Week 5- Qualitative research methods Flashcards
What is quantitative research?
- Useful for capturing the big picture
- We measure + quantify phenomena
- Has the ability to generalise results
- Requires prior definition of research process
- Involves prediction of outcomes - hypothesis
- Produces explanatory theories + modules
- Argued to be objective
What is qualitative research?
- Good for smaller picture
- Attempt to provide rich descriptions + possible explanations of people’s meaning making
- Not typically able to generalise; instead we aim to say something specific about some phenomena or cohort of people
- Researchers need a focus, or research question - this can be quite broad
- No prediction or hypothesis about findings
- More subjective (but grounded in data analysis)
- Values creativity + novel forms of data
- Qualitative can be combined/mixed with quantitative
-> Preliminary to large scale survey or experimental work
->Add on at end of large survey to acquire deeper understanding
What are the key differences between quantitative and qualitative research?
(Braun & Clarke, 2022)
1) Research purpose
2) The big theory position & research paradigm: ontology + epistemology
3) Orientation of truth
4) Researcher role
5) Researcher subjectivity
6) Orientation to influence of subjectivity
7) Data purpose + sampling
8)Data analysis
9) Contribution to knowledge
1) Research purpose
Quantitative:
- Recording and understanding (objective) truth
- Often seeking explanatory models or theories
- Often reductive - remove context
- Hypothesis testing - test hypotheses based on existing theories + models
Qualitative:
- Focused on meaning + meaning making on how people understand world around them
- From understanding of situated meaning to understanding of meaning making practices
What is ontology, epistemology + research paradigm?
Ontology: what is reality, what is the nature of reality (e.g. single vs multiple truths/realities)
Epistemology: how can we understand the reality, how can i know the reality (positivist vs relativist)
Research paradigm: how do i combine ontology & epistemology to my research, understanding of the research and how it can be investigated by my research
2-3) Research paradigm + orientation to truth
Quantitative:
- Singular truth (reality)
- A world knowable through systematic observation and experimentation
- Positivist or postpositivist
Qualitative:
- Multiple truths, situated or life-embedded truths, partial truth
- Partially knowable world
- meaning + interpretation as situated practices
- Non-positivist, multiple theories (constructionist, critical realists)
4) Researcher role
Quantitative:
- Impartial observer of object of study
- Unbiased reporter
- Objectively valued
- Subjectivity threatens the objective truth
Qualitative:
- Situated interpreter of meaning
- Subjective storyteller
- Subjectivity valued
5) Researcher subjectivity
Quantitative:
- Introduces bias which threatens analytic validity
-> so requires measures to be controlled
Qualitative:
- Not problematic but an asset
-> Especially when researcher engages with reflexivity
Reflexivity: critical reflection of your role as a researcher and your research practices
6) Orientation to influence of subjectivity
Quantitative:
- Measures to control or eliminate bias + subjectivity
Qualitative:
- Reflexivity is a tool to both value and harness subjectivity
7) Data purpose + sampling
Quantitative:
- Larger, representative samples
- Ideally to gain generalisable understanding of phenomena
Qualitative:
- Smaller samples
-> sometime even case studies
- Gaining deep, rich understanding
8) Data analysis
Quantitative:
- Focused on numbers
- Relationship between variables
- Cause + effect
Qualitative:
- Focused on text (language) + meaning
9) Contribution to knowledge
Quantitative:
- Stepping stone towards complete or perfect understanding of single reality
Qualitative:
- Part of a rich tapestry of understanding
Summarise the differences between quantitative + qualitative research
Quantitative:
- Numbers as data
- Finds relationships between variables to explain or predict - to generalise to wider pop
- Generates broad data across lots of ppts
- Looking for norms + general patterns
- Theory testing + deductive
- Values detachment + objectivity
- Quicker to analyse statistically once data collected
Qualitative:
- Words/ images/ observations as data
- Understand and interpret local meanings in context; can contribute to general understandings
- Produces rich data + detailed, complex accounts from smaller cohort of ppts
- Seeks patterns but explores difference and diversity
- Theory generating + indictive
- Values subjectivity and reflexivity
- Takes time + no formula
What do quantitative + qualitative research questions look like?
Quantitative would ask about quantifiable results:
- What is the prevalence of? How much there is? What is the difference between?
Qualitative would ask about meaning:
- How people make sense of particular experience? How they understand? What is the experience of? Why… men don’t go to the doctors?
Why do we do qualitative research?
- To answer the ‘how’ and ‘why’ or the broader picture
- It’s rich, exciting + challenging
- To make sense of patterns + meanings
- We can give voice to under-researched groups of people
- It can have impact - we can change things from our research (e.g. can improve lives of specific patient groups)
What does qualitative research look like in practice?
- Need to define, develop + refine your methodological stance
Methodological decisions to be made can be summarised: - What is your research topic?
- What assumptions are you making about reality (ontology)
- How is it possible to know/investigate this reality + topic (epistemology)
- What do you wish to find out about your research topic
- What kind of data are you going to collect?
- How will you analyse this data?
What are outsiders?
- Researchers who do not share similar backgrounds or experiences with the group under study, they are not members of the group
What are the advantages + disadvantages of outsiders?
Advantages:
- Objectivity, detachment + distance, independent observations not available to insider e.g. by asking naive questions
- Meanings + perspectives not obvious to insider
- Ppts might reveal sensitive info they would not reveal to insider - more open
Disadvantages:
- Lack of understanding of experiences of ppts
- Unaware of cultural + social norms of researched group
- Pathologising the other
- Descriptive and shallow analysis
- Difficult access to group
- Need for a trusted informant (usually members of research group)
What are insiders?
- Researchers who share similar background, identity, beliefs as the researched group or they are a prior group member with existing relationships within the community
What are the advantages + disadvantages of insiders?
Advantages:
- Understanding of community history + culture, interaction styles, shared meanings
- Insight into matter, easier development of research question, interview schedule as they are familiar with problems + matter
- Easy access to group, recruitment of ppts + rapport
- Depth and breadth of understanding un-available to outsider
Disadvantages:
- Overidentification with insider role, overinvolved with community, compromise the ethics
- Illusion of ‘sameness’ of the experiences of others
- Loss of intellectual and emotional distance for unbiased analysis
- Negative impact on existing relationships
-> may need to ask for further + full explanations
Describe the issue of decolonising qualitative research
Decolonisation refers to the undoing of colonial rule
-> decolonisers ask questions such as who conducts the research?
- Indigenous communities are often under represented in academic research communities and hence their voices and concerns. are not heard
- Need to consider how power affects what we select to research, who pays for the research + what purpose the research serves
- Researcher must be accountable (not distort), be collaborative. and give back to the community they study
- How is research methodology itself distorted by a dominant tradition?
