Module 1: Introduction to Qualitative Methods Flashcards
What is Qualitative Research?
Qualitative research refers to the meanings, concepts, definitions, characteristics, metaphors, symbols, and descriptions of things.
What methods of data collection are used in qualitative research
- interviewing
- focus groups
- ethnography
- unobtrusive methods
- case studies
- action research
What are the differences in collection methods and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data?
Quantitative Data:
- uses numbers and statistics in the collection and analysis of data
Qualitative data:
- uses mainly words and other non-numeric symbols in the collection and analysis of data
What is an important area of qualitative research?
Social norms: the normatively expected and informally enforced patterns of behaviour that are widely shared within any given society.
- vital to daily life in a given society; highly revealing about the society
- examples of norms: jokes, absences,
What is one of the most immediate and effective ways to demonstrate the the existence of norms?
Violate the norms and observe the results.
- the expectations reveal the norms, and the objections to their violation reveal the expectations.
What are social artifacts?
Things produced or performed by people in the normal course of their life.
What is triangulation?
- the use of multiple lines of sight
Why is it beneficial to combine several lines of sight within qualitative method?
- Each method reveals slightly different facets of the same symbolic reality
- Each method is a different line of sight directed toward the same point, observing particular aspects of the social and symbolic reality.
THEREFORE: combining several lines of sight, researchers can obtain a better, more substantive picture of reality; a richer, more complete array of symbols and theoretical concepts; and a means of verifying many of these elements.
How was triangulation originally applied within the social sciences.
- used as a metaphor describing a form of multiple operationalism or convergent validation
- used largely to describe multiple data-collection technologies designed to measure a single concept or construct.
What are lines of action?
Introduced by Denzin (1978)
- characterizes the use of multiple data-collection technologies, multiple theories, multiple researchers, multiple methodologies, or combinations of these four categories of research.
How is triangulation applied by researchers today?
- Triangulation is (mostly) restricted to the use of multiple data-gathering techniques to investigate the same phenomenon.
- interpreted as a means of mutual confirmation of measures and validation of findings.
What is the benefit of using multiple research designs within qualitative studies?
The use of multiple research design strategies and theories increase the depth of understanding an investigation can yield.
What is the purpose/orientation of qualitative strategies?
- We do not conduct research to only amass data.
- The purpose of research is to discover answers to questions through the application of systematic procedures.
- Research on human beings affects how these persons will be viewed.
What are the interests of qualitative researchers?
Qualitative researchers are most interested in how humans arrange themselves and their settings and how inhabitants of these settings make sense of their surroundings through symbols, rituals, social structures, social roles, etc.
What are the main goals of qualitative research?
Empathy: seeing through the eyes of the people studied
