Topic 2 - Qualitative Methods

• Unstructured Interviews


  Interviews that are not restricted to set questions, allowing the researcher to pursue what they see fit / interesting
• Pros of Unstructured Interviews


  • A rapport can be built between subject and interviewer which allows the opportunity to clarify meanings and explore key topics more
  • This relationship may help the subject to open up more about sensitive topics
  • Flexibility – not restricted to set questions. It allows the researcher to pursue what they see fit / interesting. This is useful to study subjects we know little about
• Cons of Unstructured Interviews


  • Requires training
  • Time-consuming
  • Produce large amounts of data – difficult to analyse
• Ethical Issues with Unstructured Interviews


  • The interview situation may make individuals feel pressured to answer questions
  • Sensitive topics can risk psychological harm
  • Informed consent needs to be gained prior to interview
  • Need to guarantee anonymity, and make it clear they have the right to not answer any questions
• Theoretical Pros of Unstructured Interviews


  • Produces valid data – through involvement, getting close to people's experiences and meanings
  • Grounded theory – building up and modifying our hypothesis during the actual course of the research itself, useful for investigating unfamiliar subjects
  • Interviewee's view – freedom to raise issues and discuss what's important to them, and reveal the interviewer's true meanings
• Theoretical Cons of Unstructured Interviews


  • Not reliable – as not standardised
  • Cannot be easily quantified – open-ended Qs used
  • Lacks validity – rapport + qual. data collected
• Feminist Theoretical Perspective on Unstructured Interviews


  • Many feminists reject use of structured interviews as they regard them as 'masculine' and positivistic
  • Committed to taking women's side and aims to give voice to their experiences to free them from oppression
  • The researcher must become involved with, not detached from, the women's lives they study
  • The relationship between the researcher and subjects are equal rather than hierarchical
• Feminist Researcher - Ann Oakley


  • Used unstructured interviewing of 178 women about motherhood
  • Helped out herself around their houses, shared experiences of her own life and viewed many as friends
  • Wanted the research to help their anxieties and many said her collaborative and supportive role helped with this
  • Many provided her with further information she hadn't asked for voluntarily
• Ray Pawson (1992): There is nothing distinctively 'Feminist' about Oakley's techniques. She just has a vendetta against Positivism.
• Participant Observation


  Involves the researcher living as a member of a group to understand the experiences of the individuals well
• Pros of Participant Observation


  • Insight: by living as a member of a group, you can understand the experiences of the individuals well
  • Getting in: groups may be suspicious of outsiders interviewing them, observing is the best way to research
  • Flexibility: Whyte "I learned answers to questions that I would not have had the sense to ask if I had been using interviews"
• Cons of Participant Observation


  • Getting in: gaining access may be difficult e.g. for a criminal gang. The researcher's age, gender, class or ethnicity may be an obstacle to gaining access
  • Time consuming
  • Expensive: intensive training
  • Covert observations: difficult to record findings
• Ethical Issues with Participant Observation


  • Covert PO raises ethical issue of deceiving people
  • Researchers may have to lie to leave the group or they may simply abandon the group – which is seen as unethical
  • May have to participate in immoral or illegal activities as part of their 'role'
  • PO researcher risks 'going native' which may mean they for e.g. withhold info from police
  • Non-participant avoids most ethical issues but covert non-participant 'spying' without knowledge/consent
• Theoretical Pros of Participant Observation


  • Validity through involvement: gaining an understanding of people's lived experiences; representative of reality as researcher is involved
  • Flexibility and grounded theory: researcher can study unfamiliar situations, groups or cultures and can develop/modify ideas, producing grounded theory
• Theoretical Cons of Participant Observation


  • Representativeness: the group studied is usually very small and the 'sample' is usually selected accidently, by encountering someone who allows you to gain access
  • Going native: over-identify or getting too involved can lead to being biassed / lacking objectivity. Researchers may develop loyalty, choosing not to publish aspects
  • Hawthorne effect: this applies to overt observations, individuals may alter their behaviour
  • Ignore macro-scale: because observations focus on micro-scale interactions, structural forces (macro-scale) that shape our behaviour, such as class inequality, are ignored
  • Reliability: unsystematic and not a standardised scientific measuring instrument. Comparisons with other studies are also difficult due to the qualitative data produced
• Documents


  Existing information gathered by others, used by researchers
• Pros of using Documents


  • Free or cheap as someone else has already gathered the information
  • Using existing documents saves the researcher time
• Cons of using Documents


  • Individuals and organisations create documents for their own purposes, not the sociologist's
• There are rare ethical problems such as using unpublished documents will require concealing the identity of an organisation.
• Theoretical Pros of using Documents


  • There is validity for example, diaries and letters give us an insight into an individual's meanings and their reality
  • Avoids the Hawthorne effect: would be the authentic view of the author, no influence from the researcher as they are not present
• Theoretical Cons of using Documents


  • Lack credibility for example, politicians may write diaries which are self-serving, glossing over their mistakes
  • Be misinterpreted by sociologists, especially if the documents are in a foreign language or written a long-time ago
  • Documents are not reliable because they are all unique accounts, for example, everyone will most likely have a different account of an experience of the same war
  • Documents are unrepresentative of all groups, for example illiterate individuals may not keep diaries. Not all documents are available e.g. for the first 30 years
• Content Analysis


  A method for dealing with the contents of documents, especially those produced by the mass media
• Types of Content Analysis


  • Thematic Analysis - Involves in-depth analysis of a small number of cases. Aims to reveal the underlying meanings that have been 'encoded' in the documents, as a way of uncovering the author's ideological bias. However it is criticised for being unrepresentative and unscientific
  • Formal Content Analysis - Allows for the qualitative data to be turned into quantitative data by coding and counting the number of times a certain concept (from decided categories) appears. Attractive to positivists and feminists, however criticised by interpretivists due to lack of validity
• Interpretivists are more likely to use Qualitative methods such as Participant Observation, Unstructured Interviews and Personal Documents due to their rich, valid data output which allows them to get as close as possible to the experiences of actors.
• Positivists would be much less likely to use a Qualitative technique due to they feel the methods are TOO flexible, subjective and biassed. They lack reliability and representativeness.