Qualitative Research

• James P. Spradley: '"I want to understand the world from your point of view. I want to know what you know in the way you know it. I want to understand the meaning of your experience, to walk in your shoes, to feel things as you feel them, to explain things as you explain them. Will you become my teacher and help me understand?"'
• Qualitative Research
• Qualitative Research

  • A way of understanding subjective realities or psychological phenomena
  • A framework, an interpretative frame
  • A lens
  • Often helps us see why something is the way it is, rather than just presenting a phenomenon
• Quantitative research has features such as uses numerical indices to summarize/describe, explores relationships among traits
• Qualitative research has features such as reliance on control, statistics, measurements, uses verbal descriptions (rather than statistical report), has emphasis on studies in natural setting
• Quantitative Hypothesis Testing

  Describes, explains, predicts, controls, establishes facts about phenomena via numerical data
• Qualitative Hypothesis Generating

  Explains, explores, discovers, constructs, develops understanding and gains insight of a phenomena via collection of narrative data
• Quantitative Hypothesis Testing

  Confirmatory or top down, tests hypothesis and theory
• Qualitative Hypothesis Generating

  Exploratory or bottom-up, generates new hypothesis and theory
• Quantitative Research Design Steps

  • Formulation of research hypothesis to be tested
  • Operationalize independent and dependent variables
  • Use appropriate statistical tool for data analysis
• Qualitative Research Design Steps

  • Formulation of research focus to be investigated
  • Narrative interview, talk and text, scripts, photos, journal entries for data collection
  • Coding and identifying patterns in the data
• Researcher in Quantitative Research

  Independent, uninvolved, results are objective
• Researcher in Qualitative Research

  Involved, results are subjective
• Quantitative Research Design

  Structured, predetermined, formal, specific
• Qualitative Research Design

  Evolving or emerging, flexible, informal, general
• Coding


  A word or phrase that symbolically assigns a summative, salient attribute that captures the essence of a language or visual data
• Qualitative Data Analysis

  1. Read through data to obtain general sense

  2. Prepare data for analysis (e.g. transcribe fieldnotes)

  3. Code the data (locate text segments and assign codes)

  4. Identify patterns and themes in the coded data
• Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis


  • Focus on understanding the meaning of human experience
  • Objective is to understand what personal and social experiences mean to those people who experience them
  • Ask participants to describe events, emotions, relationships they have
  • Unit of study is experiential account
• Trustworthiness in Qualitative Research

  • Confirmability (objectivity) through triangulation, member checking, researcher reflexivity
  • Dependability (reliability) through dependability audits, consensus meetings, peer debriefing, bracketing
  • Transferability (external validity/generalizability) through thick description, data saturation
• Qualitative writing becomes an unfolding story where the writer makes sense of the data and their role in the research
• Unlike quantitative work, the meaning in qualitative work is in the entire text and the voice/person of the researcher as writer
• Usual Writing Structure for Qualitative Research

  • Abstract
  • Introduction and Rationale
  • Literature Review
  • Methodology
  • Findings
  • Conclusions and Recommendations
• Introduction in Qualitative Research

  Provides preliminary background, clarifies focus, specifies aims and objectives, points out value of research
• Literature Review in Qualitative Research

  Evidence that the researcher is well-informed, indicates the framework, indicates what was learned from previous research and how the current research positions itself
• Delayed Literature Review in Qualitative Research

  Literature is introduced towards the end of the study rather than at the beginning, except for necessary 'nesting' of the problem in the introduction
• Discussion in Qualitative Research

  Justifies/explains the themes via responses with references to previous literature or theory, illustrates the analytical process
• Conclusions in Qualitative Research

  Recapitulates purpose and findings, relates to previous research, acknowledges limitations, discusses problems arising, outlines implications and recommendations, reflects on the researcher's contribution
• Harper Lee: 'You never understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.'