CHYS 2P51

Lecture 1
January 10 2017

Qualitative Research
- Understanding human behaviour
- And the reason behind the behaviour
- descriptions, experiences, perceptions, motivations, beliefs
- Study of how people make sense of things
*investigating underlying meanings, patterns and relationships in social phenomena

Example: inductive reasoning

What factors might affect teachers’ satisfaction?
Theory: higher paid teachers are more satisfied than their lower paid counterparts
Experiment: measure teacher satisfaction among a sample of high/low pay teachers
Support or refute hypothesis: refuted
Analysis: higher paid teachers are not more satisfied
What qualities describe a good high school teacher?
• Collect Data: open ended interview 20 high school students – what are your
experiences with teachers?
• Analyze Data: analyzed interviews- Categorize experiences, specific
characteristics: good rapport, clear goals and expectations, engaging lots of
stories etc.
• Develop theory

Qualitative Research
• Social behavior
• Why do people do what they do?
• Beliefs behind behaviors
• Culture shapes beliefs
Example: belief about intelligence
- Is it something you are born with?
- Is it something that develops?
- Is it a combination
- born with= not much you can do to change it, so don't apply effort
- develop= learn strategies, apply effort

What is Culture?
- Norms, patterns, routines, beliefs, associations, connotations of a particular
community/ society
• - Ex. Food and eating patters, as well as attitudes and perceptions about
weight and health ex: smoking
Why Culture Matters in Obesity Reduction
• The rise in the number of obesity cases globally is well documented
• But culture plays a role….
Cultural Factors
- Institutional and sociocultural factors that normalize obesity causing factors
- Large portion sizes, large plates, supersize culture
- Fast food restaurants disproportionately located in neighbourhoods where healthy
foods are difficult to get
- Fast food is inexpensive

Examples of qualitative investigations

• How do teens relate to the Me-To-We organization?
• What are the educational experiences of children who grow up in brothels in
India?
• Children’s experiences of recess?
• Students perceptions of videogames for learning?
• Physicians’ experiences of constantly working with sick people.
• How do rock stars experience fame?
• How do undergraduates perceive the transition to university?

Assumptions
in qualitative research
• Different ways of thinking about the research process
• Research traditions = strategies

4 General Assumptions
• Ontological
• Epistemological
• Axiological
• methodological

Ontological
- Definition: questioning the nature of reality
- assumption that many different beliefs, perspectives, interpretations about what
reality is:
- qualitative researchers embrace different realities, including
- intention is report these multiple realities

Epistemological
- What exactly counts as “knowledge”?
- Qualitative researchers assume proximity=knowledge

Axiological
- Assumption that all researchers bring values to a study
- Qualitative researchers expected to make these values known
- make explicit values, biases
Methodological
- Methodology= procedures, process
- Assumption in qualitative research:
-inductive
-emerging
-shaped by the researcher
-flexible

Practice Questions for the Week

On page 15, berg discusses “life-worlds” what does he mean by this? What does it
have to do with qualitative research?

On page 26, Berg discusses the combination od the research before theory
enterprise and the theory before research enterprise
- Can you summarize what he means by this in your own words?

What is qualitative data? Can you give me some examples?

Can you give examples of several qualitative methods for gathering data

In what ways does the film, born into brothels, compare to qualitative research?

Avoiding bias is important in quantitative research. How do we ensure validity in

qualitative research?