RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

By
Dr. Shaukat Hussain Bhatti
 LECTURE

NON-EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH
(III)
Qualitative Research

Definition
Historical review
Specialized use of qualitative research
Difference between qualitative and
quantitative research
Types
Pros and cons
Types of Qualitative Research

The six types of qualitative research are:

• Phenomenological model
• Ethnographic model
• Grounded theory
• Case study
• Historical model
• Narrative model
 Phenomenological Study
• In a phenomenological study, you use a combination of methods,
such as conducting interviews, reading documents, watching videos,
or visiting places and events, to understand the meaning participants
place on whatever’s being examined.
• The research rely on the participants’ own perspectives to provide
insight into their motivations.
• . In a phenomenological study, you often conduct a lot of interviews,
usually between 5 and 25 for common themes, to build a sufficient
dataset to look for emerging themes and to use other participants to
validate your findings.
 Ethnographic Research

• Ethnographic research is probably the most familiar and

applicable type of qualitative method to professionals. In
ethnography, you immerse yourself in the target participants’
environment to understand the goals, cultures, challenges,
motivations, and themes that emerge.
• Ethnography has its roots in cultural anthropology where
researchers immerse themselves within a culture, often for
years! Rather than relying on interviews or surveys, you
experience the environment first hand, and sometimes as a
“participant observer.”
 Grounded theory

• Grounded theory looks to provide an explanation or theory behind

the events.
• Use primarily interviews and existing documents to build a theory
based on the data. Go through a series of open and axial coding
techniques to identify themes and build the theory. Sample sizes
are often also larger between 20 to 60 with these studies to better
establish a theory.
• Grounded theory can help inform design decisions by better
understanding how a community of users currently use a product or
perform tasks
 Case study design

• A case study involves a deep

understanding through multiple
types of data sources.
• Case studies can be explanatory,
exploratory, or describing an
event.
 Historical model

• The historical research involves examining past events to draw

conclusions and make predictions about the future.

• The steps in historical research are: formulate an idea, formulate

a plan, gather data, analyze data, and analyze the sources of
data.
 Narrative Model
• The narrative approach weaves together a sequence of events,
usually from just one or two individuals to form a cohesive story.
You conduct in-depth interviews, read documents, and look for
themes; in other words, how does an individual story illustrate
the larger life influences that created it.

• Often interviews are conducted over weeks, months, or even

years, but the final narrative doesn’t need to be in chronological
order.
Pros and cons of Qualitative research

Pros:

• A small sample :
The research is carried out on a small group of respondents to provide fast
results at a low cost.
• Flexible :
You can interview a small group of respondents at different location and
timing. You don’t have to worry about interviewing a large number of
people at the same time.
• Unrestricted interview :
Interview questions used to collect data are not restricted to specific
questions and the researcher can guide or redirect respondents.
• Open ended process :
Qualitative research enables you to get superficial responses,
rational thoughts, and emotional responses from the respondent. The
emotional response influences one’s decision and behavior.

• Powerful information :
The collected and analyzed data based on human experience is
more powerful and more compelling than the quantitative data.

• Revision of the research framework:

The new information gathered through the research can be used to
change the research framework and direction.
• Taps respondent creativity :
Qualitative research questions are open-ended, dynamic and can help
in tapping the respondent’s creativity as well as get more ideas by
interacting with them.

• Detailed examination :
It requires you to examine an area of research in details an in more
depth than the quantitative research.

• Explain customers attitude :

Through qualitative research, you can get an explanation of events that
happen outside a certain predictive matrix from the previous
research. This helps to understand the customer’s attitude and behavior.
• Source of more ideas :
Qualitative research provides a rich source of more
formative ideas which can be evaluated on the topic.
 Cons
• No generalization :
Once you collect data from the respondents, you can’t
generalize the findings like in quantitative research. Qualitative
research doesn’t allow you to use the findings as the basis for
representing a wide audience or the public.

• Time consuming :
The volume of data collected, the analysis process and
interpretation of data are very time-consuming. It is also time-
consuming to characterize findings in visual form.
Subjective data :
The data collected is highly subjective due to
individual perspectives of the researchers. A
single researcher can collect data that is
deemed pointless and unimportant by another
researcher. This can lead to inaccurate and
unreliable data.
• Require Industry-related expertise :
It is dependent on the interviewer’s skills and
experience. Lack of industry-related expertise may
lead to the collection of inaccurate data.

• Not accepted :
Qualitative research is not well understood or
accepted in the scientific community as quantitative
research. More people rely on quantitative data than
on qualitative data.
• Trust :
A lot of trust and patient is needed for the researcher to
gather data and draw together the unseen data from the
respondent. This ensures unseen data doesn’t disappear.

• Difficult to quantify :
It is very difficult to quantify the number of respondents
who answered one way or the other. You cannot easily
create a solid statistic on a number of respondents.

• The rigidity of data :

Data collected is based on individual perspective making it
difficult to prove.