LECTURE 1

INTRODUCTION TO
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

1
 INTRODUCTION

The design of a research study begins with the

selection of a topic and a paradigm. A paradigm
is essentially a worldview, a whole framework of
beliefs, values, and methods within which
research takes place. It is this world view within
which researchers work.
 RESEARCH PARADIGM
The choice of either a qualitative or quantitative
paradigm in social science research depends on
the assumptions of :
• Philosophy
• Ontology
• Epistemology
• Methodology
(Guba and Lincoln, 2005; Creswell, 1994; Morgan
and Smircich, 1980; Burrel and Morgan, 1979).

3
 RESEARCH PHILOSOPHY
1. guides the researcher to clarify a research design or strategy to be
used in a study. This includes the type of evidence gathered and
analysed, the way such evidence is interpreted in order to provide
good answers to the basic research questions;

2. enables the researcher to recognise the different methodologies

and methods that are most suitable. It also helps a researcher to
avoid inappropriate use and unnecessary work by identifying the
limitations of particular approaches at an early stage; and

3. helps the researcher to be creative and innovative in identifying,

creating, and designing a method that were previously outside his
or her past experience.

Easterby-Smith, et al. (1991, p. 21).

4
 ONTOLOGY
• Reflects beliefs about the nature of reality .

“what is the form and nature of social reality and what is

there that can be known about it”
(Denzin and Lincoln, 1994)

 Is reality an objective phenomenon that holds truth?

(“reality” to be investigated is objective and external to the

individual, imposing itself on individual consciousness from
without)
OR

 Is reality virtually constructed through social, political,

and gendered meanings?
(reality is the product of individual cognition) 5
 EPISTEMOLOGY
•Refers to beliefs about the preferred relationship between the
researcher and the researched.

•The epistemological debate is therefore divided between positivism

and phenomenology.

 Should we remain objective and removed from what we study?

(explain and predict what happens in the social world by searching for
regularities and causal relationships between its constituent elements)
OR
 Should we get immersed in it?
(explain that the social world can only be understood from the point of
view of the individuals directly involved in the activities which are to
be studied)

6
 METHODOLOGY
• Refers to the techniques we use for collecting information about the
world. The assumptions about how one attempts to investigate and
obtain “knowledge” about the social world.

• The basic methodological question concerns whether the social

world is a hard, real, objective reality, external to the individual, or a
softer, personal reality, internal to the subjective experience of the
individual.

Should we manipulate and measure variables in order to test

hypotheses?
(base research on systematic protocol and techniques, using
methods found in the natural sciences that focus on the process of
hypothesis testing- nomothetic principles)
OR
Should we search for meaning in words and behaviours?
(base research on the view, that one can only understand the social
world by obtaining first hand knowledge of the subject under
investigation-ideographic principles)
7
 RESEARCH PARADIGM
• The frames of reference that researchers use to
shape observation and understanding.

• They include basic assumptions underpinning the

research, key issues, models of quality research,
and methods used.
(Neuman, 2006, p. 81; Rubin and Babbie, 2001)
• There are three main paradigms associated with
social research:
– Positivist Paradigm
– Critical Paradigm
– Interpretivist Paradigm
8
 Positivism
• Neuman (2006, p. 82) defines positivist social research as:

“An organised method for combining deductive logic with precise

empirical observations of individual behaviour in order to discover
and confirm a set of probabilistic causal laws that can be used to
predict general patterns of human behaviour.”

• likely to remain formal or apart from the "subjects" who take part
in their studies;
• social world exists externally, and that its properties should be
measured through objective methods ;
• believe that research produces truthful information about an
objective world;
• commonly employ structured methods such as experiments or
surveys that produce quantitative data;
• might use structured interviews or observation to record
qualitative data in a systematic fashion.
9
 Critical
Neuman (2006, p. 95) defines critical social research as:

“A critical process of inquiry that goes beyond surface illusions to uncover

the real structures in the material world in order to help people change
conditions and build a better world for themselves.”

• The aim of research in this paradigm is not just to study society but also to
play an active role in social change (Alston and Bowles, 1998). Critical
social researchers believe that research is a political activity and argue that
uncritical research is in danger of maintaining the status quo rather than
helping to create a better world (Neuman, 2006).

• Critical researchers assume that social reality is historically constituted and

that it is produced and reproduced by people. Although people can
consciously act to change their social and economic circumstances, critical
researchers recognise their ability to do so is constrained by various forms
of social, cultural, and political domination (Neuman, 2006). 10
 Interpretive
Neuman (2006, p. 88) defined interpretive social research as:

“The systematic analysis of socially meaningful action

through the direct detailed observation of people in
natural settings in order to arrive at understandings and
interpretations of how people create and maintain their
social worlds.”

• assumes that reality exists in the thoughts and perceptions of

each individual; thus, objectivity is impractical and researchers
should try to understand the contextual realities and subjective
meanings that shape peoples' interactions with their world.
• generally attempt to understand phenomena through the
meanings that people assign to them
• believe in multiple realities rather than a single Truth. They
will collaborate with participants in an attempt to understand
lived experience from the point of view of the participants.
11
 Interpretive (cont…)
• commonly use repeated or on-going interviews and field
notes that produce qualitative data, though they might use
supporting empirical measures or count the frequency of
events to supplement their qualitative understandings.

• asking participants to verify the way that the researcher

represents their stories. The participant, not the researcher, is
viewed as the authority on the phenomenon under study.

• Interpretive research does not predefine dependent and

independent variables, but focuses on the full complexity of
human sense making as the situation emerges

12
Interpetive research: use of theory
• Initial guide to design and data collection
– Initial theoretical framework
– Sensibility to data
– Danger of not-seeing
• Part of an iterative process of data collection and
analysis
– Being open to field data
– Modify initial assumptions and theories
• A final product of the research
– Concepts
– Conceptual framework

13
Interpretive research: empirical work
• Access to other people’s interpretations
• Own role as researcher
– Outside observer – not direct involvement
– Involved researcher (action, participant observation)
• Evidence: interview as primary data source
– Styles of interview
– Reporting media
• Reporting fieldwork
– Credibility: document your process of data collection
– Importance of details (research site, motivation for choices,
number of people, data sources, ... and theory-data
iterations)

14
 Types of generalizations from
interpretive case study (Walsham)

• Development of concepts
• Generation of theory
• Drawing of specific implications
• Contribution of reach insight

15
 Key Distinctions between Qualitative and
Quantitative Research
1.Words and numbers
Qualitative research places emphasis on understanding through looking
closely at people's words, actions and records. The traditional or
quantitative approach to research looks past these words, actions and
records to their mathematical significance. The traditional approach to
research (quantifies) the results of these observations.
In contrast qualitative research examines the patterns of meaning which
emerge from the data and these are often presented in the participants'
own words. The task of the qualitative researcher is to find patterns within
those words (and actions) and to present those patterns for others to
inspect while at the same time staying as close to the construction of the
world as the participants originally experienced it.
2. Subjective versus objective views
3. Discovery versus proof
The goal of qualitative research is to discover patterns which emerge after
close observation, careful documentation, and thoughtful analysis of the
research topic. What can be discovered by qualitative research are not
sweeping generalizations but contextual findings. This process of discovery
is basic to the philosophic underpinning of the qualitative approach.
16
 Quantitative
• Quantitative study is an inquiry into a social or human
problem, based on testing a theory composed of
variables, measured with numbers, and analyzed with
statistical procedures, in order to determine whether
the predictive generalizations of the theory hold true.
• Quantitative researchers use methods as a way to
remain objective and removed.
• Under the quantitative framework, researchers place
much emphasis on defining and adhering to a
methodological protocol.
• Methodological rigor, after all, assures objectivity and
reliability in the data.
17
 SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM FOR
QUANTITATIVE
• Scientific materialism
• Laws of nature
• Measurable and observable ‘proof’
• Experiment, large scale data collection,
quantitative analysis

18
Definitions of Qualitative Research
Denzin and Lincoln (1994)
“Qualitative research is multi-method in focus, involving an
interpretive, naturalistic approach to its subject matter. This means
that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings,
attempting to make sense of or interpret phenomena in terms of
the meanings people bring to them. Qualitative research involves
the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical materials
case study, personal experience, introspective, life story interview,
observational, historical, interactional, and visual texts-that
describe routine and problematic moments and meaning in
individuals' lives.”

Cresswell (1994)
“Qualitative research is an inquiry process of understanding based
on distinct methodological traditions of inquiry that explore a social
or human problem. The researcher builds a complex, holistic
picture, analyzes words, reports detailed views of informants, and
conducts the study in a natural setting.”
19
 Why use qualitative?
“Qualitative methods can be used to explore
substantive areas about which little is known or
about which much is known to gain novel
understandings (Stern, 1980). In addition,
qualitative methods can be used to obtain the
intricate details about phenomena such as
feelings, thought processes, and emotions that
are difficult to extract or learn about through
more conventional research methods.”
(Strauss and Corbin, 1998, p. 11)

20
 REASONS FOR CONDUCTING QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH
• Given these distinctions and definitions of a
qualitative study, why does a person engage in
such a rigorous design?
• To undertake qualitative research requires a
strong commitment to study a problem and
demands time and resources.
• Qualitative research shares good company with
the most rigorous quantitative research, and it
should not be viewed as an easy substitute for a
"statistical" or quantitative study.

21
 Qualitative
• qualitative researchers cannot anticipate all
the methods they might use in a study;
instead, they actively construct their methods
as the study progresses.
• qualitative researchers do not forgo the
importance of methodological rigor but they
define rigor quite differently.
• researchers use methods as a way to enter the
subjective reality of the participant.
22
 Characteristics of Qualitative
Research
• An exploratory and descriptive focus
• Emergent Design
• Data collection in the natural setting
• Emphasis on ‘human-as-instrument’
• Qualitative methods of data collection
• Early and On-going inductive analysis

23
 Qualitative Research Types
• The Biography
• Phenomenology
• Grounded Theory
• Ethnography
• Case Study
Cresswell (1994)

24
 Biography
• The researcher needs to collect extensive information
from and about the subject of the biography.
• The investigator needs to have a clear understanding of
historical, contextual material to position the subject
within the larger trends in society or in the culture.
• It takes a keen eye to determine the particular stories,
slant, or angle that "works" in writing a biography and
to uncover the "figure under the carpet" (Edel, 1984)
that explains the multilayered context of a life.
• The writer, using an interpretive approach, needs to be
able to bring himself or herself into the narrative.

25
 Phenomenology
A phenomenological study may be challenging to use
because:
• The researcher requires a solid grounding in the
philosophical precepts of phenomenology.
• The participants in the study need to be carefully
chosen to be individuals who have experienced the
phenomenon
• Bracketing personal experiences by the researcher may
be difficult.
• The researcher needs to decide how and in what way
his or her personal experiences will be introduced into
the study.

26
 Grounded Theory
• The investigator needs to set aside, as much as possible,
theoretical ideas or notions so that the analytic, substantive
theory can emerge.
• Despite the evolving, inductive nature of this form of
qualitative inquiry, the researcher must recognize that this
is a systematic approach to research with specific steps in
data analysis.
• The researcher faces the difficulty of determining when
categories are saturated or when the theory is sufficiently
detailed.
• The researcher needs to recognize that the primary
outcome of this study is a theory with specific components:
a central phenomenon, causal conditions, strategies,
conditions and context, and consequences. These are
prescribed categories of information in the theory.

27
 Ethnography
• The researcher needs to have grounding in cultural
anthropology and the meaning of a social-cultural system
as well as the concepts typically explored by
ethnographers.
• The time to collect data is extensive, involving prolonged
time in the field.
• In many ethnographies, the narratives are written in a
literary, almost storytelling approach, an approach that
may limit the audience for the work and may be
challenging for authors accustomed to traditional
approaches to writing social and human science research.
• There is a possibility that the researcher will "go native"
and be unable to complete the study or be compromised
in the study. This is but one issue in the complex array of
fieldwork issues facing ethnographers who venture into an
unfamiliar cultural group or system.
28
 Case Study
• The researcher must identify his or her case. He or she must
decide what bounded system to study, recognizing that
several might be possible candidates for this selection and
realizing that either the case itself or an issue, for which a
case or cases are selected to illustrate, is worthy of study.

• The researcher must consider whether to study a single

case or multiple cases. The study of more than one case
dilutes the overall analysis; the more cases an individual
studies, the greater the lack of depth in any single case.
When a researchers chooses multiple cases, the issue
becomes "How many?"- Typically, however, the researcher
chooses no more than four cases. What motivates the
researcher to consider a large number of cases is the idea
of generalizability, a term that holds little meaning for most
qualitative researchers. 29
 Qualitative Methods of Data
Collection
Lye et al. (1997) suggest that in order to provide
rich explanations, the research method must not
attempt to ignore or simplify the complexities of
the context that control the phenomena under
investigation, but should instead, clarify them.
Thus, qualitative data collected in close proximity to
a specific context are more suitable because they
can be a source of well grounded explanations of
processes occurring in their local context (Miles and
Huberman, 1994).

30
 Qualitative Methods of Data Collection

• People’s words and actions represent the data of

qualitative inquiry and this requires methods that
allow the researcher to capture language and
behaviour. The key ways of capturing these are:
• Observation – both participant and direct
• In-depth interviews
• Group Interviews
• The collection of relevant documents
• Photographs and Video Tapes

31
 Data Collection: Various Types
• Critical Ethnography
• Discourse analysis versus critical discourse
• Content Analysis
• Oral Histories
• Documents
• Oral histories
• Interviews
• Focus groups
• Field notes
• Ethnography
• Auto-ethnography
• Participant observation

32
 The Interview
• The interview is one of the major sources of data
collection, and it is also one of the most difficult ones
to get right. In qualitative research the interview is a
form of discourse.
• According to Mischler (1986) its particular features
reflect the distinctive structure and aims of
interviewing, namely, that it is discourse shaped and
organized by asking and answering questions.
• An interview is a joint product of what interviewees
and interviewers talk about together and how they talk
with each other. The record of an interview that we
researchers make and then use in our work of analysis
and interpretation is a representation of that talk.

33
 Characteristics of Good Qualitative Research
• We use a tradition of inquiry. This means that the researcher
identifies, studies, and employs one or more traditions of inquiry.
• We begin with a single focus. The project starts with a single idea/
• Problem that the researcher seeks to understand, not a causal
relationship of variables or a comparison of groups. Although
relationships might evolve or comparisons might be made these
emerge late in the study after we describe a single idea
• The study includes detailed methods, a rigorous approach to data
collection, data analysis, and report writing. This means, too, that
the researcher verifies the accuracy of the account using one of the
many procedures for verification.
• We write persuasively so that the reader experiences "being there."
• We analyze data using multiple levels of abstraction. Often, writers
present their studies in stages (e.g., the multiple themes that can
be combined into larger themes or perspectives) or layer their
analyses from the particular to the general reflecting all the
complexities that exist in real life. The best qualitative studies
engage the reader.
34
 Strength of Qualitative Research
The strength of qualitative research is that it is
known as the ‘best strategy for discovery,
exploring a new area, developing hypotheses’
(Miles and Huberman, 1994, p.10). However,
the goal of qualitative research is not to produce
generalisations, but rather in-depth
understandings and knowledge of particular
phenomena (Leininger, 1994).

35
 Qualitative inquiry is for the researcher
who is willing to do the following:
• Commit to extensive time in the field. The investigator
spends many hours in the field, collects extensive data,
and labors over field issues of trying to gain access,
rapport, and an "insider" perspective.
• engage in the complex, time-consuming process of
data analysis – the ambitious task of sorting through
large amounts of data and reducing them to a few
themes or categories. For a multidisciplinary team of
qualitative researchers, this task can be shared; for
most researchers, it is a lonely, isolated time of
struggling with the data. The task is challenging,
especially because the database consists of complex
texts and images.
36
 Cont…
• Write long passages, because the evidence must
substantiate claims and the writer needs to show
multiple perspectives. The incorporation of
quotes to provide participants' perspectives also
lengthens the study.
• Participate in a form of social and human science
research that does not have firm guidelines or
specific procedures and is evolving and changing
constantly. This complicates telling others how
one plans to conduct a study and how others
might judge it when the study is done.

37
 Cont…
• If an individual is willing to engage in qualitative inquiry, then
the person needs to determine whether a strong rationale
exists for choosing a qualitative approach, and there are
compelling reasons to undertake a qualitative study .

In this respect Cresswell (1994) offers the following advice:

1. Select a qualitative study because of the nature of the
research question. In a qualitative study, the research
question often starts with a how or a what so that initial
forays into the topic describe what is going on. This is in
contrast to quantitative questions that ask why and look for a
comparison of groups (e.g., Is Group 1 better at something
than Group 2) or a relationship between variables, with the
intent of establishing an association, relationship, or cause
and effect (e.g., Did Variable explain what happened in
Variable Y)
38
 Cont…
2. Choose a qualitative, study because the topic needs to be
explored. 'By this, I mean that variables cannot be easily
identified, theories are not available to explain behavior of
participants or their population of study, and theories need
to be developed.

3. Use a qualitative study because of the need to present a

detailed view of the topic. The side angle lens of the distant
panoramic shot will not suffice to present answers to the
problem, or the close-up view does not exist.

4. Choose a qualitative approach in order to study individuals

in their natural setting. This involves going out to the setting
or field of study, gaining access, and gathering material. If
participants are removed from their setting, it leads to
contrived findings that are out of context.
39
 Cont…
5. Select a qualitative approach because of interest in
writing in a literary style; the writer brings himself or
herself into the study, the personal pronoun "I" is
used, or perhaps the writer engages a storytelling
form of narration.

6. Employ a qualitative study because of sufficient time

and resources to spend on extensive data collection
in the field and detailed data analysis of "text"
information.

40
 Cont…
7. Select a qualitative approach because audiences are
receptive to qualitative research. This audience might
be a graduate adviser or committee, a discipline
inclusive of multiple research methodologies, or
publication outlets with editors receptive to
qualitative approaches.

8. Employ a qualitative approach to emphasize the

researcher's role as an active learner who can tell the
story from the participants' view rather than as an
"expert" who passes judgment on participants.

41
 Criticisms of qualitative research
• Qualitative research has been criticized and
regarded with suspicion and hostility, within the
nursing profession and elsewhere, because its
general characteristics remain poorly understood and
consequently its potential remains underdeveloped
(Adelman, Kemmis, & Jenkins, 1980; Sandelowski,
1986).

• A familiar criticism of qualitative methodology

questions the value of its dependence on small
samples which is believed to render it incapable of
generalizing conclusions (Hamel, Dufour, & Fortin,
1993; Yin, 1984, 1993, 1994;).

42
 Criticisms of qualitative research
Cont…
• Those researchers forcefully argue for the value of
every single study providing that parameters are
guided by the goals of the study, and have met the
established objectives. Yin (1989) asserts that general
applicability will result from the set of methodological
qualities of the study, and the rigor with which the
study is constructed.

• Attention to such rigor may serve to offset some of

the criticisms of qualitative research as a 'soft
approach' utilizing subjective procedures that provides
corresponding weak explanations (Morse, 1989).

43