A constructive Approach to Managing Faculty Conflict: An Action Research Study

Post Workshop Surveys. The researcher created post-workshop surveys (see Appendices G & I) that were administered after both workshops to measure and evaluate workshop effectiveness.
Workshop Assessment. A workshop assessment was used to evaluate and measure the effectiveness of every aspect of the conflict management strategies workshop. This included the participants completion of the pre-questionnaire, involvement in the group discussions and interactive conflict resolution games in both workshops, and post-group discussions (see Appendix J).
Interviews. An interview protocol guide (see Appendix M) was used as an instrument of inquiry as well as an instrument for conversation regarding workshop participation. The individual interviews were the last component of the intervention. Data Analysis
Data analysis included gathering all the quantitative data from the conflict management strategies workshop and using Qualtrics software program to analyze the data. The analyzed data was then exported to an Excel spreadsheet for easier reading and organization of the data. The qualitative data collected was transcribed via Sonix, an automated online transcription service, in which the researcher uploaded audio files of the workshops and interviews to Sonix and the service provided text-based documentation. The researcher transferred the text-based qualitative data from Sonix into Dedoose, another online research tool that assists in analyzing qualitative and

mixed methods data. Dedoose provided coded data in order for the researcher to examine the emergent themes regarding the effectiveness of workshop participation.

Coding is a central strategy used in inductive qualitative data analysis that helps distill units of meaning and then combine them in a new way into groups, categories, thus recreating participants’ common experience with the studied phenomenon. Coding is a part of the data-segmenting process aiming to reduce large amounts of text-data into a system of hierarchically organized categories and themes based on similar types of information for identifying and presenting the findings (Ivankova, 2015).
Additionally, the researcher maintained observational notes throughout the evaluation phase to document the data collection process after the completion of each workshop, documented what the data analysis revealed at each step of the implemented workshops, and the researcher’s thoughts were noted to reflect upon and maintain familiarity with the inner workings of the implemented study.