Week 1 - Introduction To Qualitative Research

Question 1

Qualitative vs quantitative part 1

Answer 1

Subjective vs objective
Organismic (whole) vs mechanistic
Critical/constructivist vs positivist
Biased vs unbiased
Context-bound vs context free
Dialectal vs logical
Interactive vs independent
Informal vs formal

Question 2

Qualitative vs quantitative part 2

Answer 2

Inductive, idiographic, interpretation vs deductive, nomothetic
Emerging design vs static design
Research question vs hypotheses
Verification vs validity and reliability
Patterns for understanding vs generalizations lead to predictors

Question 3

What is qualitative research?

Answer 3

Understanding everyday lives with in depth interviews, focus groups, observation

Allow the studied to define what is central and important to them

Question 4

Qualitative research in daily life

Answer 4

“Common sense” discoveries are usually invisible to us unless we pay sociological attention

Patterns are noticed in everyday environment

Question 5

Qualitative methods

Answer 5

In depth open ended interviews - direction quotations from people about experiences, opinions, feelings, knowledge

Direct observation - descriptions of behaviour, actions, human interaction

Written documents - excerpts, quotations, passages

Question 6

Qualitative evaluative process

Answer 6

Talk to participants about experiences and perceptions
Records and documents are examined
Data organized into themes

Question 7

Reliability in qualitative research

Answer 7

Identifying and documenting recurrent and accurate and consistent or inconsistent features like patterns, themes, worldviews etc