Disciplinary is a term used to describe types of knowledge, expertise, skills, people, projects, communities, problems, challenges, studies, inquiry, approaches, and research areas that are strongly associated with academic areas of study or areas of professional practice. Disciplinary knowledge associated with academic disciplines and professions results in people who are known as expert, as opposed to generalist who may have studied liberal arts or systems theory.
Cross-disciplinary describes any method, project and research activity that examines a subject outside the scope of its own discipline without cooperation or integration from other relevant disciplines. In cross-disciplinary, topics are studied using foreign methodologies of unrelated disciplines, for example Ethics in clinical research and occupational health. Within a cross-disciplinary relationship disciplinary boundaries are crossed but no techniques or ideals are exchanged.
Inter-disciplinary involves the combining of two or more academic fields into one single discipline. An interdisciplinary field crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions have emerged. It is applied within education and training pedagogies to describe studies that use methods and insights of several established disciplines or traditional fields of study. Inter-disciplinary involves researchers, students, and teachers in the goals of connecting and integrating several academic schools of thought, professions, or technologies - along with their specific perspectives- in the pursuit of a common task.
Trans-disciplinary connotes a research strategy that crosses many disciplinary boundaries to create a holistic approach. It applies to research efforts focused on problems that cross the boundaries of two or more disciplines, such as research on effective information systems for biomedical research, and can refer to concepts or methods that were originally developed by one discipline, but are now used by several others, such as ethnography, a field research method originally developed in anthropology but now widely used by other disciplines.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciplinary,Qualitative research seeks out the ‘why’, not the ‘how’ of its topic through the analysis of unstructured information – things like interview transcripts, open ended survey responses, emails, notes, feedback forms, photos and videos.
Qualitative research is used to gain insight into people's attitudes, behaviours, value systems, concerns, motivations, aspirations, culture or lifestyles. It’s used to inform business decisions, policy formation, communication and research. Focus groups, in-depth interviews, content analysis, ethnography, evaluation and semiotics are among the many formal approaches that are used, but qualitative research also involves the analysis of any unstructured material, including customer feedback forms, reports or media clips.
- Ethnography is a systematic study of a particular cultural group or phenomenon, based upon extensive fieldwork in one or more selected locales.
- Ethnography research focuses on cultural interpretation, for the purposes of description or extension of social theory.
- Ethnographers use multiple data sources and methods of data collection to increase the validity and trustworthiness of the findings.
- Ethical ethnographers are careful to reduce any risks to themselves and the other participants before, during, and after the research process.
- Ethnography brings complex, personal, and thoughtful insights and meaning to the inner workings of social settings.
