AN OVERVIEW OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
By: Ignasia Yuyun
Denzin and Lincoln (1994) defined qualitative research as multi-method in focus, involving an interpretive, naturalistic approach to its subject matter. This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of or interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. Qualitative research involves the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical materials case study, personal experience, introspective, life story interview, observational, historical, interactional, and visual texts-that describe routine and problematic moments and meaning in individuals' lives.
According to Cresswell (1994), qualitative research is an inquiry process of understanding based on distinct methodological traditions of inquiry that explore a social or human problem. The researcher builds a complex, holistic picture, analyzes words, reports detailed views of informants, and conducts the study in a natural setting.
A. Qualitative Research Paradigms
Guba and Lincoln (1994) suggest four underlying "paradigms" for qualitative research: positivism, post-positivism, critical theory, and constructivism. Orlikowski and Baroudi (1991), following Chua (1986), suggest three categories, based on the underlying research epistemology: positivist, interpretive and critical. This three-fold classification is the one that is adopted here. However it needs to be said that, while these three research epistemologies are philosophically distinct (as ideal types), in the practice of social research these distinctions are not always so clear cut (e.g. see Lee, 1989). There is considerable disagreement as to whether these research "paradigms" or underlying epistemologies are necessarily opposed or can be accommodated within the one study.
Qualitative research can be positivist, interpretive, or critical (see Figure 1). It follows from this that the choice of a specific qualitative research method (such as the case study method) is independent of the underlying philosophical position adopted. For example, case study research can be positivist (Yin, 1994), interpretive (Walsham, 1993), or critical, just as action research can be positivist (Clark, 1972), interpretive (Elden and Chisholm, 1993) or critical (Carr and Kemmis, 1986). These three philosophical perspectives are discussed below.
1. Positivist Research
Positivists generally assume that reality is objectively given and can be described by measurable properties which are independent of the observer (researcher) and his or her instruments. Positivist studies generally attempt to test theory, in an attempt to increase the predictive understanding of phenomena. In line with this, Orlikowski and Baroudi (1991, p.5) classified a research as positivist if there was evidence of formal propositions, quantifiable measures of variables, hypothesis testing, and the drawing of inferences about a phenomenon from the sample to a stated population.
2. Interpretive Research
Interpretive researchers start out with the assumption that access to reality (given or socially constructed) is only through social constructions such as language, consciousness and shared meanings. The philosophical base of interpretive research is hermeneutics and phenomenology (Boland, 1985). Interpretive research does not predefine dependent and independent variables, but focuses on the full complexity of human sense making as the situation emerges (Kaplan and Maxwell, 1994).
3. Critical Research
Critical researchers assume that social reality is historically constituted and that it is produced and reproduced by people. The main task of critical research is seen as being one of social critique, whereby the restrictive and alienating conditions of the status quo are brought to light. Critical research focuses on the oppositions, conflicts and contradictions in contemporary society, and seeks to be emancipatory i.e. it should help to eliminate the causes of alienation and domination.
B. Distinctions from quantitative research
The term qualitative research is most often used in the social sciences in contrast to quantitative research. It differs from quantitative research in many ways. The distinctions clearly shown in the following table:
Qualitative mode | |
Assumptions
| Assumptions
|
Purpose
| Purpose
|
Approach
| Approach
|
Researcher Role
| Researcher Role
|
Although some social science researchers (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Schwandt, 1989) perceive qualitative and quantitative approaches as incompatible, others (Patton, 1990; Reichardt & Cook, 1979) believe that the skilled researcher can successfully combine approaches.
C. Qualitative Research Methods
A research method is a strategy of inquiry which moves from the underlying philosophical assumptions to research design and data collection. The choice of research method influences the way in which the researcher collects data. Specific research methods also imply different skills, assumptions and research practices. The six research methods that will be discussed here are biography, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, case study, and action research.
(a) Biography
Cresswell (1994) stated that the researcher needs to collect extensive information from and about the subject of the biography.
(b) Phenomenology
In line with this, Cresswell (1994) stated that a phenomenological study may be challenging to use because the researcher requires a solid grounding in the philosophical precepts of phenomenology. The participants in the study need to be carefully chosen to be individuals who have experienced the phenomenon and bracketing personal experiences by the researcher may be difficult.
(c) Grounded Theory
Cresswell (1994) stated that a grounded theory study challenges researchers to set aside, as much as possible, theoretical ideas or notions so that the analytic, substantive theory can emerge. Despite the evolving, inductive nature of this form of qualitative inquiry, the researcher must recognize that this is a systematic approach to research with specific steps in data analysis. Besides, the researcher needs to recognize that the primary outcome of this study is a theory with specific components: a central phenomenon, causal conditions, strategies, conditions and context, and consequences. The major difference between grounded theory and other methods is its specific approach to theory development - grounded theory suggests that there should be a continuous interplay between data collection and analysis.
(d) Ethnography
Ethnographic research comes from the discipline of social and cultural anthropology where an ethnographer is required to spend a significant amount of time in the field. The ethnographer "immerses himself in the life of people he studies" (Lewis 1985, p. 380) and seeks to place the phenomena studied in its social and cultural context.
In many ethnographies, the narratives are written in a literary, almost storytelling approach, an approach that may limit the audience for the work and may be challenging for authors accustomed to traditional approaches to writing social and human science research. There is a possibility that the researcher will "go native" and be unable to complete the study or be compromised in the study. This is but one issue in the complex array of fieldwork issues facing ethnographers who venture into an unfamiliar cultural group or system (Cresswell: 1994).
(e) Case Study
Acoording to Creeswell (1994), the case study poses that the researcher must identify his or her case. He or she must decide what bounded system to study, recognizing that several might be possible candidates for this selection and realizing that either the case itself or an issue, for which a case or cases are selected to illustrate, is worthy of study. The researcher must consider whether to study a single case or multiple cases. The study of more than one case dilutes the overall analysis; the more cases an individual studies, the greater the lack of depth in any single case. What motivates the researcher to consider a large number of cases is the idea of generalizability, a term that holds little meaning for most qualitative researchers.
Although there are numerous definitions, Yin (1994) defines the scope of a case study as follows: "A case study is an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident" (Yin 1994, p. 13).
E. Data Collection Techniques
People’s words and actions represent the data of qualitative inquiry and this requires methods that allow the researcher to capture language and behavior. The key ways of capturing these are observation, in-depth interview and group interviews, the collection of relevant documents, and photographs and video tapes.
Fraenkel and Wallen (1993) stated that certain kinds of research questions can best be answered by observing how people act or how things look. The degree of observer participation can vary considerably. Raymond and Gold in Fraenkel and Wallen (1993) identified four different roles that a researcher can take as complete participant, participant as observer, observer as participant and complete observer.
The interview is one of the major sources of data collection, and it is also one of the most difficult ones to get right. In qualitative research the interview is a form of discourse. According to Mischler (1986) its particular features reflect the distinctive structure and aims of interviewing, namely, that it is discourse shaped and organized by asking and answering questions. The record of an interview that we researchers make and then use in our work of analysis and interpretation is a representation of that talk. One of the key techniques in good interviewing is the use of probes. Patton (1990) identifies three types of probes, namely, detail-oriented probes, elaboration probes, and clarification probes.
Concerning with document analysis, data collected by the analysis of the written or visual contents of a document Fraenkel and Wallen (1993). The data collection in qualitative research is more completed by taking Photographs and Video Tapes. This technique aims to support the existing data. A permanent record is obtained for comparison with later or different samples.
D. Data Analysis
According to Fraenkel and Wallen (1993), analyzing the data in qualitative research essentially involves synthesizing the information the researcher obtains from various sources (e.g. observations, interviews, document analysis) into a coherent description of what he or she has observed or otherwise discovered. Data analysis in qualitative research, however, relies heavily on description; even when certain statistics are calculated, they tend to be used in a descriptive rather than an inferential sense.
Although there are many different modes of analysis in qualitative research, just two approaches or modes of analysis will be discussed here: hermeneutics and semiotics (Myers, 2000).
Hermeneutics is primarily concerned with the meaning of a text or text-analogue (an example of a text-analogue is an organization, which the researcher comes to understand through oral or written text). The basic question in hermeneutics is: what is the meaning of this text? (Radnitzky 1970, p. 20). Taylor says that "Interpretation, in the sense relevant to hermeneutics, is an attempt to make clear, to make sense of an object of study. This object must, therefore, be a text, or a text-analogue, which in some way is confused, incomplete, cloudy, seemingly contradictory - in one way or another, unclear. The interpretation aims to bring to light an underlying coherence or sense" (Taylor 1976, p. 153).
0n the other hand, semiotics is primarily concerned with the meaning of signs and symbols in language. The essential idea is that words/signs can be assigned to primary conceptual categories, and these categories represent important aspects of the theory to be tested. The importance of an idea is revealed in the frequency with which it appears in the text. There are three forms of semiotics, namely, content analysis, conversation analysis, and discourse analysis.
Marshall and Rossman (2006) stated seven phases in analytical procedures, namely, organizing the data, immersion in the data, generating categories and themes, coding the data, offering interpretations through analytics memos, searching for alternative understanding and writing the report or other format for presenting the study.
Reliability and validity are conceptualized as trustworthiness, rigor and quality in qualitative paradigm. It is also through this association that the way to achieve validity and reliability of a research get affected from the qualitative researchers’ perspectives which are to eliminate bias and increase the researcher’s truthfulness of a proposition about some social phenomenon (Denzin, 1978) using triangulation. Then triangulation is defined to be “a validity procedure where researchers search for convergence among multiple and different sources of information to form themes or categories in a study” (Creswell & Miller, 2000, p. 126).
E. Strengths and weaknesses of Qualitative research
Johnson and Onwuegbuzie (2004) emphasized the strengths and weaknesses of Qualitative research as follows. Concerning with strengths, the data are based on the participants’ own categories of meaning and are usually collected in naturalistic settings in qualitative research. It is useful for studying a limited number of cases in depth, describing complex phenomena, provides individual case information, and provides understanding and description of people’s personal experiences phenomena (i.e., the “emic” or insider’s viewpoint). Besides, the researcher identifies contextual and setting factors as they relate to the phenomenon of interest, can study dynamic processes (i.e., documenting sequential patterns and change) and can use the primarily qualitative method of “grounded theory” to generate inductively a tentative but explanatory theory about a phenomenon. Qualitative approaches are responsive to local situations, conditions, and stakeholders’ needs and qualitative researchers are responsive to changes that occur during the conduct of a study (especially during extended fieldwork) and may shift the focus of their studies as a result. Furthermore, one can use an important case to demonstrate vividly a phenomenon to the readers of a report.
On the other side, concerning with weaknesses, knowledge produced may not generalize to other people or other settings (i.e., findings may be unique to the relative few people included in the research study). It is difficult to make quantitative predictions and to test hypotheses and theories. Besides, it may have lower credibility with some administrators and commissioners of programs and generally takes more time to collect the data when compared to quantitative research. Furthermore, data analysis is often time consuming and the results are more easily influenced by the researcher’s personal biases and idiosyncrasies.
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