Qualitative Research Methods

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Qualitative Research Methods

• Communication Research
• Week 12

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Who uses qualitative methods?

• Philosophers
• Psychologists
• Sociologists
• Anthropologists
• Students of literature
• Historians
• anyone who finds the methods of the physical
  sciences inappropriate for understanding human
  realities

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Why qualitative methods?

• Not everything that can be counted counts, and
  not everything that counts can be counted.
• Albert Einstein

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Varieties of Qualitative Methods

• Sources of data can include
• Ones own immediate experience
• Others experiences that can be sought to be
  understood via
• their speaking or writing
• their other behaviours
• their other products technology, artwork,
  footprints etc

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Qualitative Methods

• provide in-depth descriptions
• study things in natural settings
• from the individuals perspective
• complexity
• in-depth examination of a number of issues
• contextual
• situational and environmental concerns specific
  to people

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Myths and Realities of Qualitative Research

• Qualitative research
• is not as reliable as
• takes more time than
• does not involve numbers like
• is generalisable unlike
• is subjective unlike
• is not as systematic as
• quantitative research

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Why do some researchers prefer qualitative
methods?

• Ethical concerns about manipulation
• Reliance on measurement a concern
• Issue of control in quantitative methods
• Concern on quantitative tendency to reductionism
• Concern that experimental methods are
  deterministic

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Some types of qualitative research methods

• Historical
• Survey
• Case Study
• Participant Observation
• Ethnography
• Phenomenological
• Interviews

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Historical Research

• Studies available data to study, understand, and
  interpret past events
• Uses primary, secondary and tertiary data sources
• Art or science?
• Interpretation can change over time and
  according to political, social and philosophical
  perspectives ie historical revisionism
• was Australia discovered or invaded?
• C19th Colonialism and the White Mans Burden

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Views of history

• History is the record of progress
• History is the study of class conflict Marx
• History is bunk Henry Ford
• History is the story of great figures
• History is the study of everyday life

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What is history?

• These so-called facts which are the the same for
  all historians, commonly belong to the category
  of raw materials of the historian rather than of
  history itself The necessity to establish these
  basic facts rests not with any quality in the
  facts themselves, but on an a priori decision
  of the historian

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What is history? continued

• It used to be said that facts speak for
  themselves. This is, of course untrue. The facts
  speak only when the historian calls on them it
  is he who decides to which facts to give the
  floor, and in what order or context. E.H. Carr
  (1961,5) What is history?

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Potential problems of historical research

• Limited to data already available
• Excessive reliance on secondary sources
• Uncertainty about authenticity and/or accuracy of
  sources
• Lack of objectivity
• Need to find patterns/weave a narrative

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Case Studies

• Pioneered by Sigmund Freud case of Anna O
• Examine the characteristics of a particular
  entity, phenomenon, or person
• Focus is on a single subject or unit (could be
  multiple individuals)
• A rich account of a phenomenon not available by
  other means

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Problems with case studies

• Limited generalisability
• Deep but not broad
• What you see is not always what you get
• Researchers notes may only reflect one reality
• Observer (researcher) bias
• Cause-effect links difficult to validate
• Need for extensive data collection

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Ethnographic Research

• studies cultural patterns and perspectives of
  participants in their natural settings
• describes and analyses practices and beliefs of
  cultures and communities
• guided by theory anthropology, education,
  psychology
• understand the culture from insider and outsider
  perspective
• focus on behaviors, ideas, beliefs, knowledge,
  etc

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Phenomenological Research

• considers how the experience of particular
  participants exhibits a unique perspective
• aims to understand and describe an event from the
  point of view of the participant
• subjective experience is the centre of the
  inquiry
• researcher does not make assumptions about
  reality that is outside of the individual

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Unstructured Interviews

• Interaction between researcher and person(s) of
  interest
• Guiding questions but no formal structured
  instrument or protocol
• Interviewer moves conversation in direction of
  responses
• Need to tape record the interviews
• Consent forms for tape recording

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Focus Groups

• group interviews that rely on the interaction
  within the group
• designed to elicit more of the participants
  points of view
• interested in how individuals perceive a problem

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Focus Groups

• exchange of ideas of how to interpret key terms
  or differences are resolved and consensus is
  built
• systematic variation across groups
• variations in
• ordering of questions
• background traits of participants
• homogenous groups vs heterogeneous groups
• compare responses of individuals who meet several
  times

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Grounded Theory Glaser Strauss 1960s

• method for developing grounded theory is based on
  data that are systematically gathered and
  analysed
• theoretical propositions are not stated at the
  beginning
• generalisations (theory) comes from the data and
  not before data collection

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Grounded Theory

• emerging theory is grounded in the current
  project
• constant comparative method
• researcher interprets the data and uses it to
  generate theory
• must verify the hypotheses that emerge from the
  study

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Key Features of Grounded Theory

• constant interaction with data to identify
  possible theories relate to the study
• select incidents that seems to reflect the
  emerging theory ask more questions that will
  fill in the gaps
• coding techniques to help organize the
  information

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Finally general characteristics of qualitative
research...

• Data sources are real-world situations
• Data are descriptive
• Emphasizes a holistic approach (processes and
  outcomes)
• Data analysis is inductive
• Describes the meaning(s) of research finding(s)
  from the perspective of the research participants

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The general characteristics of qualitative
research...

• Involves developing generalisations from a
  limited number of observations or experiences
• Highly dependant upon the representativeness of
  the specific observations used to make the
  generalisation

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The last word on qualitative methods from a
famous researcher

• Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will
  learn nothing from experimental psychology. He
  would be better advised to abandon exact science,
  put away his scholars gown, bid farewell to his
  study, and wander with human heart through the
  world. There in the horror of prisons, lunatic
  asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in
  brothels and gambling hells in the salons of the
  elegant

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Last word continued

• the Stock Exchange, socialist meetings,
  churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic
  sects, through love and hate, through the
  experience of passion in every form of his own
  body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge
  than text books a foot thick could give him, and
  he will know how to doctor the sick with the real
  knowledge of the human soul. Carl Jung