arose for researchers. Before, with in-the-field research, researchers may have chosen to take work home; however, with online shifts, work more frequently originated and even lived in researchers’ home spaces. From the positionality of educational researchers, this prompted the examination of having inadvertently extending Noddings’(1995, 1988, 2018) idealized ethics of care into 18research. By intermixing teaching with data collection in the same modalities and timeframes, theories for teaching and researcher roles sometimes blended, often without overt reflection. While both teaching and research involve ethics of care, researchers stopping to problematize the overlap in such care may matter. Some research has addressed this issue, albeit, not specific to qualitative data collection, and often as aligned with action research (Bergmark, 2020) and narrative approaches (Caine et al., 2020).
6.Final Considerations
Given that remote work-across all educational sectors-has largely become an expectation rather than an emergency transition, qualitative researchers must recognize the need to be fluent in online data collection modes. This examination of primarily reactionary conversations related to the urgent transition to online data collection (via field notebooks and published literature) has led us to aim at moving beyond the reactionary, and to reconceptualize data collection for online contexts. In a sense, our cataloguing of these SAGE practices serves as a compilation of what we wish we had known or had time/space to consider at the outset of the pandemic, as it responds, reflexively and with more calculated thought and intentionality, to some of the very data collection situations we encountered as qualitative researchers.
