Innovative Qualitative Collection Methods for Centering Race and Ethnicity

Race, equity, and justice remain challenging yet critical topics for education researchers in the contemporary U.S. context. Meaningful engagement with these topics requires researchers to critically acknowledge dominant paradigms and intentionally design research approaches that meaningfully center race and ethnicity. This research note offers innovative and tested methods for qualitative data collection that enable researchers to engage in deeper dialogues on race and ethnicity with participant-collaborators: (1) purposeful sampling to reflect racial/ethnic diversity within the group under investigation, (2) “matched” and “mixed” focus groups to center participants’ social identities, and (3) vignettes with auditory and visual depictions to facilitate discussion. Each proved beneficial for in-depth and rich data collection, fostering deeper analyses, discussions, and recommendations for practice.