Ch 9. The Nature of Qualitative Research Flashcards
Qualitative research is concerned primarily with words and images…
…rather than numbers
Immersed in the social setting (kind of qualitative research)
Ethnography/participant observation
In-depth, semi-structured, or unstructured (kind of qualitative research)
Qualitative Interviewing
Interview several people together (kinds of qualitative research)
Focus Groups
Discourse and conversation analysis (kinds of qualitative research)
Analyze the language
Content analysis (kinds of qualitative research)
Qualitative analysis of texts and documents
Engage participants to produce social change (kinds of qualitative research)
Participatory action research
The Main Steps in Qualitative Research
- Establish a general research question
- Select a relevant site & subjects
3.Collect the data
- Interpret the data
- Conceptual and theoretical work (tighter specification of the research question and collection of further data)
- writing up and findings/conclusions
Blumer (1954): definitive versus sensitizing concepts. What are their definitions?
- definitive concepts: defined with nominal and operational definitions, as in quantitative research
- Sensitizing concepts: provide only a general sense of reference and guidance as to the content of the concept
What are two key criteria to evaluate a qualitative study
trustworthiness & authenticity
Trustworthiness’ four criteria
Credibility
Transferability
Dependability
Confirmability
Do the people studied agree with the interpretation of their thoughts and actions offered by the researcher?
Credibility
Can the findings be applied to other contexts or people not studied?
Transferability
Thick description helps to determine whether transferability is possible. What is “thick description”?
Provides enough information to conduct later comparison to findings from other studies
Were proper procedures followed? Can the study’s theoretical inferences be justified?
Dependability
seeing through the eyes of the people being studied (2):
- empathy
- in-depth description and emphasis on context
Flexibility and Limited Structure of Qualitative Research(4)
- questions should be quite general
- usually little or no theory driving the research
- topics explored may change as the study progresses
- allows the researcher to find new directions of study
- Seeing through the eyes of others
- Bringing out a sense of process
- Having a flexible and unstructured method of inquiry
- Achieving a deep understanding of the people or groups being studied
- Pursue social justice and bring about social change
Ultimate Goals of Qualitative Research (5)
there are many critiques of qualitative research (5)
- can be too impressionist
- bias can result from personal relationships
- unclear how a particular topic/theme became focus of research
- too subjective
- researchers will bring different reactive effects (gender race social position)
One critque of qualitative research is that it is not generalizable.
generalization may not be the goal of research and an in-depth description and understanding may be goal instead.
- difficult to determine how the research was conducted
- why were certain people chosen for in-depth interviews
- unclear how researchers arrived to specific findings
Complaints that qualitative research lacks transperency
Contrasts between Quantitative and Qualitative Research (important for exam) (10)
- Numbers vs words
- Point of view of researcher vs points of view of participants
- Researcher distant vs researcher close
- Theory and concepts tested in research vs theory and concepts developed from data
- Structured vs unstructured
- Generalizable knowledge vs contextual understanding
- Theory testing vs theory development
- Hard reliable data vs rich, deep data
Macro- vs micro- - Behaviour vs meaning
- Artificial settings vs natural settings
Qualitative research often involves the grounded theory approach
the use of data to develop theories
going back and forth from data to theory, revising the theory in the process
iterative process
Auditing” is sometimes done wherein
peers review the research and procedures to see if the study is dependable
