Qualitative research
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Qualitative research is a type of research that aims to gather and analyse non-numerical (descriptive) data in order to gain an understanding of individuals' social reality, including understanding their attitudes, beliefs, and motivation. This type of research typically involves in-depth interviews,
focus group A focus group is a group interview involving a small number (sometimes up to ten) of demographically predefined participants. Their reactions to specific researcher/evaluator-posed questions are studied. Focus groups are used in market researc ...
s, or field observations in order to collect data that is rich in detail and context. Qualitative research is often used to explore complex phenomena or to gain insight into people's experiences and perspectives on a particular topic. It is particularly useful when researchers want to understand the meaning that people attach to their experiences or when they want to uncover the underlying reasons for people's behavior. Qualitative methods include
ethnography Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. It explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining ...
, grounded theory,
discourse analysis Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is an approach to the analysis of written, spoken, or sign language, including any significant semiotic event. The objects of discourse analysis (discourse, writing, conversation, communicative sy ...
, and interpretative phenomenological analysis. Qualitative research methods have been used in
sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...
,
anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...
,
political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...
,
psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...
,
communication studies Communication studies (or communication science) is an academic discipline that deals with processes of human communication and behavior, patterns of communication in interpersonal relationships, social interactions and communication in differ ...
, social work, folklore, educational research, information science and
software engineering Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining Application software, software applications. It involves applying engineering design process, engineering principl ...
research.


Background

Qualitative research has been informed by several strands of philosophical thought and examines aspects of human life, including culture, expression, beliefs, morality, life stress, and imagination.Wertz, Charmaz, McMullen. "Five Ways of Doing Qualitative Analysis: Phenomenological Psychology, Grounded Theory, Discourse Analysis, Narrative Research, and Intuitive Inquiry". 16-18. The Guilford Press: March 30, 2011. 1st ed. Print. Contemporary qualitative research has been influenced by a number of branches of
philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
, for example,
positivism Positivism is a philosophical school that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positivemeaning '' a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. Gerber, ''Soci ...
, postpositivism, critical theory, and constructivism.Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). "Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions, and emerging influences" In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), ''The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research'' (3rd ed.), pp. 191-215. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. The historical transitions or 'moments' in qualitative research, together with the notion of 'paradigms' (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005), have received widespread popularity over the past decades. However, some scholars have argued that the adoptions of paradigms may be counterproductive and lead to less philosophically engaged communities.


Approaches to inquiry

The use of nonquantitative material as empirical data has been growing in many areas of the
social science Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the ...
s, including
pedagogy Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken ...
, development psychology and cultural psychology. Several philosophical and psychological traditions have influenced investigators' approaches to qualitative research, including
phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (Peirce), a branch of philosophy according to Charles Sanders Peirce (1839� ...
,
social constructionism Social constructionism is a term used in sociology, social ontology, and communication theory. The term can serve somewhat different functions in each field; however, the foundation of this Conceptual framework, theoretical framework suggests ...
,
symbolic interactionism Symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that develops from practical considerations and alludes to humans' particular use of shared language to create common symbols and meanings, for use in both intra- and interpersonal communication. ...
, and
positivism Positivism is a philosophical school that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positivemeaning '' a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. Gerber, ''Soci ...
.


Philosophical traditions

Phenomenology refers to the philosophical study of the structure of an individual's consciousness and general subjective experience. Approaches to qualitative research based on constructionism, such as grounded theory, pay attention to how the subjectivity of both the researcher and the study participants can affect the theory that develops out of the research. The symbolic interactionist approach to qualitative research examines how individuals and groups develop an understanding of the world. Traditional positivist approaches to qualitative research seek a more objective understanding of the social world. Qualitative researchers have also been influenced by the
sociology of knowledge The sociology of knowledge is the study of the relationship between human thought, the social context within which it arises, and the effects that prevailing ideas have on societies. It is not a specialized area of sociology. Instead, it deals w ...
and the work of Alfred Schütz, Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann, and Harold Garfinkel.


Sources of data

Qualitative researchers use different sources of data to understand the topic they are studying. These data sources include interview transcripts, videos of social interactions, notes, verbal reports and artifacts such as books or works of art. The case study method exemplifies qualitative researchers' preference for depth, detail, and context. Data
triangulation In trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by forming triangles to the point from known points. Applications In surveying Specifically in surveying, triangulation involves only angle m ...
is also a strategy used in qualitative research. Autoethnography, the study of self, is a qualitative research method in which the researcher uses his or her personal experience to understand an issue. Grounded theory is an inductive type of research, based on ("grounded" in) a very close look at the empirical observations a study yields. Thematic analysis involves analyzing patterns of meaning. Conversation analysis is primarily used to analyze spoken conversations. Biographical research is concerned with the reconstruction of life histories, based on biographical narratives and documents. Narrative inquiry studies the
narrative A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether non-fictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller ...
s that people use to describe their experience.


Data collection

Qualitative researchers may gather information through observations, note-taking, interviews, focus groups (group interviews), documents, images and artifacts.


Interviews

Research interviews are an important method of data collection in qualitative research. An interviewer is usually a professional or paid researcher, sometimes trained, who poses questions to the interviewee, in an alternating series of usually brief questions and answers, to elicit information. Compared to something like a written survey, qualitative interviews allow for a significantly higher degree of intimacy, with participants often revealing personal information to their interviewers in a real-time, face-to-face setting. As such, this technique can evoke an array of significant feelings and experiences within those being interviewed. Sociologists Bredal, Stefansen and Bjørnholt identified three "participant orientations", that they described as "telling for oneself", "telling for others" and "telling for the researcher". They also proposed that these orientations implied "different ethical contracts between the participant and researcher".


Participant observation

In participant observation ethnographers get to understand a culture by directly participating in the activities of the culture they study. Participant observation extends further than ethnography and into other fields, including psychology. For example, by training to be an EMT and becoming a participant observer in the lives of EMTs, Palmer studied how EMTs cope with the stress associated with some of the gruesome emergencies they deal with.


Recursivity

In qualitative research, the idea of recursivity refers to the emergent nature of research design. In contrast to standardized research methods, recursivity embodies the idea that the qualitative researcher can change a study's design during the
data collection Data collection or data gathering is the process of gathering and measuring information on targeted variables in an established system, which then enables one to answer relevant questions and evaluate outcomes. Data collection is a research com ...
phase. Recursivity in qualitative research procedures contrasts to the methods used by scientists who conduct
experiment An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs whe ...
s. From the perspective of the scientist, data collection, data analysis, discussion of the data in the context of the research literature, and drawing conclusions should be each undertaken once (or at most a small number of times). In qualitative research however, data are collected repeatedly until one or more specific stopping conditions are met, reflecting a nonstatic attitude to the planning and design of research activities. An example of this dynamism might be when the qualitative researcher unexpectedly changes their research focus or design midway through a study, based on their first interim data analysis. The researcher can even make further unplanned changes based on another interim data analysis. Such an approach would not be permitted in an experiment. Qualitative researchers would argue that recursivity in developing the relevant evidence enables the researcher to be more open to unexpected results and emerging new constructs.


Data analysis

Qualitative researchers have a number of analytic strategies available to them.


Coding

In general, coding refers to the act of associating meaningful ideas with the data of interest. In the context of qualitative research, interpretative aspects of the coding process are often explicitly recognized and articulated; coding helps to produce specific words or short phrases believed to be useful
abstraction Abstraction is a process where general rules and concepts are derived from the use and classifying of specific examples, literal (reality, real or Abstract and concrete, concrete) signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstraction" ...
s from the data.


Pattern thematic analysis

Data may be sorted into patterns for thematic analyses as the primary basis for organizing and reporting the study findings.


Content analysis

According to Krippendorf, "Content analysis is a research technique for making replicable and valid inference from data to their context" (p. 21). It is applied to documents and written and oral communication. Content analysis is an important building block in the conceptual analysis of qualitative data. It is frequently used in sociology. For example, content analysis has been applied to research on such diverse aspects of human life as changes in perceptions of race over time, the lifestyles of contractors, and even reviews of automobiles.


Issues


Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS)

Contemporary qualitative data analyses can be supported by computer programs (termed computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software).Silver, C., & Lewins, A. F. (2014). Computer-assisted analysis of qualitative research. In P. Leavy (Ed.), ''The Oxford handbook of qualitative research''. (pp. 606–638). Oxford University Press. These programs have been employed with ''or'' without detailed hand coding or labeling. Such programs do not supplant the interpretive nature of coding. The programs are aimed at enhancing analysts' efficiency at applying, retrieving, and storing the codes generated from reading the data. Many programs enhance efficiency in editing and revising codes, which allow for more effective work sharing, peer review, data examination, and analysis of large datasets. Common qualitative data analysis software includes: * ATLAS.ti * Dedoose (mixed methods) * MAXQDA (mixed methods) * NVivo * QDA MINER A criticism of quantitative coding approaches is that such coding sorts qualitative data into predefined ( nomothetic) categories that are reflective of the categories found in objective science. The variety, richness, and individual characteristics of the qualitative data are reduced or, even, lost. To defend against the criticism that qualitative approaches to data are too subjective, qualitative researchers assert that by clearly articulating their definitions of the codes they use and linking those codes to the underlying data, they preserve some of the richness that might be lost if the results of their research boiled down to a list of predefined categories. Qualitative researchers also assert that their procedures are repeatable, which is an idea that is valued by quantitatively oriented researchers. Sometimes researchers rely on computers and their software to scan and reduce large amounts of qualitative data. At their most basic level, numerical coding schemes rely on counting words and phrases within a dataset; other techniques involve the analysis of phrases and exchanges in analyses of conversations. A computerized approach to data analysis can be used to aid content analysis, especially when there is a large corpus to unpack.


Trustworthiness

A central issue in qualitative research is trustworthiness (also known as credibility or, in quantitative studies, validity).Lincoln, Y. & Guba, E. G. (1985) ''Naturalistic Inquiry''. Newbury Park, CA:Sage Publications. There are many ways of establishing trustworthiness, including member check, interviewer corroboration, peer debriefing, prolonged engagement, negative case analysis, auditability, confirmability, bracketing, and balance. Data triangulation and eliciting examples of interviewee accounts are two of the most commonly used methods of establishing the trustworthiness of qualitative studies. Transferability of results has also been considered as an indicator of validity.


Limitations of qualitative research

Qualitative research is not without limitations. These limitations include participant reactivity, the potential for a qualitative investigator to over-identify with one or more study participants, "the impracticality of the Glaser-Strauss idea that hypotheses arise from data unsullied by prior expectations," the inadequacy of qualitative research for testing cause-effect hypotheses, and the Baconian character of qualitative research.Schonfeld, I.S., & Mazzola, J.J. (2013). Strengths and limitations of qualitative approaches to research in occupational health psychology. In R. Sinclair, M. Wang, & L. Tetrick (Eds.), ''Research methods in occupational health psychology: State of the art in measurement, design, and data analysis'' (pp. 268-289). New York: Routledge. Participant reactivity refers to the fact that people often behave differently when they know they are being observed. Over-identifying with participants refers to a sympathetic investigator studying a group of people and ascribing, more than is warranted, a virtue or some other characteristic to one or more participants. Compared to qualitative research, experimental research and certain types of nonexperimental research (e.g., prospective studies), although not perfect, are better means for drawing cause-effect conclusions. Glaser and Strauss,Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1967). ''The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research''. Chicago: Aldine. influential members of the qualitative research community, pioneered the idea that theoretically important categories and hypotheses can emerge "naturally" from the observations a qualitative researcher collects, provided that the researcher is not guided by preconceptions. The ethologist David Katz wrote "a hungry animal divides the environment into edible and inedible things....Generally speaking, objects change...according to the needs of the animal."
Karl Popper Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian–British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the ...
carrying forward Katz's point wrote that "objects can be classified and can become similar or dissimilar, only in this way--by being related to needs and interests. This rule applied not only to animals but also to scientists." Popper made clear that observation is always selective, based on past research and the investigators' goals and motives and that preconceptionless research is impossible. The Baconian character of qualitative research refers to the idea that a qualitative researcher can collect enough observations such that categories and hypotheses will emerge from the data. Glaser and Strauss developed the idea of theoretical sampling by way of collecting observations until ''theoretical saturation'' is obtained and no additional observations are required to understand the character of the individuals under study.
Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic ...
suggested that there can be no orderly arrangement of observations such that a hypothesis will jump out of those ordered observations; some provisional hypothesis usually guides the collection of observations.


In psychology


Community psychology

Autobiographical narrative research has been conducted in the field of community psychology. A selection of autobiographical narratives of community psychologists can be found in the book ''Six Community Psychologists Tell Their Stories: History, Contexts, and Narrative''.


Educational psychology

Edwin Farrell used qualitative methods to understand the social reality of at-risk high school students. Later he used similar methods to understand the reality of successful high school students who came from the same neighborhoods as the at-risk students he wrote about in his previously mentioned book.


Health psychology

In the field of health psychology, qualitative methods have become increasingly employed in research on understanding health and illness and how health and illness are socially constructed in everyday life. Since then, a broad range of qualitative methods have been adopted by health psychologists, including
discourse analysis Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is an approach to the analysis of written, spoken, or sign language, including any significant semiotic event. The objects of discourse analysis (discourse, writing, conversation, communicative sy ...
, thematic analysis, narrative analysis, and interpretative phenomenological analysis. In 2015, the journal '' Health Psychology'' published a special issue on qualitative research.


Industrial and organizational psychology

According to Doldor and colleagues organizational psychologists extensively use qualitative research "during the design and implementation of activities like organizational change, training needs analyses, strategic reviews, and employee development plans."


Occupational health psychology

Although research in the field of occupational health psychology (OHP) has predominantly been quantitatively oriented, some OHP researchers have employed qualitative methods. Qualitative research efforts, if directed properly, can provide advantages for quantitatively oriented OHP researchers. These advantages include help with (1) theory and hypothesis development, (2) item creation for surveys and interviews, (3) the discovery of stressors and coping strategies not previously identified, (4) interpreting difficult-to-interpret quantitative findings, (5) understanding why some stress-reduction interventions fail and others succeed, and (6) providing rich descriptions of the lived lives of people at work. Some OHP investigators have united qualitative and quantitative methods within a single study (e.g., Elfering et al., 005; these investigators have used qualitative methods to assess job stressors that are difficult to ascertain using standard measures and well validated standardized instruments to assess coping behaviors and dependent variables such as mood.


Social media psychology

Since the advent of social media in the early 2000s, formerly private accounts of personal experiences have become widely shared with the public by millions of people around the world. Disclosures are often made openly, which has contributed to social media's key role in movements like the #metoo movement. The abundance of self-disclosure on social media has presented an unprecedented opportunity for qualitative and mixed methods researchers; mental health problems can now be investigated qualitatively more widely, at a lower cost, and with no intervention by the researchers. To take advantage of these data, researchers need to have mastered the tools for conducting qualitative research.


Academic journals

* Consumption Markets & Culture *
Journal of Consumer Research The ''Journal of Consumer Research'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on the psychological aspects of consumer behavior. It was established in 1974 and originally published by University of Chicago Press. Since 2015 ...
* '' Qualitative Inquiry'' * '' Qualitative Market Research'' * '' Qualitative Research'' * ''The Qualitative Report''


See also

* Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) * * * * * * * *


References


Further reading

* Adler, P. A. & Adler, P. (1987). : context and meaning in social inquiry / edited by Richard Jessor, Anne Colby, and Richard A. Shweder * Baškarada, S. (2014) "Qualitative Case Study Guidelines", in ''The Qualitative Report'', 19(40): 1-25. Available fro

* * Creswell, J. W. (2003). ''Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method approaches.'' Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. * Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2000). ''Handbook of qualitative research ( 2nd ed.)''. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. * Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2011). ''The SAGE Handbook of qualitative research ( 4th ed.)''. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. * DeWalt, K. M. & DeWalt, B. R. (2002). ''Participant observation''. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. * Fischer, C.T. (Ed.) (2005). ''Qualitative research methods for psychologists: Introduction through empirical studies''. Academic Press. . * Franklin, M. I. (2012),
Understanding Research: Coping with the Quantitative-Qualitative Divide
. London/New York. Routledge * Giddens, A. (1990). ''The consequences of modernity''. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. * Gubrium, J. F. and J. A. Holstein. (2000). "The New Language of Qualitative Method." New York: Oxford University Press. * Gubrium, J. F. and J. A. Holstein (2009). "Analyzing Narrative Reality." Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. * Gubrium, J. F. and J. A. Holstein, eds. (2000). "Institutional Selves: Troubled Identities in a Postmodern World." New York: Oxford University Press. * Hammersley, M. (2008) ''Questioning Qualitative Inquiry'', London, Sage. * Hammersley, M. (2013) ''What is qualitative research?'', London, Bloomsbury. * Holliday, A. R. (2007). ''Doing and Writing Qualitative Research, 2nd Edition''. London: Sage Publications * Holstein, J. A. and J. F. Gubrium, eds. (2012). "Varieties of Narrative Analysis." Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. * Kaminski, Marek M. (2004). ''Games Prisoners Play''.
Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...
. . * * Malinowski, B. (1922/1961). ''Argonauts of the Western Pacific''. New York: E. P. Dutton. * Miles, M. B. & Huberman, A. M. (1994). ''Qualitative Data Analysis''. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. * Pamela Maykut, Richard Morehouse. 1994 Beginning Qualitative Research. Falmer Press. * Pernecky, T. (2016)
Epistemology and Metaphysics for Qualitative Research
London, UK: Sage Publications. * Patton, M. Q. (2002). ''Qualitative research & evaluation methods ( 3rd ed.)''. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. * Pawluch D. & Shaffir W. & Miall C. (2005). ''Doing Ethnography: Studying Everyday Life''. Toronto, ON Canada: Canadian Scholars' Press. * Racino, J. (1999). Policy, Program Evaluation and Research in Disability: Community Support for All." New York, NY: Haworth Press (now Routledge imprint, Francis and Taylor, 2015). * Ragin, C. C. (1994). ''Constructing Social Research: The Unity and Diversity of Method'', Pine Forge Press, * Riessman, Catherine K. (1993). "Narrative Analysis." Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. * Rosenthal, Gabriele (2018)
''Interpretive Social Research''. ''An Introduction''
Göttingen, Germany: Universitätsverlag Göttingen. * Savin-Baden, M. and Major, C. (2013). "Qualitative research: The essential guide to theory and practice." London, Rutledge. * Silverman, David, (ed), (2011), "Qualitative Research: Issues of Theory, Method and Practice". Third Edition. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi, Sage Publications * Stebbins, Robert A. (2001) ''Exploratory Research in the Social Sciences''. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. * Taylor, Steven J., Bogdan, Robert, ''Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods'', Wiley, 1998, * Van Maanen, J. (1988) Tales of the field: on writing ethnography, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. * Wolcott, H. F. (1995). ''The art of fieldwork''. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. * Wolcott, H. F. (1999). ''Ethnography: A way of seeing''. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. * Ziman, John (2000). ''Real Science: what it is, and what it means''. Cambridge, Uk:
Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...
.


External links


''Qualitative Philosophy''C.Wright Mills, On intellectual Craftsmanship, The Sociological Imagination,1959Participant Observation, ''Qualitative research methods: a Data collector's field guide''''Analyzing and Reporting Qualitative Market Research''Overview of available QDA Software


Videos

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