3. Qualitative Methods

Question 1

What is qualitative research?

Answer 1

Seeks understanding of a particular social phenomenon. Allows topics to be explored in depth and detail. Uses small sample size. Focuses on subjective feelings.

Question 2

What are some types of qualitative methods?

Answer 2

Interviews, focus groups, observation, ethnography, analysing documents or images

Question 3

What are the pros and cons of qualitative interview studies?

Answer 3

Advantages: produces detailed contextual info, prioritises the participants perspective, good for investigating topics for which relatively little is known about, valuable for researching sensitive issues/complex behaviours

Disadvantages: subjective nature makes it susceptible to bias, can be time consuming to do in depth interviewing, for an inexperienced researcher it is easy to conduct a poor interview, struggle to analyse large quantities of unstructured narrative data

Question 4

What is the pupose of coding?

Answer 4

Coding does not analyse data but helps to sort and order it. It can help to identify emerging themes.

Question 5

What are common analysis techniques and their common key processes?

Answer 5

Techniques: thematic analysis, narrative analysis, content analysis, constant comparitive method

Common processes: identify important phrases/patterns/themes, look for consistencies in the data, test consistencies against a construct or theory