research and communication methods

Guide to Communication Research Methodologies: Quantitative, Qualitative and Rhetorical Research

Media and Communication

• Encyclopedias and Background Information
• Finding Books and E-books
• Finding Articles
• Primary Sources

Communications Research Methods: Articles & Books

• Methods in Media Studies (MiMS)

Getting help from NYU Library Data Services

For assistance, please submit a request .  You can also reach us via the chat below, email [email protected] , or join Discord server .

If you've met with us before,                        tell us how we're doing .

Service Desk and Chat

Bobst Library , 5th floor

Staffed Hours: Spring 2024

Mondays:  12pm - 5pm         Tuesdays:  12pm - 5pm         Wednesdays:  12pm - 5pm         Thursdays:  12pm - 5pm         Fridays:  12pm - 5pm        

Data Services closes for winter break at the end of the day on Friday, Dec. 22, 2023. We will reopen on Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024.

Quantitative Data

Interested in using quantitative data? Need some assistance using SPSS?  Make a one-on-one appointment with the Data Service Studio by emailing [email protected].

For full details see the Data Service Studio page.

• Communication Research Methods II: A Sourcebook An updated version of the "bible" of how to do research in communication and media studies.
• Handbook of Media and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies A great overview of both qualitative and quantitative approaches to content analysis and media studies research.
• Qualitative Media Analysis The authors of this work show readers how to obtain, categorize, and analyze different media documents. They look at traditional primary documents such as newspapers and magazines but also at more recent forms–television newscasts and cyberspace.
• Mass Communications Research Methods Originally published in 1988. Step-by-step, this book leads students from problem identification, through the mazes of surveys, experimentation, historical/qualitative studies, statistical analysis, and computer data processing to the final submission and publication in scientific or popular publications.
• Communication Research Methods in Postmodern Culture: A Revisionist Approach The second edition of Communication Research Methods in Postmodern Culture continues to explore research from a postmodern perspective. Typical qualitative and quantitative research methods are adjusted to fit the needs of contemporary culture.
• << Previous: Primary Sources
• Next: Course-Specific Guides >>
• Last Updated: May 3, 2024 1:22 PM
• URL: https://guides.nyu.edu/mediaandcommunication

• school Campus Bookshelves
• menu_book Bookshelves
• perm_media Learning Objects
• login Login
• how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
• hub Instructor Commons
• Download Page (PDF)
• Download Full Book (PDF)
• Periodic Table
• Physics Constants
• Scientific Calculator
• Reference & Cite
• Tools expand_more
• Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

1.5: Approaches to Organizational Communication Research

• Last updated
• Save as PDF
• Page ID 14853

\( \newcommand{\vecs}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)

\( \newcommand{\vecd}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash {#1}}} \)

\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)

( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\) \( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)

\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\) \( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)

\( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\)

\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)

\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\)

\( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\)

\( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)

\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\)

\( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)

\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \( \newcommand{\AA}{\unicode[.8,0]{x212B}}\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorA}[1]{\vec{#1}}      % arrow\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorAt}[1]{\vec{\text{#1}}}      % arrow\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorB}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorC}[1]{\textbf{#1}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorD}[1]{\overrightarrow{#1}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorDt}[1]{\overrightarrow{\text{#1}}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectE}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash{\mathbf {#1}}}} \)

Learning Objectives

• Explain what is meant by the social-scientific approach to organizational communication.
• Explain what is meant by the interpretive approach to organizational communication.
• Explain what is meant by the critical approach to organizational communication.

In Table 1.3 you saw the basic history or of organizational communication and how it’s grown into the academic discipline that it is today. The earliest years in the development of the field were predominantly marked by either thought pieces written about organizational communication or were driven by social-scientific/quantitative research. If you read Table 1.3 carefully, starting in the early 1980s new voices began emerging in the field of organizational communication brining both qualitative/interpretive and then rhetorical/critical approaches to the study of organizational communication. In this section, we are going to examine each of these different methodological traditions and the types of research questions commonly posed in each. As authors, we find it very important to have this discussion in the first chapter because you’ll come in contact with all three methodological approaches as you read this book. We want you, as readers, to be able to critically analyze the research we are presenting and understand how the different methodological traditions impact our understanding of the phenomenon that is organizational communication. To help with this purpose, we are going to explore the two major branches of organizational communication: social-scientific/quantitative and qualitative (both interpretive and critical).

Social-Scientific/Quantiative

The first major tradition in organizational communication is the social-scientific/quantitative tradition to organizational communication. The bulk of the early work in organizational communication either focused on prescriptive methods for business speaking or came from outside the field of communication studies until the 1960s. The 1960s represented a period when the field started to solidify and create professional boundaries to differentiate itself from business, psychology, sociology, and speech. During these early years of the field, the goal of organizational communication research was very scientific. In essence, researchers would use theory to form a series of hypotheses, the researchers would then test these hypotheses through experimental observation, and the outcomes of the experimental observations would help the researchers revise the original theory, which inevitably lead to new research questions and hypotheses. The predominant research methodology available at the time stemmed out of the world of social psychology and was based in statistics. As noted in the two studies examining organizational methodology discussed in the history of organizational communication, the bulk of research conducted today is still from this social-scientific or quantitative perspective.Spence, P. R., & Baker, C. R. (2007). State of the method: An examination of levels of analysis, methodology, representation, and setting in current organizational communication research. Journal of the Northwest Communication Association, 36 , 111–124. , Wert-Gray, S., Center, C., Brashers, D. E., & Meyers, R. A. (1991). Research topics and methodological orientations in organizational communication: A decade in review. Communication Studies, 42 , 141–154. For social scientists, there are three general avenues of research that are common: survey, experiments, and content analyses.

Survey Research in Organizational Communication

The first common type of social scientific method utilized in organizational communication is probably the most common in communication research as a whole, the survey. SurveysForm of social-scientific research based on a series of questions designed to measure individuals’ personality/communication traits, attitudes, beliefs, and/or knowledge on a given subject. involve a series of questions designed to measure individuals’ personality/communication traits, attitudes, beliefs, and/or knowledge on a given subject. Surveys are as popular as they are because you can get massive amounts of information from a wide array of people very quickly. However, one always has to question whether or not a survey is adequately using the right types of participants for a specific study. For example, using a group of college students to discuss workplace violence may not be very accurate because of the limited exposure your average undergraduate college student has in the work world. As such, you want to look for studies that utilize people who not in school and work for a living outside of the college environment if at all possible.

Experimental Research in Organizational Communication

The second type of common social-scientific/quantitative study conducted by communication researchers is the experiment. Like in the physical sciences, the goal of an experimentForm of social-scientific research based on the manipulation of some facet of a participant’s experience to determine how that participant responds. is to manipulate some facet of a participant’s experience to determine how that participant responds. For example, in a study examining the impact that an initial handshake has on potential interviewers, you could have a trained confederate (someone the participants do not know is working for the researcher) enter into a potential job interview and shake the hands in an aggressive, average firmness, or weak fashion. The goal of this potential study would be to determine if the interviewer’s experiences with the potential job candidate would differ based on the type of handshake he or she used at the beginning of an interview. In this hypothetical study, we, as the researchers, would manipulate the type of handshake an interviewer receives at the beginning of the interview in some kind of random fashion to ensure we are not accidentally biasing the results. Overall, experiments generally involve a lot of planning and time to pull-off competently.

Content Analysis in Organizational Communication

The final type of research conducted on the banner of social-scientific/quantitative research is the content analysis. A content analysisForm of social-scientific research based on taking a series of artifacts and numerically coding information contained within the artifacts to see if a discernible pattern emerges. involves taking a series of artifacts and numerically coding information contained within the artifacts to see if a discernible pattern emerges. First, we need to define what we mean by artifacts. In this sense of the word, artifacts are objects made by organizational members capturing communication attempts. For example, speeches of CEOs found on YouTube could be a video artifact or press releases from Fortune 500 corporations could be a different type of artifact. Second, we then numerically code these artifacts looking for specific details. For example, maybe we’re going to analyze speeches made by Fortune 500 CEOs looking for terms that resemble patriotic themes: patriotism, United States, duty, honor, America, etc… Our could would be to get a numerical count of this specific type of image. We could then also analyze the incidence of these themes across different organizational types: banking, automotive, etc… In this case, the goal would be to see if different types of organizations have CEOs who are more likely to invoke images of patriotism than other types of organizations.

For more information on conducting quantitative research, we recommend reading Wrench, Thomas-Maddox, Richmond, and McCroskey’s Quantitative Research Methods for Communication: A Hands-On Approach .Wrench, J. S., Thomas-Maddox, C., Richmond, V. P., & McCroskey, J. C. (2008). Quantitative research methods for communication: A hands-on approach . New York: Oxford. The accompanying sidebar contains an example of a social-scientific/quantitative study in organizational communication.

Example of Quantiative/Social Scientific Research

Individual Differences in Managers’ Use of Humor: Subordinate

Perceptions of Managers’ Humor

By Brian J. Rizzo, Melissa Bekelja Wanzer, and Melanie Booth-Butterfield (1999)Rizzo, B. J., Wanzer, M. B., & Booth-Butterfield, M. (1999). Individual differences in managers’ use of humor: Subordinate perceptions of managers’ humor. Communication Research Reports, 16 , 360–369.

In this study, Rizzo, Wanzer, and Booth-Butterfield set out to examine subordinates’ perceptions of their manager’s use of humor in the workplace. The researchers recruited 151 participants in introductory communication courses, graduate communication courses, and MBA courses. All participants were either current or past part-time (less than 40 hours per week) or full time (40 hours per week or more) employees of some organization.

The researchers used three mental measures in this study: Self and Manager Humor Orientation (individual’s use of humor in interpersonal interactions—was completed once for self and once for their manager), Humor Behaviors (Individual’s use of humor strategies in the workplace—was completed once for self and once for their manager), Manager Affect (degree to which a subordinate likes her or his manager), and Manager Effectiveness (degree to which a subordinate perceives her or his manager as effective).

The researchers had four hypotheses in this study (taken from page 362):

H1: High humor oriented individuals will report using more humorous behaviors in the workplace than low humor oriented individuals.

H2: Hugh humor oriented individuals will perceive more types of humorous behaviors as appropriate for their manager to use in the workplace than low humor oriented individuals.

H3: Subordinates perceptions of managers’ humor orientation will be positively associated with liking toward these managers.

H4: Employees’ perceptions of mangers’ humor orientation will be positively related to perceptions of managerial effectiveness.

The Results

First, employees who rated themselves as using large amounts of humor in their daily interactions with others used more humorous behaviors in the workplace than those individuals who did not rate themselves as humorous.

Second, employees who rated themselves as using large amounts of humor in their daily interactions with others believed that managers could use a wider array of humor strategies in the workplace than those individuals who did not rate themselves as humorous.

Third, employees’ perceptions of their manager’s use of humor in her or his interactions with others was positively related to a subordinate’s liking of that manager.

Lastly, employees’ perceptions of their manager’s use of humor in her or his interactions with others was positively related to a subordinate’s perception of the effectiveness of that manager.

In essence, all four of this study’s hypotheses were supported.

Qualitative

Research generally divides methods into two different epistemologies, or ways of knowing: social-scientific and humanistic. We’ve briefly discussed the first approach, social-science, in the previous section and we’re going to explore the nature of this humanistic way of knowing, which is generally referred to as qualitative research.Wrench, J. S., Thomas-Maddox, C., Richmond, V. P., & McCroskey, J. C. (2008). Quantitative research methods for communication: A hands-on approach . New York: Oxford. Qualitative research is “It is at best an umbrella term covering an array of interpretive techniques which seek to describe, decode, translate, and otherwise come to terms with the meaning, not the frequency, of certain more or less naturally occurring phenomena in the social world.”Van Maanen, J. (1979). Reclaiming qualitative methods for organizational research: A preface. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24 , 520–526, pg. 520. Because of the variety of different approaches available under the larger title “qualitative,” researchers often break discuss two different qualitative lines of inquiry: interpretive and critical.Fink, E. J., & Gantz, W. (1996). A content analysis of three mass communication research traditions: Social science, interpretive studies, and critical analysis. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 73 , 114–134. We’ll explore each of these in the rest of this section.

Interpretive

Interpretive research is not an easy idea to nail down, so any discussion of what interpretive research is must start by clearly distinguishing this approach from the social scientific one. According to Amedeo P. Giorgi, the social-scientific (often referred to as positivistic research by qualitative researchers) method can be broken into six general parts:

• Reductionistic, the goal is to reduce phenomena into operational definitions for easy of study;
• Deterministic, the belief that outcomes and phenomena are the result of causes that can be duplicated;
• Predictive, the general goal of scientific research is to predict behavior;
• Observer independent, researchers attempt to be as objective as possible and avoid influencing the data;
• Empirical, only data that can be observed or obtained from participants is worthy of analysis;
• Repeatable, research results should be replicated by other researchers; and
• Quantitative, all phenomena should be numerically measured.Giorgi, A. (1971). Phenomenology and experimental psychology, In A. Giorgi, W. F. Fischer, & R. Von Echartsberg (Eds.), Duquesne studies in phenomenological psychology (vol. 1, part 1). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.

Fundamentally, Giorgi believed that social-scientific researchers are asking fundamentally wrong questions. Instead of asking how a phenomena should be measured, Giorgi believed that researchers should ask, “What do the phenomena mean?”Giorgi, A. (1971). Phenomenology and experimental psychology, In A. Giorgi, W. F. Fischer, & R. Von Echartsberg (Eds.), Duquesne studies in phenomenological psychology (vol. 1, part 1). Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, pg. 21. Put a different way, interpretive research focuses on “how people communicate in their own natural environments, when they are guided by their own personal objectives, how they give meaning to their communication, especially when they are using communication for those pragmatic objectives that determine and control day-to-day existence.”Chesebro, J. W., & Borisoff, D. J. (2008). Interpretive research. In J. S. Wrench, C. Thomas-Maddox, V. P. Richmond, and J. C. McCroskey (Eds.), Quantitative research methods for communication: A hands-on approach (pp. 449–486). New York, NY: Oxford, pg. 451. Let’s break this definition down into its functional parts.

Communicating in Natural Environments

The first major goal of interpretive research is the desire to see how people communicate in their natural environments. By natural environment, interpretive researchers do not want to view people engaging in communication within a laboratory setting. Instead, interpretivists want to observe people going about their daily communicative routines with their coworkers in a fashion that resembles as normal a communication experience as humanly possible.Yanow, D., & Ybema, S. (2009). Interpretivism in organizational research: On elephants and blind researchers. In D. A. Buchannan & A. Bryman (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational research methods (pp. 39–60). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Interpretivists believe that communication that in one’s natural environment will be unforced and will resemble how people actually communicate instead of how they perceive their communication to be, which is an inherent problem with some social-scientific research (especially surveys).

Guided by Personal Objectives

Second, interpretivists want to observe participants as they go about their daily lives doing what they normally would do and not alter their behavior for the researcher(s). One of the inherent differences between social-scientific research and interpretivistic research is that interpretivists do not go into the research encounter expecting to “see” anything specific. Social-scientists set specific hypotheses, determine how to test those hypotheses, and test the hypotheses. By this purpose, social-scientists go into a research encounter expecting to “see” something very specific. Interpretivists, on the other hand, go into a research encounter to observe and learn and ultimately see what their participants show them. Instead of going in with a pre-set agenda, interpretivists watch how people behave when the participants are guided by their own personal objectives and not those of the researcher.

People Giving Meaning to their Own Communication

Lastly, interpretivists are interested in how people understand their own communicative behavior and give meaning to their own communicative behavior. Humans generally behave and communicate for a variety of reasons, and thus understand and prescribe a variety of meanings to their communication. An interpretivist is less concerned with attaching some kind of meaning to a researcher participant than they are with understanding how that research participant views her or his own communicative behavior. As an outsider looking in, we can ascribe all kinds of incorrect attributions to an individual’s communicative behavior. It’s only when we get inside a communicative interaction from the participant’s point-of-view, that we can truly begin to understand why someone is communicating a specific manner and how that communication is important to her or him. In the organizational environment, maybe a researcher is interested in understanding how people view the balance between their work lives and their personal lives. It’s only after someone engages with people that a researcher can start to develop a better idea of how people view this phenomenon of work-life balance answering the question, “what does this phenomena mean?” Renee Cowan and Mary F. Hoffman did just this in their study examining how people view their work and personal lives in the accompanying sidebar.

For more information on conducting interpretive research, we recommend reading Lindlof and Taylor’s (2002)Lindlof, T. R., & Taylor, B. C. (2002). Qualitative communication research methods (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. book on interpretive research methods in communication.

Example of Interpretive/Qualitative Research

The Flexible Organization: How Contemporary Employees Construct the Work/Life Border

By Renee Cowan and Mary F. Hoffman (2007)Cowan, R., & Hoffman, M. F. (2007). The flexible organization: How contemporary employees construct the work/life border. Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 8 , 37–44.

In this study, the researchers set out to qualitatively examine how individuals manage their work lives and their personal lives with each other. Specifically, the researcher had one overarching research question in this study:

RQ1: How do employees of today define the terms flexibility and permeability in regard to work/life balance?

The researchers recruited 30 participants. All of the participants had to be at least 18 years of age and currently employed in an organization that provided benefits (e.g., retirement, stock options, health care, etc.). 99 percent of the sample were permanent employees, 44 percent were female and 56 percent were male. 70 percent of the sample was married and 76 percent of the sample had children.

All of the participants agreed to take part in an interview about their “perceptions and definitions of work/life balance, what balancing work/life issues meant and looked like in their lives, what their company did that made it easy or difficult to balance work/life issues, and any stories they had heard about people using work/life benefits in their company” (p. 39). Ultimately, the 30 interviews generated 112 single-spaced pages of transcribed text for analysis.

Overall, the researchers found that the terms “flexibility” and “permeability” were used interchangeably by the participants. Furthermore, these issues can be broken into four distinct themes: time, space, evaluation, and compensation.

Time Flexibility. Employees wanted to have flexibility in how their time was calculated by the organizations. This included flex time issues (instead of coming in at 8 and leaving at 4, you could come in at 10 and leave at 6), and the possibility of examining time over a larger period (not always counting up 40 hours within one work week, but averaged over the entire year).

Space Flexibility. Employees saw space issues as a two prong construct: physical space and mental space. Physical space flexibility is the notion that individuals should have the ability to telecommute and work from home when capable. Mental space is the notion that individuals should be allowed to think about work at home and think about home at work.

Evaluation Flexibility. Employees believed that the evaluation of one’s work should be based on the quality of the work itself and not on the amount of time an individual spends in the office doing the work.

Compensation Flexibility. Employees believed that their quality work should receive extra financial compensation (bonuses, increase in pay, etc.) or time compensation (increased number of vacation days, telecommuting options, etc.).

Traditional social-scientific research wants to make hypotheses and test them interpretive research wants to study how people communicate in a natural environment and understand that communication. Critical research is less interested with explaining or understanding organizational communication than it is with “analyzing values and judging, or criticizing, them.”Fink, E. J., & Gantz, W. (1996). A content analysis of three mass communication research traditions: Social science, interpretive studies, and critical analysis. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 73 , 114–134, pg. 115. As the word “critical” entails, critical research is about seeing how society, or for our purposes an organization, exists in a world of power imbalances. Within most groups there are those with power and those without power. Critical researchers strongly believe that those with power purposefully prevent those without from achieving equality. As such, “critical scholarship tends to stand on the side of ‘weaker’ parties when studying or commenting upon relations of dominance.”Alvesson, M., & Ashcraft, K. L. (2009) Critical methodology in management and organization research. In D. A. Buchannan & A. Bryman (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational research methods (pp. 61–77). Los Angeles, CA: Sage, pg. 61. According to Mats Alvesson and Karen L. Ashcroft, critical theory entails four specific parts:

• The critical questioning of ideologies, institutions, interests, and identities (what might be called ‘the 4 I’s’) deemed dominate, in some way harmful, and/or unchallenged.
• Through some form of denaturalization and/or rearticulation.
• With the aim of inspiring social reform in the presumed interest of the less-privileged and/or majority—particularly resistance to ‘the 4 I’s’ that tend to fix people into unreflectively receiving and reproducing limited ideas, selves, motives, and practices.
• While also maintaining at least some degree of recognition that ‘real’ (i.e., lived and living) conditions constrain choice and action in the contemporary organizational world. Alvesson, M., & Ashcraft, K. L. (2009) Critical methodology in management and organization research. In D. A. Buchannan & A. Bryman (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational research methods (pp. 61–77). Los Angeles, CA: Sage, pg. 63.

Questioning the 4 I’s

The first part of critical theory identified by Alvesson and Ashcroft is the idea that critical theory helps people question ideologies, institutions, interests, and identities that appear dominant and are in some way problematic.Alvesson, M., & Ashcraft, K. L. (2009) Critical methodology in management and organization research. In D. A. Buchannan & A. Bryman (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational research methods (pp. 61–77). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Let’s look at these in turn. First, we have ideologiesThe beliefs, myths, and doctrines that guide an individual, group, or organization., which are the beliefs, myths, and doctrines that guide an individual, group, or organization. From the critical theorists perspective, they want to examine whether or not these ideologies that have been developed within an organization are fundamentally harmful (especially to workers). Furthermore, critical theorists question if specific ideologies have are unchallenged. By unchallenged, we mask whether or not a specific ideology is allowed to be pervasive and no questions the ideology or where it came from and how it stays. Often organizational leaders create ideologies that are inherently problematic for workers. If workers never question these ideologies, they’ll stay in place for years or decades without ever being challenged. Critical theorists attempt to look at a variety of ideologies that exist (and get communicated) within an organization in an attempt to shed the light on how ideologies function to keep workers subjugated by management.

Second, critical theorists examine various institutions that are dominant in society and examine them to see if they are harmful for the general worker. In fact, it’s this category of critical examination that really focuses its attention specifically on how modern organizations are institutions that attempt to create structures that keep workers subjugated. We’ll talk more about this idea in Chapter 4.

Third, critical theorists examine various interests to see if they are harmful to workers and remain unchallenged. By interestsWhether or not an individual (or group of individuals) has a clear advantage or advancement of a personal or group agenda that is not necessarily clearly articulated to everyone within an organization., we are specifically referring to whether or not an individual (or group of individuals) has a clear advantage or advancement of a personal or group agenda that is not necessarily clearly articulated to everyone within an organization. One of the more interesting and seedy aspects of modern organizational life is the issue of unarticulated or hidden interests that people (especially those in leadership positions) may have. Critical theorists attempt to seek out these interests and bring them to the light of day in an effort to show workers how they are being manipulated to help people in power achieve these interests. Furthermore, often the interests of those with power are not the same as those without the power.

Lastly, critical researchers attempt to examine various identities that could be harmful or under-challenged. For critical purposes, identityThe state of being or believing that you are the same person or thing described or claimed by those with power. refers to the state of being or believing that you are the same person or thing described or claimed by those with power. Under this premise, workers are often labeled with specific identities that are designed to subjugate the workers. For example, someone may be told that if he or she was a “good worker” then he or she wouldn’t question having to put in 50 of 60 hours a week at a job. Inherent in this use of “good worker” is often the veiled threat that bad workers get fired and good workers have prospects at getting promoted. As such, workers often adopt either the good or bad worker identity without ever realizing that it is a tool of managerial control.

Denaturalization and/or Rearticulation

After identifying relevant ideologies, institutions, interests, and identities, a critical researcher must “articulate an alternative position that challenges conventional representations and critically probes (rather than taking at face value) the reported views and experiences of research participants.”Alvesson, M., & Ashcraft, K. L. (2009) Critical methodology in management and organization research. In D. A. Buchannan & A. Bryman (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational research methods (pp. 61–77). Los Angeles, CA: Sage, pg. 64. In essence, the critical theorist attempts to show individuals that the specific ideologies, institutions, interests, and identities that they believe are steadfast and unchangeable, are in fact creations of people in power and can be altered. Part of this process involves the critical theorists clearly articulating a new vision for ideologies, institutions, interests, and identities that are more egalitarian or worker friendly.

Inspiring Social Reform

Further the notion of rearticulating ideologies, institutions, interests, and identities is taking those changes to a more societal level. The goal of a critical theorist is to not just notice problems that exist in society but to help people change the power imbalances that exist. Part of this process is helping people see new ideas, selves, motives, and practices. In the organizational context, the goal is to emancipate workers or “break away from structures and ideologies that tend to constrain forms of consciousness into prespecified routes that stifle imagination.”Alvesson, M., & Ashcraft, K. L. (2009) Critical methodology in management and organization research. In D. A. Buchannan & A. Bryman (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational research methods (pp. 61–77). Los Angeles, CA: Sage, pg. 64.

Constraining Choice and Action

While it would be wonderful if modern organizations could be utopian enterprises where everyone was truly equal, critical theorists must also realize that overly revolutionary or radical perspectives on organizing and the modern workplace may not be realistic or helpful.Alvesson, M., & Ashcraft, K. L. (2009) Critical methodology in management and organization research. In D. A. Buchannan & A. Bryman (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational research methods (pp. 61–77). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Instead, critical theorists should focus the real lives and experiences that people in modern organizations have. This isn’t to say that critical theorists must always be strictly “realistic,” but rather critical scholarship “seeks to acknowledge how realizing ideals such as class, gender, race, and ecological justice may have drastic consequences for the material functioning of organizations alongside effects on member subjectivities.”Alvesson, M., & Ashcraft, K. L. (2009) Critical methodology in management and organization research. In D. A. Buchannan & A. Bryman (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational research methods (pp. 61–77). Los Angeles, CA: Sage, pg. 65.

Overall, critical theory provides a very interesting and specific proactive perspective on organizational communication scholarship. For more information on conducting rhetorical/critical research, we recommend reading either Foss’ (2004)Foss, S. K. (2004). Rhetorical criticism: Exploration & practice (3rd ed.). Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland. or Swartz (1996)Swartz, O. (1996). Conducting socially responsible research: Critical theory, neo-pragmatism, and rhetorical inquiry . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. books on rhetorical/critical research methods in communication.

Example of Rhetorical/Critical Scientific Research

The Communicational Basis of the Organizational Text as Macroactor:

A Case Study of Multilevel Marketing Discourse

By Walter J. Carl (2005)Carl, W. J. (2005). The communicational basis of the organizational text as macroactor: A case study of multilevel marketing discourse. Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 6 , 21–29.

In this study, Carl wanted to examine a macroactor (an individual who is empowered to speak on behalf of a large number of people). In this specific analysis, the macroactor was a letter to the editor in Forbes magazine by Ken McDonald the managing director of Quixtar, Inc. Prior to this letter, Karen J. Bannan had written an article in Forbes magazine titled “Amway.com” discussing how the notorious multi-level marketing firm Amway was the sister company of Quixtar along with the perils of multi-level marketing. McDonald’s letter in response to the Bannan letter to the editor took issue with the article because it “’did not provide an accurate picture of the company,’ citing an inaccurate understanding of the corporate relationship among Amway, Quixtar, and Alticor, unfair representations of Quixtar business meetings as ‘cult-like,’ and only publishing accounts from dissatisfied ‘Independent Business Owners’” (p. 23).

The purpose of Carl’s analysis of McDonald’s letter was to demonstrate that the letter is a clear piece of organizational rhetoric. While the organization attempts to hide its actions in the voice of a single individual speaking out, the very act of this letter is clearly a message with backing from the institution itself. To aid in the development of his argument, McDonald examined four major issues “(1) the features of the text that make it a letter to the editor and not, for example, a press release or news story or some other kind of text [company logo, date, salutation, name of author, author identity, etc].; (2) the issue of authorship and its authorizing function [the signature on the letter with the company’s logo makes the letter act as a function of the organization itself]; (3) the presuppositions that, thought absent, are necessary for the text to ‘make sense’ to its audience [the primary presupposition is that the reporter did nto provide a fair, accurate, and objective account of Quixtar]; and (4) how the text is constructed to orient to these presuppositions and to build up a rhetorical case imputing motive to Forbes magazine [the letter systematically explains why Quixtar felt the need to respond]” (pp. 23–24).

Comparing the Three Types

Now that we’ve explained how each of the three methodological traditions approaches organizational communication, let’s see how the three compare when we put them side-by-side. Table \(PageIndex{1}\) provides an explanation for how the three methodological approaches differ in their understanding and approach to organizational communication.

Source: Wrench, J. S. (in press). Communicating within the modern workplace: Challenges and prospects. In J. S. Wrench (Ed.), Workplace communication for the 21st century: Tools and strategies that impact the bottom line: Vol. 1. Internal workplace communication . Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.

At this point, you may be wondering about the state of organizational communication as a field today. Today there are still a wide range of scholars investigating organizational communication from a social-scientific, interpretive, and critical vantage point. In a 2007 article by Patric Spence and Colin Baker, the researchers set out to examine what types of methodologies modern organizational communication scholars were using. Spence, Patric, R., & Baker, C. R. (2007). State of the method: An examination of level of analysis, methodology, representation and setting in current organizational communication research. Journal of the Northwest Communication Association, 36 , 111–124. Using a period from 1998 to 2004, the researchers located 153 articles discussing organizational communication in major communication journals published by regional, national, and international communication associations. Figure 1.4 demonstrates the basic findings from this study.

Source: Patric Spence & C. R. Baker, “State of the Method: An Examination of Level of Analysis, Methodology, Representation and Setting in Current Organizational Communication Research,” Journal of the Northwest Communication Association 36 (2007): 111-124.

Key Takeaways

• The social scientific approach to organizational communication is based on the notion that researchers start by desiring to test a specific theoretical idea about organizational communication, which leads to specific hypotheses being made, data is the gathered and interpreted, and lastly the data leads to further generalizations that help to refine the original theory. Social scientists typically conduct research using surveys, experiments, or content analysis that can be analyzed using statistical reasoning.
• Create an experiment testing the impact that verbal, nonverbal, or mediated messages have on ensuring employee understanding about a new organizational policy.

• Tools and Resources
• Customer Services
• Communication and Culture
• Communication and Social Change
• Communication and Technology
• Communication Theory
• Critical/Cultural Studies
• Gender (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies)
• Health and Risk Communication
• Intergroup Communication
• International/Global Communication
• Interpersonal Communication
• Journalism Studies
• Language and Social Interaction
• Mass Communication
• Media and Communication Policy
• Organizational Communication
• Political Communication
• Rhetorical Theory
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

Methods for intercultural communication research.

• John Oetzel , John Oetzel Waikato Management School, The University of Waikato
• Saumya Pant Saumya Pant Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA)
•  and  Nagesh Rao Nagesh Rao Partner, Siya Consulting
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.202
• Published online: 09 May 2016

Research on intercultural communication is conducted using primarily three different methodological approaches: social scientific, interpretive, and critical. Each of these approaches reflects different philosophical assumptions about the world and how we come to know it. Social scientific methods often involve quantitative data collection and research approaches such as surveys and experiments. From this perspective, intercultural communication is seen as patterns of interaction, and we seek to explain and understand these patterns through clear measurement and identification of key independent variables. Interpretive methods often involve qualitative data collection and research approaches such as interviews and ethnographic observation. From this perspective, intercultural communication and meaning is created through interaction, and we seek to understand these meanings by exploring the perspectives of people who participate as members of cultural communities. Critical methods often involve qualitative data collection and research approaches such as interviews and textual critique. From this perspective, intercultural communication involves inequalities that can be attributed to power and distortions created from (mis)use of this power. Critical scholars seek to unmask domination and inequality. Most scholars utilize one of these primary approaches given the consistency with their world views, theories, and research training. However, there are creative possibilities for combining these approaches that have potential for fuller understanding of intercultural communication.

• social science methods
• interpretive methods
• critical methods
• quantitative
• qualitative
• intercultural communication

Introduction

Our worldview shapes what is “interesting” to a particular audience, what is considered a problem, what problem is interesting to study, and whether the goal of studying a problem is to analyze the problem, to analyze and solve the problem, or to analyze, solve, and implement the solution. Our worldview defines if an issue is a problem or not and if we need to come up with a solution. For example, behaviors associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are seen as a problem in the United States, and there are medications to solve the problem. In India, the same set of behaviors among children is seen as what children tend to do, as normal and not as a problem.

Our worldview not only shapes what we see as an interesting problem to study but also the methodology we use to study the problem. The purpose of this article is to describe, and explore integration of, the three main methodological perspectives in studying intercultural communication issues: social scientific, interpretive, and critical. First, the ontological, epistemological, and axiological assumptions underlying each of these methodological perspectives are explored. Then, for each methodological perspective, common methods and types of data collected and some exemplars are identified. Finally, we offer traditional integration of the three approaches and also alternate methodological perspectives to study intercultural issues from a non-Western lens.

Ontology, Epistemology, and Axiology

Ontology is the study of the researcher’s orientation to reality. In the social scientific perspective, the researcher views the world objectively in that there is a world outside of us that can be systematically studied. Researchers from this perspective use a deductive approach and are keen to explain and predict phenomena. Social scientific ontology provides clarity and direction due to its rigorous questioning of plausibility and reduction of subjectivity. In contrast and as a reaction to the social scientific perspective, interpretive researchers argue that the observer and the observed are subjective and the most important lessons are in how they co-create meaning. If the social scientists take a deterministic view of human behavior, interpretivists thrive in a person’s free will. Critical theorists focus particularly on social injustices and inequalities in life. Researchers in this area explore how social structures create power inequalities and injustices. Thus, they believe that power differences are at the base of social transactions (Scotland, 2012 ). Any ontological investigation for a critical theorist will thus have to help unearth these inequities.

Epistemology looks at how we come to know a chosen phenomenon and thus how researchers study this phenomenon. Social scientists, interested in assessing objective reality (or at least reduced subjectivity), use a scientific method to collect empirical evidence. They focus particularly on causal relationships between phenomena and generally use quantitative approaches to collect data. The basis of their assessment and data collection is the premise that objects have an existence independent of the knower (Cohen et al., 2007 ). Interpretivists, who are interested in situational and contextual meaning, generally use qualitative methods to assess participants’ sense of reality. They are not exploring one truth, but the play of multiple truths simultaneously. They do so by studying individual interactions and the historical and cultural contexts in which these individuals interact. Critical researchers use a variety of qualitative methods to explore, for example, how language is used to create power imbalances or how mass media is used to avoid critical thinking. Critical scholars are particularly sensitive to the overdependence on empirical and social scientific evidence. They do so as critical investigations are premised on the fact that social/positional power determines what is considered knowledge (Cohen et al., 2007 ).

Axiology explores the values that guide a researcher’s questions, the methods used to collect and analyze data, the interpretation of the data, and the implications of the findings. Social scientists study phenomena to find the truth, which, in turn, guides specific types of action. They are focused on exploring what is referred to as the value axiom, or how much a phenomenon being studied fulfills the requirements of the concept to which it belongs (Kelleher, 2013 ). Both interpretivists and critical theorists are interested in describing what exists, how the participants in the community interpret phenomena, with critical theorists particularly interested in reducing class imbalances and other forms of oppression. Interpretivists are axiologically determined to encourage the fact that observations drawn can always be disagreed upon and reopened to interpretation. With respect to control, social scientists wish to control as many variables as possible, narrowing down the causal pattern to the variables under study. Interpretivists seek active participation in the study to understand how they view reality. Critical theorists are particularly aware of the community members’ need to take control of their own situations. With this brief overview in mind, we now explain the methodological approaches of the social scientific, interpretive, and critical perspectives; the types of data collected; some exemplars for each perspective; and some general concerns about each of the methods.

Social Science Methods

Social science research methods address questions related to both cross-cultural and intercultural communication. Much of the foundational work on intercultural communication research is based on comparisons of two or more cultures. Both forms of communication research try to enhance the comprehension of communication that are mediated by and through cultural context (Sponcil & Gitimu, 2010 ). These comparisons helped to identify how the normative and subjective aspects of culture vary across cultures and presumably provided information about what to expect when interacting with members from different cultures. This type of research is classified as cross-cultural. In contrast, intercultural communication is the exchange of messages between people from different cultural groups (Gudykunst, 2003a ). Regardless of the interest in cross-cultural or intercultural communication, the social scientific perspective seeks to understand and predict the effect of culture on communication variables and the subsequent effect of communication on various outcomes. Thus, the methods of study are similar. This section reviews the three most prominent social scientific methods providing an example of each. Additionally, the types of data generated and methodological concerns are discussed.

There are three methods used by most social scientific researchers to study cross-cultural and intercultural research: (a) survey questionnaire, (b) experimental design, and (c) content analysis. The survey questionnaire is by far the most frequently used research method (e.g., Oetzel & Ting-Toomey, 2003 ; Rao, Singhal, Ren, & Zhang, 2001 ). It is typically a self-administered and self-report instrument that is distributed to large samples in multiple cultures. Most cross-cultural comparisons utilize self-report questionnaires because of the difficulty of collecting data from large samples in multiple cultures using other methods. Finally, self-report questionnaires are relatively easy to construct. Numerous cross-culturally valid scales exist, and methodological difficulties have been clearly identified (Gudykunst, 2003b ). While not easy to overcome, methodological difficulties of survey questionnaires are manageable (see below for more detail). Survey questionnaires provide detailed description of cultural associations of communication behavior and outcomes and allow for comparisons to other cultures.

Hanasono, Chen, and Wilson’s ( 2014 ) study of perceived discrimination, social support, and coping among racial minority university students is an example of survey research. The authors surveyed 345 students, half international students and half U.S. students, about their acculturation, experiences with discrimination, support, and coping needs. They found that the level of acculturation helped to explain students’ need for support and how they coped with discrimination.

Experimental designs are highly regarded social scientific research because of the control of variables, which enables causal relationships to be examined. Culture is not a variable that lends itself well to experimental manipulation, and thus experimental designs are relatively rare in this line of research. Rather than experimental controlling culture, researchers typically use quasi-experimental designs manipulating the composition of groups or dyads to be intra- or intercultural (e.g., Cai, Wilson, & Drake, 2000 ; Oetzel, 1998 ). These experiments collect a combination of self-report information (e.g., cultural and individual variables) as well as videotaped interaction. Additionally, some researchers have used experimental conditions on survey questionnaires (e.g., Han & Cai, 2010 ). These studies utilize stimulus variables (e.g., contextual features) that ask participants to respond to specific situations.

Brinson and Stohl’s ( 2012 ) study of media framing on attitudes toward Muslims, civil liberties, and counterterrorism policies is an example of experimental design. They used a Solomon four-group design involving 371 U.S. adults to compare the media framing of “domestic homegrown” and “international” terrorism of the London bombings in 2005 . The authors used video segments from actual broadcasts on July 7, 2005 , and edited them together to create an approximately 10-minute video for each of the two conditions. The authors found that media frames of homegrown terrorism produced greater fear than the international framing. Fear resulted in greater support for restricting civil liberties of Muslims and, under certain conditions, general negative feelings toward Muslims.

A third method used in social scientific research is content analysis of media sources. This method is utilized to identify patterns prevalent in the media (e.g., Dixon & Azocar, 2006 ; Klein & Shiffman, 2006 ). Additionally, some researchers survey participants for their reactions about media patterns. Content analysis, while time consuming, is convenient and inexpensive since the only access needed is a recording or transcript of the artifact of study. It involves the use of a coding scheme to provide an “objective” description of the media and thus insights into cultural values and behaviors. The categorizations are then compared across cultures. When these categorizations are compared, it is done on the basis of frames, which are defined as a “schema of interpretation, collection of anecdotes, and stereotypes” (Cissel, 2014 , p. 67). Once these frames are determined, the way in which individuals deal with their realities within and across cultures can be studied.

An example of such content analysis was the study of the coverage of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan in two Belgian newspapers: Le Soir and De Standard (Perko et al., 2011 ). The time period of the study was from March 11, 2011, to May 11, 2011 . Every article was coded by two independent coders. The authors had begun their study with a question as to how the framing of the question of nuclear power would appear in the two Belgian newspapers. They arrived at the conclusion that the reporting was mostly neutral. Further, since the Fukushima nuclear accident was in a country quite remote, the articles did not frame the issue as an example of a possible threat to their own country from nuclear power plants.

Data Analysis and Methodological Concerns

Data from these three methods are quantified to allow for statistical analysis. All forms of data must be reduced to categories that are independent from one another (exhaustive and exclusive categories). These can include frequency counts of behaviors, sequence of behaviors, and self-report information on numerical scales. Data are then analyzed with statistical software to determine associations between cultural (independent) and communication (dependent) variables (outcomes are dependent variables with culture and/or communication as independent). The nature of analysis depends on the numerical measurement of the variables, but frequent tests include t -tests, analysis of variance, correlation, and regression. Additionally, complex modeling of dependent variables can be undertaken using, for example, structural equation modeling and hierarchical linear modeling. The key concern with the statistical tests is accounting for variance in the dependent variables. The more variance explained means the “more important” a cultural factor is for communication behavior. Because of the vast number of factors that explain human behavior, intercultural researchers believe that as little as 5–10% of variance explained is meaningful.

There are four concerns for data analysis in social scientific research: (a) reliability, (b) measurement validity, (c) internal validity, and (d) external validity. Reliability is reproducibility. For the aforementioned methods, two types of reliability are relevant. First, internal consistency of measures is usually measured with Cronbach’s alpha. Second, when completing content or interaction analysis, intercoder reliability (agreement between two or more coders) is important and measured with Cohen’s K or Scott’s pi (or the like). Reliability means a researcher has consistent measures, whereas validity focuses on accurate information.

Validity is a combination of measurement, internal, and external validity (depending on the goals in the study). Measurement validity focuses on the accuracy with which a scale (or coding scheme) is measuring what is supposed to be measured. Internal validity is the strength to which a researcher can conclude that the independent variable is associated with the dependent variable as hypothesized. Internal validity is established by eliminating rival explanations for statistical associations through statistical or experimental control of confounding (or nuisance) variables. External validity is the degree to which a study’s results can be generalized to the larger populations from which a sample was drawn. In intercultural research, researchers are more concerned with measurement and internal validity than external validity.

While these general methodological concerns are true for all social science research, there are also unique concerns with cross-cultural/intercultural communication research (Gudykunst, 2003b ; Levine, Park, & Kim, 2007 ). Gudykunst ( 2003b ) outlined a number of concerns with cross-cultural research, but chief among the methodological issues is establishing equivalence. In order to make cross-cultural comparisons (and have valid measures for intercultural research), researchers need to ensure that the constructs and measures are equivalent on five levels. First, constructs must be functionally equivalent; that is, the construct must work the same way in the cultures under study. Second, constructs must be conceptually equivalent; that is, the construct must have the same meaning within the cognitive system of the members of cultures being examined. Third, linguistic equivalence for constructs refers having language that is equivalent. Linguistic equivalence is often established through translating and backtranslating of measures. Fourth, metric equivalence is established by ensuring that participants in different cultures do not respond to numerical scales in different ways (e.g., one cultural group may not use the extreme scores in a scale). Finally, researchers need to take care and establish that there is sample equivalence in the two cultural groups. The samples need to be comparable (e.g., similar age, gender, education, etc.). Fletcher and colleagues ( 2014 ) explore the steps needed to statistically ensure equivalence in measurement across multiple cultures. Establishing equivalence on these issues helps to eliminate rival explanations and further ensures that differences found are due to cultural differences. In addition to such methodological rigor, scholars from other orientations argue that it is also imperative for the researcher to be reflexive and aware of theoretical and methodological centeredness that can come from such systematic rigor (Asante, Miike, & Yin, 2008 ).

Interpretive Methods

Interpretive scholars are interested in unearthing multiple simultaneous truths, believe in a person’s free will, acknowledge that the known and the knower cannot be separated, and believe that interpretation is based on one’s persuasive abilities. Striving for meaning, interpretive scholars generally use a variety of qualitative methods to study specific intercultural phenomena. As a result of this, interpretivists examine theoretical limits by comparing results from multiple forms of research about the same phenomenon (Szabo, 2007 ). For this article, we focus on ethnography of communication and interpretive interviews as these are two common approaches. We then discuss the general methodological issues in collecting and analyzing interpretive data.

Ethnography of communication (EOC) is a method to study the relationship between language and culture through extensive field experience. The concept of the ethnography of communication was developed by Dell Hymes (Hall, 2002 ). It can be defined as the discovery and explication of the rules for contextually appropriate behavior in a community or group or what the individual needs to know to be a functional member of the community. EOC applies ethnographic methods to understand the communication patterns of a speech community (Philipsen, 1975 ). A speech community is a group of speakers who share common speech codes and use these codes based on a specific situation. From the presence or absence of certain speech codes, one can interpret the culture of a community with its shared values, beliefs, and attitudes. In his classic study, Philipsen ( 1975 ) explored the communication patterns of white males in a predominantly blue-collar neighborhood called “Teamsterville” in South Chicago. Philipsen lived in the community for several years and worked and interacted as a member of the community while also conducting his research. Results from this study explained when talk was appropriate, at what levels, and when action was more appropriate than talk. When two men were of similar backgrounds, of more or less equal status, and were close friends, they could talk to each other. There was less talk when the relationship was asymmetrical (e.g., father–son and husband–wife). The least amount of talk occurred when a “Teamsterville” was responding to an insult or trying to assert his power over someone. It is in these instances that action was more appropriate than words. If a man did talk during this interaction, he was seen as not masculine enough. Another interesting study was conducted by Radford et al. ( 2011 ). The study focused on applying EOC to the case of virtual reference context. Here, the researchers focused on the interactions that constitute the context in which the participants make verbal statements and coordinate them with other statements in order to closely analyze the relational barriers and relational facilitators. The interactions spanned a 23-month time period ( July 2004–May 2006 ), and the transcripts of 746 live chats of this period were studied. The researchers were able to conclude from their study that when professional librarians chatted, they were more formal, less free with accepted online abbreviations, whereas students were more comfortable with using abbreviations and other turns of phrases. One of the conclusions the researchers drew was that if the librarians used more informal language they would appear more friendly and approachable.

Interpretive interviews are a second common approach. The purpose of the interpretive interview is to uncover insider meanings and understandings from the perspective of the participants (Denzin, 2001 ). According to Denzin ( 2001 ), the characteristic of interpretive interviews is that they allow us to understand the society in which we live, which is referred to as an interview society. Typically, these interviews are one-on-one and face-to-face interviews designed to elicit in-depth information. The interviews can focus on narratives, topics, perspectives, and opinions and often are conducted in a semi-structured manner (although unstructured interviews are sometimes conducted). One of the reasons why the semi-structured and/or narrative form is used is to allow for deeper and embedded meanings that might elude a more inquiry-based approach. An example of interpretive interviews is Baig, Ting-Toomey, and Dorjee’s ( 2014 ) study of meaning construction of the South Asian Indian term izzat (face) in intergenerational contexts. The authors interviewed six younger (aged 31–40) and six older (aged 55–72) South Asian Indian American women about face concerns in their intergenerational family communication situations. The authors found that family izzat is of primary importance in these contexts and that the motif of respect is central to the meaning of izzat . They also identified differences in the younger and older facework strategies.

The primary focus of analyzing interpretive research data is rather nicely summarized by Carbaugh ( 2007 ):

It is important to emphasize the interpretive task before the analyst: while engaging in a communication practice, an analyst seeks to understand what range of meanings is active in that practice, when it is getting done. The analyst sets out to interpret this practice, what is being presumed by participants for it to be what it is, that is, to understand the meta-cultural commentary imminent in it. What all does this practice have to say? (p. 174)

Thus, the interpretive scholar analyzes data in order to describe and interpret.

Carbaugh ( 2007 ) identified two concerns in analyzing interpretive data—the framework used to analyze the semantic content of cultural discourse and the vocabulary used to formulate these contents. A researcher’s analysis of the content of the communication exchange also includes a meta-analysis of the subject, the object, the context, the history, and the stories revolving around the exchange. Carbaugh ( 2007 ) noted that “these cultural meanings—about personhood, relationships, action, emotion, and dwelling, respectively—are formulated in cultural discourse analyses as radiants of cultural meaning” (p. 174). These radiants of cultural meanings focus on personhood and identity, relating and relationships, meanings about acting, action and practice, meanings about emotions and feelings, and meanings about place or context.

Reliability and validity are explicated differently in interpretive research compared to social science research. If social scientific scholars are interested in consistency for reliability, interpretive scholars see reliability as the quality of the information obtained; does the data give us a richer, clearer understanding of the phenomena (Golafshani, 2003 )? Lincoln and Guba ( 1985 ) used the term “dependability” in place of reliability to assess the quality of a research project. For validity, it is important to assess the quality based on the specific paradigm used to conduct the qualitative research. Further, while many scholars argue that validity is not a critical concept for interpretive research, Lincoln and Guba ( 1985 ) explained that the “trustworthiness” of the data is similar to validity in social science research. Do the community of scholars conducting interpretive research view the data as meaningful, useful, and following the research protocols appropriately?

After having considered these general considerations, we now consider three specific data analysis approaches using in interpretive intercultural communication research including grounded theory, constant comparative analysis, and thematic analysis. Other data analytic approaches for data analysis include narrative analysis, conversational analysis, EOC, and interpretive phenomenological analysis. Grounded theory is a continuum of practices that are inductive and iterative aimed at recognizing categories and concepts in texts in order to integrate them to formal theoretical models (Corbin & Strauss, 2008 ). They begin with the observations, experiences, and stories, and through a process of coding, analysts identify a theoretical model to fit the data. Another important approach that interpretive scholars use is that of constant comparative analysis (CCA). CCA has often been used as a part of grounded theory, but it is now being used separately to analyze cross-cultural and intercultural communication. CCA is used to balance the etic perspective (participant as outsider) with the emic perspective (participant as insider) to ensure balance between cultural readings and theoretical frameworks. CCA ensures that all data in the relevant set are compared with all other data in the same set to make sure that no data are dismissed on thematic grounds (O’Connor et al., 2008 ). Further, CCA tries to accommodate the most relevant theories though they may appear disparate. A final prominent approach is thematic analysis. Thematic analysis is a flexible and yet rigorous approach of identifying and analyzing patterns or themes of meaning from data. Braun and Clarke ( 2006 ) identify a six-step process for conducting thematic analysis.

Critical Methods

From the critical perspective, relationships between cultural groups are often characterized by dominance and resistance. Communication between groups is based on certain understanding of culture and ethnicity that is fixed, reified, and essentialized and is informed by certain cultural assumptions that tend to be rooted in Euro-American traditions and worldviews (Asante et al., 2008 ). Hermans and Kempen ( 1998 ) argued that dominant approaches to knowledge favor static conceptualizations of culture. It is the creation of these static categories in which the Western understanding of the rest of the world dominates the intercultural relations that results in the reification of culturally homogeneous “ethnic” and racial groups. Consequently, this orientation undermines ways in which the self is understood in different cultures.

Critical and feminist scholars have consistently raised questions about power imbalance between researchers and researched in the field, suggesting that if researchers fail to explore how their personal, professional, and structural positions frame social scientific investigations, researchers may inevitably reproduce dominant gender, race, and class biases (Fairclough, 1995 ; Lazar, 2005 ). This section illustrates postcolonial ethnography and critical discourse analysis as approaches for intercultural discovery from the critical lens. Additionally, we introduce the role of self-reflexivity and consciousness-raising in the context of methodological concerns from the critical perspective.

A variety of approaches to critical issues exist such as critical race theory, decolonizing and indigenous methodologies, engaged methodologies, and performative methodologies (Willink, Gutierrez-Perez, Shukri, & Stein, 2014 ). In this article, we explore two prominent methods to illustrate some of the key elements to critical approaches given that we cannot cover all of them: postcolonial ethnography and critical discourse analysis.

Postcolonial ethnography seeks to disrupt and restructure established academic practices and modes of knowledge development and dissemination (Pathak, 2010 ). It attempt to do this by pointing out that gender roles, academic institutions, racial binaries, and other power structures are not apolitical. Postcolonial ethnography seeks to question the reification and valorization of supposed objective, scientific, and disembodied knowledge formations. Instead they seek to find alternate and embodied knowledge forms that accommodate the subjective and the personal.

While postcolonial and third world feminist scholars point to myriad ways in which relations of domination infuse ethnography, they also offer some guidance for negotiating power inherent in the practice of fieldwork (Spivak, 1999 ). This guidance takes the form of feminist geopolitics, which involves not only questioning hegemonic structures and dominant power structures but also offering alternatives to those structures (Koopman, 2011 ). Postcolonial scholars argue that the practice of ethnography among marginalized groups is historically tainted by ethnocentric biases in traditional ethnographic practice and research (Collins, 1990 ). Further, as philosopher Sandra Harding ( 1998 ) emphasized, ethnocentricism is structured into the institutional and academic practices so as to produce relationships oppressive to indigenous cultures in the so-called first world as well as third world countries.

An example of postcolonial inquiry is that of an ethnographic encounter (Irani et al., 2010 ). As a part of this inquiry, the company that the researchers studied, Ddesign, had to develop prototypical home water purification filters (Irani et al., 2010 ). The site of their study was various villages in India where they were supposed to study the feasibility of home water purifiers among the economically deprived households of the villages. The researchers later were told that when Ddesign first started their study, they had notions of privations in the lives of the householders. During their study, they found that the reality was quite different from their preconceptions. They realized that the definitions of privations that the company personnel had were not applicable to the people or to their living conditions. In fact, the researchers were told by the company personnel that the villagers had a very different worldview from that of the personnel. Thus, the researchers and the company personnel realized that one group’s notions of well-being and happiness were not necessarily applicable to another group no matter how universal those notions might be.

A second approach is critical discourse analysis (CDA). The creative combining of different approaches of lived experience, texts or discourses, and the social and political structures of power has resulted in popularity of cultural studies as a critical site for different modes of enquiry. According to Fairclough ( 1995 ), “many analysts are becoming increasingly hesitant in their use of basic theoretical concepts such as power, ideology, class, and even truth/falsity” (p. 15). In recent social scientific research, there has been a turn toward language or, more specifically, toward discourse. According to the feminist critical scholar Michelle M. Lazar ( 2005 ), discourse is a “site of struggle, where forces of social (re)production and contestation are played out” (p. 4). Critical discourse analysis is known for its overtly political stance and deals with all forms of social inequality and injustice. It includes the study of processes premised on the acts and discursive interactions of individuals and groups on which both the local and international contexts bring to bear their limits in the production of legislation, news making, and other such products of discursive interactions (van Dijk, 2008 ).

An example of critical discourse analysis in intercultural communication research is Chen, Simmons, and Kang’s ( 2015 ) study of identity construction of college students. The authors contextualize their study in an era of “postracial” utopia resulting during the Obama administration. They coin the term “Multicultural/multiracial Obama-ism (MMO)” to reflect this era and the prominent frame of colorblindness and multiculturalism prominent in media discourse. They examined 65 student essays about three cultural identities that stood out in a particular context. They analyzed the essays using CDA and found three frames that support this construction of postracial utopia: meritocracy, identity as self-chosen, and equality of opportunity despite privilege. They critique these frames and identify implications for teaching about intercultural communication and identity in the classroom.

Key methodological issues in the critical approach are the role of reflexivity, consciousness-raising, and limitations/possibilities of the reflective approach. A sociology-of-knowledge approach to critical scholarship reveals the role of reflexivity as a source of insight (Cook & Fonow, 1984 ). Reflexivity means the tendency of critical scholars to reflect upon, examine critically, and explore analytically the nature of the research process. To some extent, this tendency toward reflection is part of a tradition of attention to what Kaplan ( 1964 ) referred to as “logic-in-use” or the actual occurrences that arise in the inquiry, idealized and unreconstructed. Feminist and critical epistemology carries this tradition of reflection further by using it to gain insight into the assumptions about gender and intercultural relations underlying the conduct of inquiry. This is often accomplished by a thoroughgoing review of the research setting and its participants, including an exploration of the investigator’s reactions to doing the research.

One of the ways in which reflexivity is employed involves the concept of consciousness-raising, a process of self-awareness familiar to those involved with the women’s movement. Underlying much of the reflexivity found in feminist scholarship is the notion found in the earlier work of scholars such as W. E. B. DuBois ( 1969 ) and Paulo Freire ( 1970 ) that consciousness of oppression can lead to a creative insight that is generated by experiencing contradictions. Under ideal circumstances, transformation occurs, during which something hidden is revealed about the formerly taken-for-granted aspects of intercultural relations.

Consciousness-raising is employed in various ways by the critical scholar. The first way is through attention to the consciousness-raising effects of research on the researcher. Consciousness-raising is also involved in discussions of ways in which the research process influences subjects of the inquiry. Some authors view the research act as an explicit attempt to reduce the distance between the researcher and subjects (Collins, 1990 ). These approaches have provided critical and feminist researchers with a way to tap collective consciousness as a source of data and have provided participants in the research process with a way to confirm the experiences that have often been denied as real in the past. The applications of critical consciousness-raising and reflexivity can be seen in discourses surrounding terrorism and counterterrorism. This application can be seen in the study by Schmid ( 2013 ) about radicalization, deradicalization, and counter-radicalization. Schmid has observed that the usual causes such as poverty, social inequality, oppression, and neglect by the West have not been empirically tested satisfactorily, yet they are believed to be the primary causes of radicalization. The study provides three levels of analysis that can be used to understand how “radicals” are born and how that complex construction can be interrogated: the micro level, dealing with the individual level in terms of identity and self-reflection; the meso level, which deals with the socio-political milieu surrounding the individual; and the macro level, which refers to the larger society and governance that affect the individual. Further, these three levels of analysis can also be used to see how the continuum from radical to political undesirable and terrorist can be studied.

Finally, there are limitations and possibilities of reflective practice. Critical researchers use self-reflection about power as a tool to deepen ethnographic analysis and to highlight the dilemmas in fieldwork. The call for reflective practice has also been informed by critiques of postcolonial theorists who argue for self-reflexive understanding of the epistemological investments that shape the politics of method (Mohanty, 1991 ). Cultural studies scholars have also questioned the call to reflective practice, arguing that taken to the extreme, “constant reflexivity” can make “social interaction extremely cumbersome” (Hurtado, 1996 , p. 29). In contrast, the call to “accountability” is said to offer a more collective approach than the “individual self assessment of one’s perspective” that the term “reflexivity implies” (Hurtado, 1996 , p. 29). However, from point of ethnographic practice, it is seldom clear to whom one should be “accountable,” and therefore the term reflective practice seems to be appropriate.

Reflective practice indicates both individual self-assessment and collective assessment of research strategies. Hurtado ( 1996 ) emphasized that a “reflexive mechanism for understanding how we are all involved in the dirty process of racializing and gendering others, limiting who they are and who they can become” (p. 124) is a necessary strategy to help dismantle domination. Such reflective strategies can also help ethnographers bring to the surface “their own privilege and possible bias” as well as “addressing the difference between different constituencies” (Hurtado, 1996 , p. 160) within the communities they study.

Integrating Social Science, Interpretive, and Critical Research Methods

Each set of methods presented in this chapter has strengths and limitations. They address specific purposes that collectively are all important for the field of intercultural communication. Moreover, integrating the research methods provides richer insights than using any method by itself. However, these integrations still may have limitations in exploring non-Western contexts. Thus, this section explores integrations of the methods and alternative methods for intercultural inquiry.

Integrations of Methods

The integration of research methods involves using different types of methods at different phases (Cresswell & Plano Clark, 2011 ). In this manner, the methods are used one after another (or concurrently) depending on the research question associated with the larger research program. Four phasic designs are most prevalent: a) qualitative/interpretive methods used to create a quantitative (social science measure); b) qualitative (interpretive and critical) methods used to embellish quantitative findings (Big Quant, Little Qual); c) quantitative methods used to embellish qualitative findings (Big Qual, Little Quant); and d) social science, interpretive, critical methods used conjointly. Space limitations prohibit us from providing examples of all of these approaches, so we detail two of them.

Zhang and colleagues (Zhang & Oetzel, 2006 ; Zhang, Oetzel, Gao, Wilcox, & Takai, 2007 ) provide an example of how to create a cross-culturally valid measure of a construct. Their purpose was to measure teacher immediacy. Teacher immediacy is the psychology closeness that is communicated from a teacher to a student. There exist different measures of immediacy, but Zhang and Oetzel ( 2006 ) argued that prior Western measures were not applicable in Chinese classrooms (i.e., they did not have conceptual equivalence). To address this issue, they first conducted open-ended interviews with Chinese students to identify themes associated with the meanings of immediacy. This phase of the research involved interpretive research methods as they put primacy on emic meanings. In the second phase, they used the emic meanings to create an operational measure of three dimensions of teacher immediacy (instructional, relational, and personal). This measure was administered to college students, and the data were analyzed with confirmatory factor analysis. The results dimensions were found to be internally consistent and had construct validity as they correlated with existing scales in expected directions. Zhang et al. ( 2007 ) then continued the development of the scale by administering the scale to college students in four national cultures: China, Japan, Germany, and the United States. With these data, the authors used confirmatory factor analysis to see if the three-dimensional model of teacher immediacy held up in each culture. They found cross-cultural support for the model and also the construct validity of the scales. Thus, their thorough testing from the interpretive phase to the social scientific phase led to the development of a teacher immediacy scale that has valid dimensions in at least four national cultures.

An example of integrating critical, social scientific, and interpretive methods into the same research program can be seen in the work on whiteness ideology (Nakayama & Martin, 1999 ). The project culminated in an edited book that included chapters using the various research methods. Whiteness ideology is the worldview that certain groups have privilege over others. It is labeled whiteness because whites tend to be the privileged groups in most societies. This research group’s work primarily focused on ethnic groups in the United States, but some international contexts were examined and other scholars have since examined international contexts we well (e.g., Collier, 2005 ). One part of the project examined the labels that white people in the United States prefer through a survey (Martin, Krizek, Nakayama, & Bradford, 1999 ). Another part of the project involved two of the team members’ integrated interpretive and critical methods to understand how whiteness is used as strategic rhetoric (Nakayama & Krizek, 1999 ). The volume included other scholars writing from different perspectives as well, and the editors attempted to bring together these various perspectives into a “coherent” picture about whiteness ideology. These scholars asked different questions and used different methods to investigate the same phenomena. Collectively, the research program told a richer and fuller story than any single study could have told. This example illustrates how different research methods can be used concurrently to advance understanding about intercultural phenomena.

Alternative Approaches to Studying Intercultural Communication

Intercultural research using the social scientific, interpretive, and critical methods have offered remarkable insights on a variety of intercultural phenomena. Each of these traditional approaches, however, uses a Euro-Western lens that is predominantly textocentric, privileging text, writing, and the lettered word in comparison to oral stories and visuals (Conquergood, 2002 ; Kim, 2002 ). We offer here two participatory approaches that, in some sense, hand over the power of the data to the participants. From these approaches, the ontology, epistemology, and axiology of the participants are more important than those of the researchers. Singhal, Harter, Chitnis, and Sharma ( 2007 ) explained that participation-based methodology allows for lateral communication between participants, creates a space for dialogue, focuses on the people’s needs, enables collective empowerment, and offers cultural-specific content. In contrast, they note that nonparticipatory methods allow top-down vertical communication, generally focus on individual behavior change, consider the donors’ and researchers’ goals of greater importance than community needs, and offer cultural-general information. This section discusses three participatory approaches: theater, photography, and community-based participatory research.

Participatory Theater

Based on the dialogic theorizing of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire ( 1970 ) and its application by Augusto Boal in his performative intervention, “Theater of the Oppressed” ( 1995 ), participatory theater can offer researchers an epistemology different from other research methods that rely on data from interviews and focus groups. This approach provides different kinds of data, discursive narratives that can be used to highlight some of the significant generative themes of the research participants.

The Theater of the Oppressed was developed in an effort to transform theater from the “monologue” of traditional performance into a “dialogue” between audience and stage. Boal ( 1995 ) experimented with many kinds of interactive theater. His explorations were based on the assumption that dialogue is the common, healthy dynamic between all humans and when a dialogue becomes a monologue, oppression ensues. Participatory theater is a research tool that produces generative and local knowledge, starting with the use of the body, the container of memory, emotions, and culture (Kaptani & Yuval-Davis, 2008 ). Theater has the ability to provide a useful connection to specific places as well as people. The encounter between the researcher and the researched in the theater space is outside the redundancy of everyday life. As a result, the researcher can see herself and her interactions between and with the researched in a way that is more distant than in everyday life, thus possibly making it easier to become reflexive.

Boal ( 1995 ) developed various forms of theater workshops and performances which aimed to meet the needs of all people for interaction, dialogue, critical thinking, action, and fun. For example, Forum Theater constitutes a series of workshops in which the participants are transformed from a passive audience into the double roles of actors and active audience. They construct dramatic scenes involving conflictual oppressive situations in small groups and show them to the other participants, who intervene by taking the place of the protagonists and suggesting better strategies for achieving their goals. One of the popular research tools used in Forum Theater is role-playing. Role-playing serves as a vehicle for analyzing power, stimulating public debate, and searching for solutions. Participants explore the complexity of the human condition and situate this knowledge in its cultural moment. The aim of the forum is not to find an ideal solution but to invent new ways of confronting problems. A second key tool is discussion. Following each intervention, audience members discuss the solution offered. A skilled facilitator encourages an in-depth discussion with the participants to generate ideas that will help to address issues under investigation.

Participatory Photography

Similarly, Paolo Friere is a pioneer in participatory photography. In 1973 , Freire and his team asked people living in a slum in Lima, Peru, to visualize “exploitation” by taking photographs (Singhal et al., 2007 ). One child took a photograph of a nail on a wall. While the photograph did not resonate with adults, many of the children strongly supported it. When asked to explain, it was learned that many of the boys in the neighborhood were shoeshine boys in the city. Since the shoeshine box was heavy and they could not carry it to the city, they rented a nail on the wall in one of the city shops. These shop owners charged the boys more than half of each day’s earnings as rent. The children expressed that the photo of the nail was the strongest symbol of exploitation. Friere and his team then used this photo to generate a discussion about exploitation and how the community members wished to address it.

Participatory photography, otherwise known as “photo voice” or “shooting back,” gives power to the participants, through photographs, to shape their own stories (Wang, 1999 ). Participatory photography has been used in a variety of contexts (slums, hospitals, schools, villages, etc.) and in different parts of the world (Singhal et al., 2007 ). For example, Briski and Kauffman ( 2004 ), in their Oscar-winning film, Born into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids , taught the children of commercial sex workers how to take photographs. These children, then, took photos to depict their harsh reality. These powerful images became the foundation of this moving film. Another example is the work of Loignon et al. ( 2014 ) in Canada about the relation between impoverishment and lack of access to primary health care. The researchers recruited four family medicine residents and two medical supervisors to pursue their study. There were eight participants who came from economically underprivileged backgrounds trained in photographic techniques and photo voice philosophy. The researchers were able to realize the importance of primary health care professionals developing greater interpersonal and social acuity. They also realized that their patients were co-participants in the processes of diagnosis, prognosis, and medication. Finally, the researchers were also able to realize that they would be able to develop a greater competency by actually investing a part of their training time in the socioeconomic milieu of the patients they are to serve.

The implications of using participatory photography are significant. This method works best when the participants are given general directions and allowed to play with ideas. It is important for the participants to share their visual stories with the researchers. It is, however, critical for fellow participants in a community to share their stories with each other. The challenge of using photography is that it is, by nature, an intrusive process (Singhal et al., 2007 ). With terminology like “aim,” “shoot,” and “capture,” there can be a colonizing mentality in photography. It is particularly important that the participants be sensitive and reflective about how they take photographs of people and objects. While this may be difficult to accomplish across cultures, it is important to seek the permission of the participants before taking their photographs.

Community-Based Participatory Research

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a collaborative process where researchers and community members work together at all stages of the research process to address issues that are of importance to the community (Wallerstein et al., 2008 ). Rather than a top-down approach to health and social issues, CBPR focuses on a collaborative and bottom-up approach to identifying and defining problems and developing and implementing solutions (i.e., research “with” rather than “for” or “on”). CPBR is a preferred approach for researchers working with indigenous communities, other communities of color, or other communities facing disparities, which experience similar issues of mistrust for past research issues and social/health inequities. CBPR has goals of developing culturally centered research and interventions, building trust and synergy among partners, building the capacity of all members of the research team, changing power relations among communities and outside entities, developing sustainable change, and improving the social and health conditions of the community (Wallerstein et al., 2008 ).

CBPR is not a method, rather a philosophy of research. CBPR projects can include social scientific, interpretive, and critical approaches and often involve mixed methods. The specific methods meet the needs of the community and the research problem being addressed. The methods should follow key principles of CBPR, including: a) the project fits local/cultural beliefs, norms, and practices; b) the project emphasizes what is important in the community; c) the project builds on strengths in the community; d) the project balances research and social action; and e) the project disseminates findings to all partners and involves all partners in the dissemination process (Israel et al., 2008 ).

An example of CBPR is a project in Mysore, South India, addressing stigma and discrimination among men who have sex with men (MSM), many of whom were sex workers (Lorway et al., 2013 ). The project involved a collaboration of researchers and a sex workers collective in a long-term systematic process of knowledge production and action. The research approach involved training 10 community members as researchers who conducted interviews with MSM to understand their experiences. There were 70 in-depth interviews conducted in four days. Data analysis was completed with thematic analysis. The results provided a rallying point against stigma as the community cultivated its understanding of this concept and they mobilized to increase access to sexual health services.

The purpose of this article was to explore multidisciplinary methodological approaches to intercultural communication research. If our worldview shapes our reality, what we study and how we study phenomena is greatly influenced by our cultural frameworks. We described the traditional approaches to studying intercultural communication, namely, social scientific, interpretive, and critical perspectives. We identified the key ontological, epistemological, and axiological assumptions of each of these perspectives, offered an exemplar for each kind of perspective, types of data collected, and the methodological concerns in each framework. We then explained traditional ways to integrate the social scientific, interpretive, and critical perspectives, offered examples, and explicated the strengths of such integrations. We finally offered three alternative methodological approaches (participatory theater, participatory photography, and community-based participatory research) where the participants shape the scope of the study, interpret the meaning of the data, and offer practical implications for the study.

Historiography

The early history of intercultural communication, including some discussion of research methods, has been covered well by Leeds-Hurwitz ( 1990 ) and Moon ( 1996 ). Leeds-Hurwitz reviewed the early foundation of intercultural communication, which can be traced to the work of Edward T. Hall in the Foreign Service Institute in the 1950s and 1960s. The focus in the earlier years was on descriptive linguistic analysis of micro communication practices (e.g., proxemics, kinesics, and verbal practices) of multiple cultures. These early roots of intercultural communication were influenced by anthropological study of culture (i.e., ethnography).

The 1970s saw the development of the field of intercultural communication, with a focus on culture as race, gender, nationality, and socioeconomic status (Moon, 1996 ). The research at this time also reflected the social issues of the 1970s. Methods of research were diverse but predominantly included social scientific and interpretive methods.

The late 1970s and the 1980s saw a change where the focus of culture became nationality and a large emphasis was placed on cross-cultural comparisons. There was a pursuit to develop and apply Western theories to non-Western contexts. Methodologically, the 1980s was dominated by social scientific approaches.

The 1990s brought some backlash against social scientific approaches from interpretive scholars. There was also a rise of critical scholarship which critiqued the social scientific research methods. A number of critical approaches were identified and were especially used to develop theoretical approaches for understanding intercultural communications.

The 2000s brought more balance and integration of the research approaches. The Journal of International and Intercultural Communication was founded in 2008 . The three editors of this journal to date (Tom Nakayama, Shiv Ganesh, and Rona Halualani) issued editorial statements about the scope of the journal respecting and including diverse methodological approaches.

Further Reading

• Bhawuk, D. P. S. (2008). Science of culture and culture of science: Worldview and choice of conceptual models and methodology. The Social Engineer , 11 (2), 26–43.
• Biggerstaff, D. L. , & Thompson, A. R. (2008). Interpretative phenomenological analysis: A qualitative methodology of choice in healthcare research. Qualitative Research in Psychology , 5 , 175–177.
• Communication Methods & Measures. 2007–. Journal devoted to communication research methods; not exclusive to intercultural communication.
• Fram, S. M. (2013). The constant comparative analysis method outside of grounded theory. The Qualitative Report , 18 (1), 4–8.
• Israel, B. A. , Eng, E. , Schulz, A. J. , & Parker, E. (Eds.). (2013). Methods in community-based participatory research for health (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Lindlof, T. R. , & Taylor, B. C. (2011). Qualitative communication research methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Minkler, M. , & Wallerstein, N. (Eds.). (2008). Community-based participatory research for health: From process to outcomes . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Otten, M. , & Geppert, J. (2010). Mapping the landscape of qualitative research on intercultural communication: A hitchhiker’s guide to the methodological galaxy. Forum: Qualitative Social Research , 10 (1), Article 52.
• Tuhiwai-Smith, L. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples . London: Zed Books.
• Wagstaff, C. , Jeong, H. , Nolan, M. , Wilson, T. , Tweedlie, J. , Phillips, E. , & Holland, F. (2014). The accordian and the deep bowl of spaghetti: Eight researchers’ experiences of using IPA as a methodology. The Qualitative Report , 19 (47), 1–4.
• Asante, M. K. , Miike, Y. , & Jing, Y. (2008). Introduction. Issues and challenges in intercultural communcation scholarship. In M. K. Asante , Y. Miike , & Y. Jing (Eds.), The global intercultural communication reader (pp. 1–8). New York: Routledge.
• Baig, N. , Ting-Toomey, S. , & Dorjee, T. (2014). Intergenerational narratives on face: A South Asian Indian American perspective. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication , 7 , 127–147.
• Boal, A. (1995). Theater of the oppressed . New York: Theater Communications Group.
• Braun, V. , & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology , 3 , 77–101.
• Brinson, M. E. , & Stohl, M. (2012). Media framing of terrorism: Implications for public opinion, civil liberties, and counterterrorism policies. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication , 5 , 270–290.
• Briski, Z. (Prod. & Dir.), & Kauffman, R. (Prod. & Dir.) (2004). Born into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids [Motion Picture]. India: THINKFilm
• Cai, D. A. , Wilson, S. R. , & Drake, L. E. (2000). Culture in the context of intercultural Negotiation: Individualism-collectivism and paths to integrative agreements. Human Communication Research , 26 , 591–617.
• Carbaugh, D. (2007). Cultural discourse analysis: Five communication practices and intercultural encounters. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research , 36 (3), 67–182.
• Cissel, M. (2014). Media framing: A comparative content analysis on mainstream and alternative news coverage of Occupy Wall Street. The Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications , 3 (1), 68–72.
• Chen, Y-W. , Simmons, N. , & Kang, D. (2015). My family isn’t racist—however …”: Multiracial/multicultural Obama-ism as an ideological barrier to teaching intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication , 8 , 167–186.
• Cohen, L. , Manion, L. , & Morrison, K. (2007). Research methods in education (6th ed.). London: Routledge.
• Collier, M. J. (2005). Theorizing cultural identifications: Critical updates and continuing Evolution. In W. B. Gudykunst (Ed.), Theorizing about intercultural communication (pp. 235–256). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Collins, P. H. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment . Boston: Unwin Hyman.
• Conquergood, L. (2002). Lethal theatre: Performance, punishment, and the death penalty . Theatre Journal , 54 (3), 339–367.
• Cook, J. A. , & Fonow, M. M. (1984). Am I my sister’s gatekeeper? Cautionary tales from the academic hierarchy. Humanity and Society , 8 , 442–452.
• Corbin, J. , & Strauss, A. (2008). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques to developing grounded theory (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Cresswell, J. W. , & Plano Clark, V. L. (2011). Designing and conducting mixed methods research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Denzin, N. K. (2001). The reflexive interview and a performative social science. Qualitative Research, 1(1) , 28–34.
• Dixon, T. L. , & Azocar, C. L. (2006). The representation of juvenile offenders by race on Los Angeles area television news. The Howard Journal of Communications , 17 , 143–161.
• DuBois, W. E. B. (1969). The souls of black folks. New York: New American Library.
• Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Longman.
• Fletcher, C. V. , Nakazawa, M. , Chen, Y. , Oetzel, J. G. , Ting-Toomey, S. , Chang , & Zhang, Q. (2014). Establishing cross-cultural measurement equivalence of scales associated with face-negotiation theory: A critical issue in cross-cultural comparisons. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication , 7 , 148–169.
• Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed . New York: Continuum.
• Golafshani, N. (2003). Understanding reliability and validity in qualitative research. The Qualitative Report , 8 , 597–607.
• Gudykunst, W. B. (2003a). Forward. In W. B. Gudykunst (Ed.), Cross-cultural and Intercultural Communication (pp. vii–ix). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Gudykunst, W. B. (2003b). Issues in cross-cultural research. In W. B. Gudykunst (Ed.), Cross-cultural and intercultural communication . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Hall, J. K. (2002). Teaching and researching language and culture . London: Pearson Education.
• Han, B. , & Cai, D. A. (2010). Face goals in apology: A cross-cultural comparison of Chinese and U.S. Americans. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication , 20 , 101–123.
• Hanasono, L. K. , Chen, L. , & Wilson, S. R. (2014). Identifying communities in need: Examining the impact of acculturation on perceived discrimination, social support, and coping amongst racial minority members in the United States. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication , 7 , 216–237.
• Harding, S. (1998). Is science multicultural? Postcolonialsim, feminism, and epistemologies . Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Hermans, H. J. M. , & Kempen, H. J. G. (1998). Moving cultures: The perilous problem of cultural dichotomies in a globalizing society. American Psychologist , 53 , 1111–1120.
• Hurtado, A. (1996). The color of privilege: Three blasphemies on race and feminism . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Irani, L. , Vertesi, J. , Dourish, P. , Philip, K. , & Grinter, R. E. (2010). Postcolonial computing: A lens on design and development. Proceedings of the ISGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems. CHI’10, 1311–1320.
• Israel, B. A. , Schulz, A. J. , Parker, E. A. , Becker, A. B. , & Guzman, J. R. (2008). Critical issues in developing and following CBPR principles. In M. Minkler & N. Wallerstein (Eds.), Community-based participatory research for health: From process to outcomes (2nd ed., pp. 47–66). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Kaplan, Abraham (1964). The conduct of inquiry: Methodology for behavioral science . San Francisco: Chandler.
• Kaptani, E. , & Yuval-Davis, N. (2008). Participatory theatre as a research methodology . Sociological Research On Line , 13 , 2.
• Kim, M. S. (2002). Multicultural perspectives on human communication: Implications for theory and practice . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Kelleher, W. J. (2013). Formal axiology and the philosophy of social science; esp., political science . Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2343339 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2343339
• Klein, H. , & Shiffman, K. (2006). Race-related content of animated cartoons. The Howard Journal of Communications , 17 , 163–182.
• Koopman, S. (2011). Alter-geopolitics: Other securities are happening. Geoforum , 3 , 274–284.
• Lazar, M. M. (2005). Politicizing gender in discourse: Feminist critical discourse analysis as political perspective and praxis. In M. M. Lazar (Ed.), Feminist critical discourse analysis: Gender, power and ideology in discourse (pp. 1–27). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Leeds-Hurwitz, W. (1990). Notes in the history of intercultural communication: The Foreign Service Institute and the mandate for intercultural training. Quarterly Journal of Speech , 76 , 262–281.
• Levine, T. R. , Park, H. S. , & Kim, R. K. (2007). Some conceptual and theoretical challenges for cross-cultural communication research in the 21st century. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research , 36 , 205–221.
• Lincoln, Y. S. , & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry . Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE.
• Loignon, C. , Boudreault-Fournier, A. , Truchon, K. , Labrousse, Y. , & Fortin, B. (2014). Medical residents reflect on their prejudices toward poverty: A photovoice training project .
• Lorway, R. , Thompson, L. H. , Lazarus, L. , du Plessis, E. , Pasha, P. , Mary, P. F. , et al. (2013). Going beyond the clinic: Confronting stigma and discrimination among men who have sex with men in Mysore through community-based participatory research. Critical Public Health , 24 (1), 1–15.
• Martin, J. N. , Krizek, R. L. , Nakayama, T. K. , & Bradford, L. (1999). What do white people want to be called? A study of self-labels for white Americans. In T. K. Nakayama & J. N. Martin (Eds.), Whiteness: The communication of social identity (pp. 27–50). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Mohanty, C. T. (1991). Cartographies of struggle: Third world women and the politics of feminism. In C. T. Mohanty , A. Russo , & L. Torres (Eds.), Third world women and the politics of feminism (pp. 1–50). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Moon, D. G. (1996). Concepts of culture. Implications for intercultural communication research. Communication Quarterly , 44 , 70–84.
• Nakayama, T. K. , & Krizek, R. L. (1999). Whiteness as strategic rhetoric. In T. K. Nakayama & J. N. Martin (Eds.), Whiteness: The communication of social identity (pp. 87–106). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• Nakayama, T. K. , & Martin, J. N. (Eds.). (1999). Whiteness: The communication of social identity . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• O’Connor, M. K. , Netting, F. E. , & Thomas, M. L. (2008). Grounded theory: Managing the challenge for those facing institutional review board oversight. Qualitative Inquiry , 14 (1), 11–15.
• Oetzel, J. G. (1998). Culturally homogeneous and heterogeneous groups: Explaining communication processes through individualism-collectivism and self-construal. International Journal of Intercultural Relations , 22 , 135–161.
• Oetzel, J. G. (1998). Explaining individual communication processes in homogeneous and heterogeneous groups through individualism-collectivism and self-construal. Human Communication Research , 25 , 202–224.
• Oetzel, J. G. , & Ting-Toomey, S. (2003). Face concerns in interpersonal conflict: A cross-cultural empirical test of the face-negotiation theory. Communication Research , 30 , 599–624.
• Pathak, A. (2010). Opening my voice, claiming my space: Theorizing the possibilities of postcolonial approaches to autoethnography. Journal of Research Practice , 6 (1), 4–11.
• Perko, T. , Turcanu, C. , Geenen, D. , Mamani, N. , & Rooy, Van L. (2011). Media content analysis of the Fukushima accident in two Belgian newspapers . Report: Belgian Nuclear Research Centre. Available: http://publications.sckcen.be/dspace/bitstream/10038/7502/1/blg_mediaanalysisfukushimabelgianmedia.pdf
• Philipsen, G. (1975). Speaking “like a man” in Teamsterville: Culture patterns of role enactment in an urban neighborhood. Quarterly Journal of Speech , 61 , 13–22.
• Radford, M. L. , Radford, P. G. , Connaway L. S. , & DeAngelis, J. A. (2011). On virtual face-work: An ethnography of communication approach to a live chat. Library Quarterly , 81 , 431–453.
• Rao, N. , Singhal, A. , Ren, L. , & Zhang, J. (2001). Is the Chinese self-construal in transition? Asian Journal of Communication , 11 , 68–95.
• Schmid, A. P. (2013). Radicalisation, de-radicalisation, counter-radicalisation: A conceptual discussion and literature review . International Centre for Counter-Terrorism. Available: http://www.icct.nl/download/file/ICCT-Schmid-Radicalisation-De-Radicalisation-Counter-Radicalisation-March-2013_2.pdf
• Scotland, J. (2012). Exploring the philosophical underpinnings of research: Relating ontology and epistemology to the methodology and methods of the scientific, interpretive, and critical research paradigms. English Language Teaching , 5 (9), 9–16.
• Singhal, A. , Harter, L. , Chitnis, K. , & Sharma, D. (2007). Participatory photography as theory, method, and praxis: Analyzing an entertainment-education project in India. Critical Arts , 21 , 212–227.
• Spivak, G. C. (1999). A critique of postcolonial reason: Toward a history of the vanishing present . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Sponcil, M. , & Gitimu, P. (2010). Use of social media by college students: Relationship to communication and self-concept. Journal of Technological Research , 4 , 1–13.
• Straub, J. , & Weidemann, D. (2006). Psychology, culture, and the pursuit of meaning: An introduction. In J. Straub , D. Weidemann , C. Kölbl , & B. Zielke (Eds.), Pursuit of meaning. Advances in cultural and cross-cultural psychology (pp. 11–20). Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.
• Szabo, E. (2007). Participative management and culture. A qualitative and integrative study in five European countries . Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
• Van Dijk, T. (2008). Discourse in context: A sociocognitive approach. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
• Wallerstein, N. , Oetzel, J. , Duran, B. , Belone, L. , Tafoya, G. , & Rae, R. (2008). CBPR: What predicts outcomes? In M. Minkler & N. Wallerstein (Eds.), Community-based participary research for health: From process to outcomes (2nd ed., pp. 371–392). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Wang, C. (1999). Photo voice: A participatory action research strategy applied to women’s health. Journal of Women’s Health , 8 , 185–192.
• Willink, K. , Gutierrez-Perez, R. , Shukri, S. , & Stein, L. (2014). Navigating with the stars: Critical qualitative methodological constellations for critical intercultural communication research. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication , 7 , 289–316.
• Zhang, Q. , & Oetzel, J. G. (2006). Constructing and validating a teacher immediacy scale from a Chinese perspective. Communication Education , 55 , 218–241.
• Zhang, Q. , Oetzel, J. G. , Gao, X. , Wilcox, R. , & Takai, J. (2007). Teacher immediacy scales: Testing for validity across cultures. Communication Education , 56 , 228–248.

Related Articles

• Intercultural Competence
• Intercultural Friendships
• Globalizing and Changing Culture
• Bella Figura: Understanding Italian Communication in Local and Transatlantic Contexts

Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Communication. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 13 May 2024

• Cookie Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility
• [66.249.64.20|185.80.151.41]
• 185.80.151.41

Character limit 500 /500

Communication Studies - Dr. Yang

• Use Library Resources Off-Campus
• Finding Articles, etc.
• Analyst Reports
• Brand name search
• Find and/or Compare Companies
• Find Legal Cases
• Marketing Campaigns
• Hoover's Company and Industry Reports
• Printing, Saving, Emailing & Citing
• Business Source Complete
• Simmons Insights
• RefWorks This link opens in a new window

Sage Research Methods

• SAGE Research Methods Online (SRMO) This link opens in a new window SAGE Research Methods Online (SRMO) is a fully-integrated online research methods tool designed to help researchers, faculty, and students with their research projects across multiple disciplines. Provides selected, full-text access to SAGE books, journals, and reference content.Users can explore research methods and concepts to help them design research projects, better understand particular research methods or identify new methods, conduct research, write up findings, and share their own collections of research content through the SRMO Lists feature. Other SRMO features such as the Methods Map offers users a visual representation of the inter-relationships and overlaps between the many different methods, theories, and techniques used in social research. The Methods Map can be used to locate a given research technique, theory, or method and its relationship to other approaches and as a way of reaching other relevant content from the books, journals, and reference resources that make up SRMO. Publications indexed include selected SAGE books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, the entire Little Green Book and Little Blue Book series, journal articles, and newly-commissioned videos. more... less... http://methods.sagepub.com Users can explore research methods and concepts to help them design research projects, better understand particular research methods or identify new methods, conduct research, write up findings, and share their own collections of research content through the SRMO Lists feature. Other SRMO features such as the Methods Map offers users a visual representation of the inter-relationships and overlaps between the many different methods, theories, and techniques used in social research. The Methods Map can be used to locate a given research technique, theory, or method and its relationship to other approaches and as a way of reaching other relevant content from the books, journals, and reference resources that make up SRMO. Publications indexed include selected SAGE books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, the entire Little Green Book and Little Blue Book series, journal articles, and newly-commissioned videos.
• << Previous: RefWorks
• Last Updated: May 9, 2024 1:10 PM
• URL: https://libguides.utep.edu/comm_yang

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

This article is part of the research topic.

Multimodality in Face-to-Face Teaching and Learning: Contemporary Re-evaluations in Theory, Method, and Pedagogy

The multimodal organization of feedback and its documentation: Multiactivity during formal, formative reading assessment Provisionally Accepted

• 1 Hokkaido Bunkyo University, Japan

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

This multimodal conversation analytic study draws upon naturally-occurring data from formal, formative reading assessment in an elementary school, general education classroom to investigate the interactional practice of documenting feedback. This consists of the ways teachers and students engage in both oral feedback and its written documentation simultaneously during interaction. Such competencies have been underappreciated by educational research on assessment literacies. Moreover, prior interactional research on formal formative assessment has shed light on talk-based practices that enable oral feedback but have nonetheless neglected the embodied and material practices that are necessary for its written documentation. To investigate how talk, embodiment and materiality enable feedback to be documented within multiactivity, the current study collected instances of the practice from a multimodal corpus of audio-visual recordings and electronic scans of completed assessment materials. Examination of this collection uncovered straightforward, problematic and complex interactional trajectories as well as their relationships to institutional outcomes. The study concluded that the more participants to formal, formative reading assessment focus on feedback as talk-in-interaction, the less explicitly that talk-in-interaction is represented in the written documents they collaboratively produce. As a result, important details of both teacher interventions and student performances may be rendered opaque in the material record of the assessment events. These findings extend a burgeoning multimodal turn in the interactional analysis of formal formative assessment and aim to provoke subsequent educational research into interactional assessment literacies.

Keywords: multimodality, Feedback, Multiactivity, formative assessment, reading, conversation analysis

Received: 24 Feb 2024; Accepted: 13 May 2024.

Copyright: © 2024 Tomasine. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Mr. Joseph S. Tomasine, Hokkaido Bunkyo University, Eniwa, Japan

People also looked at

• Technical Support
• Find My Rep

You are here

The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Organizational Communication

• Boris H. J. M. Brummans - Université de Montréal, Canada
• Bryan C. Taylor - University of Colorado Boulder, USA
• Anu Sivunen - University of Jyväskylä, Finland
• Description

The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Organizational Communication  is a state-of-the-art resource for scholars, students, and practitioners seeking to deepen their understanding and expertise in this dynamic field. Written by a global team of established and emerging experts, this Handbook provides a comprehensive exploration of the field’s foundational traditions of epistemology and theory, as well as its latest methodologies, methods, issues, and debates.

The volume reflects a diverse range of approaches (e.g., mixed-methods, ethnographic, rhetorical, pragmatist, phenomenological, feminist, critical race, postcolonial, queer, and engaged), and covers a broad spectrum of topics ranging from data collection and analysis, to representation. Additionally, this Handbook addresses emerging trends such as digital forensics, post-qualitative research, and the transformative impact of COVID-19 on the conduct of qualitative research in organizational communication. As the first volume of its kind in this field, The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Organizational Communication is a cornerstone text for scholars, students, and practitioners interested in understanding the vital role of communication in organizational life. Part 1: Approaches to Qualitative Organizational Communication Research  Part 2: Data Collection in Qualitative Organizational Communication Research: Methods and Issues Part 3: Data Analysis and Representation in Qualitative Organizational Communication Research: Methods and Issues Part 4: The Future of Qualitative Organizational Communication Research

See what’s new to this edition by selecting the Features tab on this page. Should you need additional information or have questions regarding the HEOA information provided for this title, including what is new to this edition, please email [email protected] . Please include your name, contact information, and the name of the title for which you would like more information. For information on the HEOA, please go to http://ed.gov/policy/highered/leg/hea08/index.html .

For assistance with your order: Please email us at [email protected] or connect with your SAGE representative.

SAGE 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, CA 91320 www.sagepub.com

The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Organizational Communication is an essential resource for management scholars, practitioners, and students alike. This groundbreaking handbook is a comprehensive guide that navigates the vast landscape of qualitative research within the realm of organizational communication. With contributions from leading experts in the field, it provides invaluable insights, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks helping to understand the complex dynamics of communication in organizational settings. It offers a diverse range of perspectives and approaches, inviting readers to explore the intricacies of organizational communication through a qualitative lens. This handbook is an indispensable companion for anyone seeking to delve deeper into this fascinating field.

Communication scholars have developed many rich and rigorous qualitative methods for capturing, analyzing, and interpreting the communicative aspects of organizing. It is exciting to see these methods brought together in a comprehensive handbook that features both classical approaches and reflections on new forms of data and analysis. Boris Brummans, Bryan Taylor, and Anu Sivunen have put together a truly wonderful resource that I will return to again and again.

This handbook is an authoritative survey of qualitative approaches to organizational communication that summarizes the state of the art and advances new insights and ideas. Its authors span the panoply of takes on qualitative research on organizational communication and are literally an all-star cast. Experienced academics and graduate students alike will benefit from its many perspectives and inquiries into key issues.

This comprehensive handbook has all the ingredients to become the main go-to resource for qualitative research in organizational communication studies. I highly recommend it to anyone who aims to broaden their horizon and expand their methodological tool kit, whether scholars, students, or practitioners.

Preview this book

Select a purchasing option.

This title is also available on SAGE Knowledge , the ultimate social sciences online library. If your library doesn’t have access, ask your librarian to start a trial .

Beamforming Techniques for MIMO-NOMA for 5G and Beyond 5G: Research Gaps and Future Directions

• Published: 02 November 2023
• Volume 43 , pages 1518–1548, ( 2024 )

Cite this article

• Sadiq Ur Rehman 1 ,
• Jawwad Ahmad   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7138-6452 2 ,
• Anwaar Manzar 1 &
• Muhammad Moinuddin 3 , 4  

238 Accesses

2 Citations

Explore all metrics

Effective sharing of the communication channel among many users, or multiple access (MA) techniques, can play a vital role in meeting the diverse demands of low latency, high reliability, massive connectivity, better fairness, and high throughput. In this context, non-orthogonal multiple access with multiple antennas, also known as multiple-input, multiple-output NOMA (MIMO-NOMA), is a promising enabling technology for fifth-generation (5G) and beyond (5G) wireless networks. The proper design of beamforming systems is one of the major difficulties in developing MIMO-NOMA. There are various ways to design beamforming for MIMO-NOMA in the literature. However, there is not much work dedicated to the survey focusing only on beamforming design in MIMO-NOMA systems. This work presents a comprehensive overview of beamforming methods in MIMO-NOMA for 5G and B5G. These strategies are classified in detail and have varied attributes, benefits, and drawbacks. As a result, future research gaps are also highlighted. Moreover, a simulation study is presented as a case study on the impact of random beamforming in various scenarios of heterogeneous environments with small and macro-cells. For this purpose, users’ outage probability is simulated with various types of interference in the heterogeneous systems, including inter-cluster, cross-tier, and co-tier interferences. This analysis also helps to contrast the performance of small and macro-cells. Finally, future research directions are discussed for beamforming in MIMO-NOMA for 5G and B5G.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Application of cell-free massive MIMO in 5G and beyond 5G wireless networks: a survey

Joint power optimization and scaled beamforming approach in B5G network based massive MIMO enabled HetNet with full-duplex small cells

CMBF-based dynamic selection for heterogeneous massive MIMO systems

Availability of data and materials.

There are no data associated with this manuscript.

A. Ahmed, Z. Elsaraf, F.A. Khan, Q.Z. Ahmed, Cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access for beyond 5G networks. IEEE Open J. Commun. Soc. 2 , 990–999 (2021)

Article   Google Scholar  

W.A. Al-Hussaibi, F.H. Ali, Efficient user clustering, receive antenna selection, and power allocation algorithms for massive MIMO-NOMA systems. IEEE Access 7 , 31865–31882 (2019)

H.M. Al-Obiedollah, K. Cumanan, J. Thiyagalingam, A.G. Burr, Z. Ding, O.A. Dobre, Energy efficient beamforming design for miso non-orthogonal multiple access systems. IEEE Trans. Commun. 67 (6), 4117–4131 (2019)

H.M. Al-Obiedollah, K. Cumanan, J. Thiyagalingam, J. Tang, A.G. Burr, Z. Ding, O.A. Dobre, Spectral-energy efficiency trade-off-based beamforming design for miso non-orthogonal multiple access systems. IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun. 19 (10), 6593–6606 (2020)

M.S. Ali, E. Hossain, A. Al-Dweik, D.I. Kim, Downlink power allocation for COMP-NOMA in multi-cell networks. IEEE Trans. Commun. 66 (9), 3982–3998 (2018)

S. Ali, E. Hossain, D.I. Kim, Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) for downlink multiuser MIMO systems: user clustering, beamforming, and power allocation. IEEE Access 5 , 565–577 (2016)

S.H. Amin, A.H. Mehana, S.S. Soliman, Y.A. Fahmy, Power allocation for maximum MIMO-NOMA system user-rate, in 2018 IEEE Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps) (IEEE, 2018), pp. 1–6

A. Araghi, M. Khalily, M. Safaei, A. Bagheri, V. Singh, F. Wang, R. Tafazolli, Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) in the sub-6 GHz band: design, implementation, and real-world demonstration. IEEE Access 10 , 2646–2655 (2022)

K. Aswini, M. Surendar, Capacity analysis of intelligent reflecting surface assisted RSMA system with perfect and imperfect CSI for 6G. J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 2466 , 012001 (2023)

F.A. Azhiri, B.M. Tazehkand, R. Abdolee, A novel EO-based optimum random beamforming method in mmWave-NOMA systems with sparse antenna array. Digit. Commun. Netw. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcan.2023.02.010

V.L. Babu, L. Mathews, S.S. Pillai, Performance analysis of linear and nonlinear precoding in MIMO systems. Int. J. Adv. Res. Comput. Commun. Eng. 4 (6), 373–376 (2015)

Google Scholar  

İ Baştürk, Evaluation of energy-efficiency problem in orthogonal frequency division multiple access cellular networks. Celal Bayar Univ. J. Sci. 15 (1), 9–15 (2019)

MathSciNet   Google Scholar  

Y. Bo, J. Fonseka, Throughput enhancement on the downlink of 4G and 5G systems: NOMA, BOMA and IBOMA. Int. J. Sens. Wirel. Commun. Control 8 (1), 57–64 (2018)

R.M. Buehrer, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) (Springer, Berlin, 2022)

B.P. Chaudhary, R. Shankar, R.K. Mishra, A tutorial on cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access networks. J. Defense Model. Simul. 19 (4), 563–573 (2022)

C. Chen, W. Cai, X. Cheng, L. Yang, Y. Jin, Low complexity beamforming and user selection schemes for 5G MIMO-NOMA systems. IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 35 (12), 2708–2722 (2017)

X. Chen, D.W.K. Ng, W. Yu, E.G. Larsson, N. Al-Dhahir, R. Schober, Massive access for 5G and beyond. IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 39 (3), 615–637 (2020)

Y. Cheng, K.H. Li, Y. Liu, K.C. Teh, H.V. Poor, Downlink and uplink intelligent reflecting surface aided networks: NOMA and OMA. IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun. 20 (6), 3988–4000 (2021)

S. Chinnadurai, P. Selvaprabhu, Y. Jeong, X. Jiang, M.H. Lee, Worst-case energy efficiency maximization in a 5G massive MIMO-NOMA system. Sensors 17 (9), 2139 (2017)

Article   ADS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

S. Chinnadurai, P. Selvaprabhu, Y. Jeong, A.L. Sarker, H. Hai, W. Duan, M.H. Lee, User clustering and robust beamforming design in multicell MIMO-NOMA system for 5G communications. AEU-Int. J. Electron. Commun. 78 , 181–191 (2017)

S. Chinnadurai, P. Selvaprabhu, M.H. Lee, A novel joint user pairing and dynamic power allocation scheme in MIMO-NOMA system, in 2017 International Conference on Information and Communication Technology Convergence (ICTC) (IEEE, 2017), pp. 951–953

K.H. Chung, On improved outage probability of correlated superposition coding/non-SIC NOMA. J. Korea Inst. Electron. Commun. Sci. 16 (4), 611–616 (2021)

J. Cui, Z. Ding, P. Fan, Power minimization strategies in downlink MIMO-NOMA systems, in 2017 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) (IEEE, 2017), pp. 1–6

X. Dai, Z. Zhang, B. Bai, S. Chen, S. Sun, Pattern division multiple access: a new multiple access technology for 5G. IEEE Wirel. Commun. 25 (2), 54–60 (2018)

Article   ADS   Google Scholar  

O. Elijah, S.K.A. Rahim, W.K. New, C.Y. Leow, K. Cumanan, T.K. Geok, Intelligent massive MIMO systems for beyond 5G networks: an overview and future trends. IEEE Access 10 , 102532 (2022)

N. Estrada Brito, C. Morales Alarcón, Non-orthogonal multiple access technique performance in a long-term evolution mobile communication system. Revista Digital Novasinergia 3 (1), 62–76 (2020)

J.L. Frauendorf, É. Almeida de Souza: Aas—advanced antenna system: the MIMO, massive MIMO, and beamforming antennas, in The Architectural and Technological Revolution of 5G (Springer, 2022), pp. 69–81

M. Ghous, A.K. Hassan, Z.H. Abbas, G. Abbas, A. Hussien, T. Baker, Cooperative power-domain NOMA systems: an overview. Sensors 22 (24), 9652 (2022)

L.C. Godara, Applications of antenna arrays to mobile communications. I. Performance improvement, feasibility, and system considerations. Proc. IEEE 85 (7), 1031–1060 (1997)

K. Higuchi, Y. Kishiyama, Non-orthogonal access with random beamforming and intra-beam SIC for cellular MIMO downlink, in 2013 IEEE 78th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Fall) (IEEE, 2013), pp. 1–5

R. Hoshyar, R. Razavi, M. Al-Imari, LDS-OFDM an efficient multiple access technique, in 2010 IEEE 71st Vehicular Technology Conference (IEEE, 2010), pp. 1–5

Y. Hu, L. Ping, Interleave division multiple access (IDMA), in Multiple Access Techniques for 5G Wireless Networks and Beyond (2019), pp. 417–449

H. Huang, Y. Shi, L. Liang, J. He, X. Zhang, Performance analysis of overlay cognitive NOMA network with imperfect SIC and imperfect CSI. Phys. Commun. 53 , 101711 (2022)

S.R. Islam, M. Zeng, O.A. Dobre, K.S. Kwak, Resource allocation for downlink NOMA systems: key techniques and open issues. IEEE Wirel. Commun. 25 (2), 40–47 (2018)

N. Iswarya, L. Jayashree, A survey on successive interference cancellation schemes in non-orthogonal multiple access for future radio access. Wirel. Pers. Commun. 120 (2), 1057–1078 (2021)

Joe: NOMA vs OMA—capacity comparison (2020). https://ecewireless.blogspot.com/2020/09/noma-vs-oma-capacity-comparison.html . Accessed 15 Jul 2023

V. Jungnickel, K. Manolakis, W. Zirwas, B. Panzner, V. Braun, M. Lossow, M. Sternad, R. Apelfröjd, T. Svensson, The role of small cells, coordinated multipoint, and massive MIMO in 5G. IEEE Commun. Mag. 52 (5), 44–51 (2014)

M. Kaliszan, E. Pollakis, S. Stańczak, Multigroup multicast with application-layer coding: Beamforming for maximum weighted sum rate, in 2012 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC) (IEEE, 2012), pp. 2270–2275

P.R. Kapula, P. Sridevi, Channel estimation in 5G multi input multi output wireless communication using optimized deep neural framework. Clust. Comput. 25 (5), 3517–3530 (2022)

F. Kara, H. Kaya, BER performances of downlink and uplink NOMA in the presence of SIC errors over fading channels. IET Commun. 12 (15), 1834–1844 (2018)

B.A. Karim, H.K. Ali, A novel beamforming technique using mmWave antenna arrays for 5G wireless communication networks. Digit. Signal Process. 134 , 103917 (2023)

R. Kataoka, I. Kanno, T. Hayashi, N. Tsumachi, T. Suzuki, H. Ishikawa, K. Yamazaki, Y. Kishi, Outdoor experimental evaluation of asynchronous successive interference cancellation for 5G in shared spectrum with different radio systems. IEICE Commun. Express 10 (8), 587–592 (2021)

W.U. Khan, M.A. Jamshed, E. Lagunas, S. Chatzinotas, X. Li, B. Ottersten, Energy efficiency optimization for backscatter enhanced NOMA cooperative V2X communications under imperfect CSI. IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst. (2022)

B. Kimy, S. Lim, H. Kim, S. Suh, J. Kwun, S. Choi, C. Lee, S. Lee, D. Hong, Non-orthogonal multiple access in a downlink multiuser beamforming system, in MILCOM 2013-2013 IEEE Military Communications Conference (IEEE, 2013), pp. 1278–1283

A. Koohang, C.S. Sargent, J.H. Nord, J. Paliszkiewicz, Internet of things (IoT): from awareness to continued use. Int. J. Inf. Manag. 62 , 102442 (2022)

K. Lakshmanna, R. Kaluri, N. Gundluru, Z.S. Alzamil, D.S. Rajput, A.A. Khan, M.A. Haq, A. Alhussen, A review on deep learning techniques for IoT data. Electronics 11 (10), 1604 (2022)

Q.N. Le, V.D. Nguyen, O.A. Dobre, N.P. Nguyen, R. Zhao, S. Chatzinotas, Learning-assisted user clustering in cell-free massive MIMO-NOMA networks. IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 70 (12), 12872–12887 (2021)

B.K.S. Lima, A.S. De Sena, R. Dinis, D.B. Da Costa, M. Beko, R. Oliveira, M. Debbah, Aerial intelligent reflecting surfaces in MIMO-NOMA networks: fundamentals, potential achievements, and challenges. IEEE Open J. Commun. Soc. 3 , 1007–1024 (2022)

S. Liu, C. Zhang, Non-orthogonal multiple access in a downlink multiuser beamforming system with limited CSI feedback. EURASIP J. Wirel. Commun. Netw. 2016 (1), 1–11 (2016)

Article   MathSciNet   Google Scholar  

Y. Liu, S. Zhang, X. Mu, Z. Ding, R. Schober, N. Al-Dhahir, E. Hossain, X. Shen, Evolution of NOMA toward next generation multiple access (NGMA) for 6G. IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 40 (4), 1037–1071 (2022)

Article   CAS   Google Scholar  

Z. Liu, P. Xiao, Z. Mheich, Power-imbalanced low-density signatures (LDS) from Eisenstein numbers, in 2019 IEEE VTS Asia Pacific Wireless Communications Symposium (APWCS) (IEEE, 2019), pp. 1–5

Z. Liu, L.L. Yang, Sparse or dense: a comparative study of code-domain NOMA systems. IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun. 20 (8), 4768–4780 (2021)

D. López-Pérez, A. De Domenico, N. Piovesan, G. Xinli, H. Bao, S. Qitao, M. Debbah, A survey on 5G radio access network energy efficiency: massive MIMO, lean carrier design, sleep modes, and machine learning. IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor. 24 (1), 653–697 (2022)

B. Lu, S. Lin, J. Shi, TDMA-NOMA based computation offloading for cognitive capacity harvesting networks with transmission order optimization. IEEE Trans. Commun. 70 (9), 6355–6369 (2022)

Y. Lu, Y. Qu, C. Yang, T. Li, X. Wang, H. Bian, H. Zhu, A user matching and power allocation scheme for downlink MIMO-NOMA communication system. Phys. Commun. 42 , 101174 (2020)

M.R. Mahmood, M.A. Matin, P. Sarigiannidis, S.K. Goudos, G.K. Karagiannidis, Residual compensation-based extreme learning machine for MIMO-NOMA receiver. IEEE Access 11 , 13398–13407 (2023)

M. Mhedhbi, F.E. Boukour, Analysis and evaluation of pattern division multiple access scheme jointed with 5G waveforms. IEEE Access 7 , 21826–21833 (2019)

A. Misra, U.R. Kalita, K.K. Sarma, Performance analysis of multi user MIMO NOMA network with hierarchical clustering. Int. J. Electron. Lett. (2022). https://doi.org/10.1080/21681724.2022.2129810

P. Mursia, I. Atzeni, D. Gesbert, L. Cottatellucci, Covariance shaping for massive MIMO systems, in 2018 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) (IEEE, 2018), pp. 1–6

H.G. Myung, J. Lim, D.J. Goodman, Single carrier FDMA for uplink wireless transmission. IEEE Veh. Technol. Mag. 1 (3), 30–38 (2006)

G. Naik, J.M. Park, J. Ashdown, W. Lehr, Next generation Wi-Fi and 5G NR-U in the 6 GHz bands: opportunities and challenges. IEEE Access 8 , 153027–153056 (2020)

A. Nasser, O. Muta, M. Elsabrouty, H. Gacanin, Interference mitigation and power allocation scheme for downlink MIMO-NOMA HetNet. IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 68 (7), 6805–6816 (2019)

S. Norouzi, B. Champagne, Y. Cai, Joint optimization framework for user clustering, downlink beamforming, and power allocation in MIMO NOMA systems. IEEE Trans. Commun. 71 (1), 214–228 (2022)

H. Pan, S.C. Liew, Information update: TDMA or FDMA? IEEE Wirel. Commun. Lett. 9 (6), 856–860 (2020)

P. Pirinen, A brief overview of 5G research activities, in 1st International Conference on 5G for Ubiquitous Connectivity (IEEE, 2014), pp. 17–22

B.U. Rehman, M.I. Babar, G.A. Azim, M. Amir, H. Alhumyani, M.S. Alzaidi, M. Alshammari, R. Saeed, Uplink power control scheme for spectral efficiency maximization in NOMA systems. Alex. Eng. J. 64 , 667–677 (2023)

S.U. Rehman, J. Ahmad, A. Manzar, M. Moinuddin, Outage probability and ergodic capacity analysis of MIMO-NOMA heterogeneous network for 5G system. J. Indep. Stud. Res. Comput. 20 (2), 15–23 (2022)

S.U. Rehman, A. Hussain, F. Hussain, M.A. Mannan, A comprehensive study: 5G wireless networks and emerging technologies. Int. Electr. Eng. Conf. (IEEC) 5 , 25–32 (2020)

S.U. Rehman, H. Mustafa, A.R. Larik, IoT based substation monitoring & control system using Arduino with data logging, in 2021 4th International Conference on Computing & Information Sciences (ICCIS) (IEEE, 2021), pp. 1–6

S.U.R. Aqeel-ur Rehman, I.U. Khan, M. Moiz, S. Hasan, Security and privacy issues in IoT. Int. J. Commun. Netw. Inf. Secur. (IJCNIS) 8 (3), 147–157 (2016)

F. Rinaldi, A. Raschella, S. Pizzi, 5G NR system design: a concise survey of key features and capabilities. Wirel. Netw. 27 , 5173–5188 (2021)

S.K. Sa, A.K. Mishra, An uplink cooperative NOMA based on CDRT with hardware impairments and imperfect CSI. IEEE Syst. J. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1109/JSYST.2023.3275469

Y. Saito, Y. Kishiyama, A. Benjebbour, T. Nakamura, A. Li, K. Higuchi, Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) for cellular future radio access, in 2013 IEEE 77th vehicular technology conference (VTC Spring) (IEEE, 2013), pp. 1–5

M. Sakai, K. Kamohara, H. Iura, H. Nishimoto, K. Ishioka, Y. Murata, M. Yamamoto, A. Okazaki, N. Nonaka, S. Suyama et al., Experimental field trials on MU-MIMO transmissions for high SHF wide-band massive MIMO in 5G. IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun. 19 (4), 2196–2207 (2020)

T. Sanjana, M. Suma, Deep learning approaches used in downlink MIMO-NOMA system: a survey, in Soft Computing and Signal Processing: Proceedings of 3rd ICSCSP 2020 , vol. 1 (Springer, 2021), pp. 687–704

A. Sarin, A.T. Avestruz, A framework for code division multiple access wireless power transfer. IEEE Access 9 , 135079–135101 (2021)

M.A. Shaikh, A. Manzar, M. Moinuddin, S.U. Rehman, H. Mustafa, Semi-blind beamforming in beam space MIMO NOMA for mmWave communications. IEEE Access 10 , 120426–120435 (2022)

L. Shan, S. Gao, S. Chen, M. Xu, F. Zhang, X. Bao, M. Chen, Energy-efficient resource allocation in NOMA-integrated V2X networks. Comput. Commun. 197 , 23–33 (2023)

W. Shao, S. Zhang, X. Zhang, J. Ma, N. Zhao, Suppressing interference and power allocation over the multi-cell MIMO-NOMA networks. IEEE Commun. Lett. 23 (8), 1397–1400 (2019)

A. Sharma, R.K. Jha, A comprehensive survey on security issues in 5G wireless communication network using beamforming approach. Wirel. Pers. Commun. 119 (4), 3447–3501 (2021)

H. Sharma, N. Kumar, R. Tekchandani, Physical layer security using beamforming techniques for 5G and beyond networks: a systematic review. Phys. Commun. 54 , 101791 (2022)

P.K. Sharma, D. Sharma, E.K. Kumari, T.S. Rao, Performance analysis of non-orthogonal multiple access over orthogonal multiple access, in Wireless Communication with Artificial Intelligence (CRC Press), pp. 273–293

M. Shehab, T. Khattab, M. Kucukvar, D. Trinchero, The role of 5g/6g networks in building sustainable and energy-efficient smart cities, in 2022 IEEE 7th International Energy Conference (ENERGYCON) (IEEE, 2022), pp. 1–7

R. Shen, X. Wang, Y. Xu, Beamforming design for uplink multi-cell MIMO-NOMA systems, in 2019 IEEE 5th International Conference on Computer and Communications (ICCC) (IEEE, 2019), pp. 2039–2043

Z. Shi, H. Wang, Y. Fu, G. Yang, S. Ma, F. Hou, T.A. Tsiftsis, Zero-forcing-based downlink virtual MIMO-NOMA communications in IoT networks. IEEE Internet Things J. 7 (4), 2716–2737 (2019)

W. Shin, M. Vaezi, B. Lee, D.J. Love, J. Lee, H.V. Poor, Coordinated beamforming for multi-cell MIMO-NOMA. IEEE Commun. Lett. 21 (1), 84–87 (2016)

W. Shin, M. Vaezi, B. Lee, D.J. Love, J. Lee, H.V. Poor, Non-orthogonal multiple access in multi-cell networks: theory, performance, and practical challenges. IEEE Commun. Mag. 55 (10), 176–183 (2017)

Y. Shobha, H. Rangaraju, Design of novel approach for emerging power-domain superposition coding (SC)-using hybrid NOMA-OFDM for 5G communications. Int. J. Intell. Unmanned Syst. (ahead-of-print) (2021)

Z. Si, H. Wan, T. Qin, Z. Wang, RIS-aided cell-free MIMO system: perfect and imperfect CSI design for energy efficiency. IEICE Trans. Commun. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1587/transcom.2022EBP3173

N.D. Sidiropoulos, T.N. Davidson, Z.Q. Luo, Transmit beamforming for physical-layer multicasting. IEEE Trans. Signal Process. 54 (6), 2239–2251 (2006)

G. Singh, A. Srivastava, V.A. Bohara, Z. Liu, Downlink performance of optical power domain NOMA for beyond 5G enabled V2X networks. IEEE Open J. Veh. Technol. 2 , 235–248 (2021)

S. Solanki, J. Park, I. Lee, On the performance of IRS-aided UAV networks with NOMA. IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 71 (8), 9038–9043 (2022)

A.B. Tambawal, R.M. Noor, R. Salleh, C. Chembe, M.H. Anisi, O. Michael, J. Lloret, Time division multiple access scheduling strategies for emerging vehicular ad hoc network medium access control protocols: a survey. Telecommun. Syst. 70 , 595–616 (2019)

M. Tian, Q. Zhang, S. Zhao, Q. Li, J. Qin, Robust beamforming in downlink MIMO NOMA networks using cutting-set method. IEEE Commun. Lett. 22 (3), 574–577 (2017)

H. Tran, V.H. Dang, D. Niyato, D.N. Cuong, N.C. Luong, C. So-In et al., Outage probability minimization in secure NOMA cognitive radio systems with UAV relay: a machine learning approach. IEEE Trans. Cogn. Commun. Netw. 9 (2), 435–451 (2022)

A. Tusha, S. Doğan, H. Arslan, A hybrid downlink NOMA with OFDM and OFDM-IM for beyond 5G wireless networks. IEEE Signal Process. Lett. 27 , 491–495 (2020)

B. Wang, L. Dai, Z. Wang, N. Ge, S. Zhou, Spectrum and energy-efficient beamspace MIMO-NOMA for millimeter-wave communications using lens antenna array. IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 35 (10), 2370–2382 (2017)

C.L. Wang, T.H. Liou, Improved modulation schemes for lattice-partition-based downlink non-orthogonal multiple access systems. IEEE Wirel. Commun. Lett. 9 (12), 2130–2134 (2020)

Q. Wang, T. Li, R. Feng, C. Yang, An efficient large resource-user scale SCMA codebook design method. IEEE Commun. Lett. 23 (10), 1787–1790 (2019)

F. Wei, W. Chen, Low complexity iterative receiver design for sparse code multiple access. IEEE Trans. Commun. 65 (2), 621–634 (2016)

C. Windpassinger, R.F. Fischer, T. Vencel, J.B. Huber, Precoding in multiantenna and multiuser communications. IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun. 3 (4), 1305–1316 (2004)

Y. Wu, L.P. Qian, Energy-efficient NOMA-enabled traffic offloading via dual-connectivity in small-cell networks. IEEE Commun. Lett. 21 (7), 1605–1608 (2017)

Y. Wu, Y. Song, T. Wang, L. Qian, T.Q. Quek, Non-orthogonal multiple access assisted federated learning via wireless power transfer: a cost-efficient approach. IEEE Trans. Commun. 70 (4), 2853–2869 (2022)

K. Xiao, S. Dai, H. Rutagemwa, B. Rong, L. Gong, M. Kadoch, A novel opportunistic NOMA scheme for 5G massive MIMO multicast communications, in 2017 IEEE 86th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC-Fall) (IEEE, 2017), pp. 1–5

Z. Xiao, Z. Han, A. Nallanathan, O.A. Dobre, B. Clerckx, J. Choi, C. He, W. Tong, Antenna array enabled space/air/ground communications and networking for 6G. IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 40 (10), 2773–2804 (2022)

Z. Xie, W. Yi, X. Wu, Y. Liu, A. Nallanathan, Modeling and coverage analysis for RIS-aided NOMA transmissions in heterogeneous networks. arXiv preprint arXiv:2104.13182 (2021)

L. Yang, Y. Liu, Y. Siu, Low complexity message passing algorithm for SCMA system. IEEE Commun. Lett. 20 (12), 2466–2469 (2016)

X. Yue, Y. Liu, Performance analysis of intelligent reflecting surface assisted NOMA networks. IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun. 21 (4), 2623–2636 (2021)

X. Yue, Z. Qin, Y. Liu, S. Kang, Y. Chen, A unified framework for non-orthogonal multiple access. IEEE Trans. Commun. 66 (11), 5346–5359 (2018)

C.H. Yuen, P. Amini, B. Farhang-Boroujeny, Single carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) for filter bank multicarrier communication systems, in 2010 Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Cognitive Radio Oriented Wireless Networks and Communications (IEEE, 2010), pp. 1–5

M. Zeeshan, K. Shahzad, M.U. Farooq, Noma-enabled cognitive communication based on hybrid narrowband/wideband SDR waveform, in 2022 3rd International Informatics and Software Engineering Conference (IISEC) (IEEE, 2022), pp. 1–6

M. Zeng, N.P. Nguyen, O.A. Dobre, H.V. Poor, Securing downlink massive MIMO-NOMA networks with artificial noise. IEEE J. Sel. Top. Signal Process. 13 (3), 685–699 (2019)

M. Zeng, A. Yadav, O.A. Dobre, G.I. Tsiropoulos, H.V. Poor, Capacity comparison between MIMO-NOMA and MIMO-OMA with multiple users in a cluster. IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 35 (10), 2413–2424 (2017)

Q. Zhang, Q. Li, J. Qin, Robust beamforming for nonorthogonal multiple-access systems in miso channels. IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 65 (12), 10231–10236 (2016)

S. Zhang, Z. Yang, M. Chen, D. Liu, K.K. Wong, H.V. Poor, Beamforming design for the performance optimization of intelligent reflecting surface assisted multicast MIMO networks. arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.07048 (2022)

Y. Zhang, K. Peng, X. Wang, J. Song, Performance analysis and code optimization of IDMA with 5G new radio LDPC code. IEEE Commun. Lett. 22 (8), 1552–1555 (2018)

Z. Zhang, J. Liu, Y. Li, Design and analysis of a multi-input multi-output system for high power based on improved magnetic coupling structure. Energies 15 (5), 1684 (2022)

Z. Zhang, H. Sun, R.Q. Hu, Downlink and uplink non-orthogonal multiple access in a dense wireless network. IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 35 (12), 2771–2784 (2017)

J. Zhao, Y. Liu, K.K. Chai, A. Nallanathan, Y. Chen, Z. Han, Spectrum allocation and power control for non-orthogonal multiple access in HetNets. IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun. 16 (9), 5825–5837 (2017)

Z. Zhao, W. Chen, An adaptive switching method for sum rate maximization in downlink MISO-NOMA systems, in GLOBECOM 2017-2017 IEEE Global Communications Conference (IEEE, 2017), pp. 1–6

B. Zheng, Q. Wu, R. Zhang, Intelligent reflecting surface-assisted multiple access with user pairing: NOMA or OMA? IEEE Commun. Lett. 24 (4), 753–757 (2020)

X. Zou, B. He, H. Jafarkhani, An analysis of two-user uplink asynchronous non-orthogonal multiple access systems. IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun. 18 (2), 1404–1418 (2019)

Download references

Acknowledgements

The Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR) at King Abdulaziz University (KAU), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has funded this project, under Grant No. (KEP-MSc: 63-135-1443).

The Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR) at King Abdulaziz University (KAU), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has funded this project, under grant no. (KEP-MSc: 63-135-1443).

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Faculty of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Hamdard University, Sharae Madinat Al-Hikmah, Karachi, 74600, Pakistan

Sadiq Ur Rehman & Anwaar Manzar

Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Usman Institute of Technology University (UITU), ST-13, Block-7, Gushan-e-Iqbal, Abu-Hasan Isphahani Road, Karachi, 75300, Pakistan

Jawwad Ahmad

Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, King Abdulaziz University, 21589, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Muhammad Moinuddin

Center of Excellence in Intelligent Engineering Systems (CEIES), King Abdulaziz University, 21589, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jawwad Ahmad .

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest.

Authors do not have any conflict of interest for the submitted work.

Code Availability

Code can be made available on request.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Rehman, S.U., Ahmad, J., Manzar, A. et al. Beamforming Techniques for MIMO-NOMA for 5G and Beyond 5G: Research Gaps and Future Directions. Circuits Syst Signal Process 43 , 1518–1548 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00034-023-02517-w

Download citation

Received : 05 March 2023

Revised : 12 September 2023

Accepted : 13 September 2023

Published : 02 November 2023

Issue Date : March 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s00034-023-02517-w

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Beamforming
• Heterogeneity
• Channel statistics
• Outage Probability
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research