lesson 3-4

• Qualitative research puts high value on people's thinking or point of view conditioned by their personal traits
• Characteristics of Qualitative Research:

  • Involves human understanding and interpretation
  • Active, powerful, and forceful with continuous changes
  • Utilizes multiple research approaches and methods
  • Specificity to generalization following an inductive or scientific method of thinking
  • Involves contextualization to understand all variables affecting the study
  • Prefers diversified data collection in real-life situations
  • Abounds with words and visuals in data gathering and analysis
  • Focuses on internal analysis of subject individuals' traits and perceptions
• Types of Qualitative Research:

  • Case study: long-term study of a person, group, organization, or situation to understand reasons behind occurrences
  • Ethnography: study of a cultural group to understand its organizational set-up and lifestyle
  • Phenomenology: study of how people find experiences meaningful
  • Content and Discourse Analysis: analysis of communication modes used by individuals or groups
  • Historical analysis: examination of primary documents to understand past events
  • Grounded theory: discovery of a new theory during data collection and analysis
• Advantages of qualitative research:

  • Naturalistic approach to subject matter
  • Full understanding of human behavior traits in natural settings
  • Instrumental for positive societal changes
  • Fosters respect for people's individuality
  • Aids in understanding and interpreting social interactions
  • Increases researcher's interest in the study by including personal experiences in data interpretation
  • Offers multiple ways of acquiring and examining knowledge
• Disadvantages of qualitative research:

  • Involves researcher's subjectivity in data analysis
  • Difficulty in determining data validity and reliability
  • Open-ended questions leading to data overload and lengthy analysis
  • Time-consuming nature
  • Results heavily dependent on researcher's views or interpretation
• Qualitative research in different areas of knowledge:

  • Positive or scientific research emphasizes measurable and observable facts, used in hard sciences and natural sciences
  • Naturalistic research focuses on personal views, attitudes, thoughts, and emotions in a natural setting, prevalent in social sciences and humanistic categories like literature, art criticism, philosophical research, and historical research