Qualitative research

Qualitative research is one of the two major approaches to research methodology in social sciences. Qualitative research involves an in-depth understanding of human behavior and the reasons that govern human behavior. Unlike quantitative research, qualitative research relies on reasons behind various aspects of behavior. Simply put, it investigates the why and how of decision making, as compared to what, where, and when of quantitative research. Hence, the need is for smaller but focused samples rather than large random samples, which qualitative research categorizes data into patterns as the primary basis for organizing and reporting results. Unlike quantitative research, which relies exclusively on the analysis of numerical or quantifiable data, data for qualitative research comes in many media - including text, sound, still and moving images.

History

Qualitative research began to gain recognition in the 1970s. The phrase 'qualitative research' was until then marginalized as a discipline of anthropology or sociology, and terms like ethnography, fieldwork, participant observation and Chicago school (sociology) were used instead. During the 1970s and 1980s qualitative research began to be used in other disciplines, and became a dominant - or at least significant - type of research in the fields of women's studies, disability studies, education studies, social work studies, information studies, management studies, nursing service studies, human service studies, psychology, communication studies, and other. The greatest concentration of qualitative research occurred in the consumer products industry during this period. Researchers most interested in investigating consumer new product and product positioning opportunities worked with a handful of the earliest qualitative consumer research pioneers including Gene Reilly of The Gene Reilly Group in Darien, CT, Jerry Schoenfeld of Gerald Schoenfeld & Partners in Tarrytown, NY and Martin Calle of Calle & Company, Greenwich, CT. In the late 1980s and 1990s after a spate of criticisms from the quantitative side, paralleling a slowdown in traditional media spending for the decade, new methods of qualitative research evolved, to address the perceived problems with reliability and imprecise modes of data analysis.

One way of differentiating Qualitative research from Quantitative research is that largely Qualitative research is exploratory, while Quantitative research hopes to be conclusive. However it may be argued that each reflects a particular discourse; neither being definitively more conclusive or 'true' than the other. Quantitative data is measurable, while Qualitative data cannot be put into a context that can be graphed or displayed as a mathematical term.

See also

• Analytic induction
• Case study
• Content analysis
• Critical Ethnography
• Critical Theory
• Educational psychology
• Ethnography
• Grounded theory
• Morphological Analysis
• Online panel
• Participatory Action Research
• Phenomenography
• Qualitative economics
• Quantitative research
• Qualitative marketing research
• Qualitative psychological research
• Non-Quantified Modeling
• Monotonic function
• Sampling (case studies)
• Sense-Making (methodology)
• Theoretical sampling
• Videovoice methods

References

• Adler, P. A. & Adler, P. (1987). Membership roles in field research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
• Becker, Howard S., The epistemology of qualitative research. University of Chicago Press, 1996. 53-71. [from Ethnography and human development : context and meaning in social inquiry / edited by Richard Jessor, Anne Colby, and Richard A. Shweder]
• Boas, Franz (1943). Recent anthropology. Science, 98, 311-314, 334-337.
• Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2000). Handbook of qualitative research ( 2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
• DeWalt, K. M. & DeWalt, B. R. (2002). Participant observation. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
• Fischer, C.T. (Ed.) (2005). Qualitative research methods for psychologists: Introduction through empirical studies. Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-088470-4.
• Flyvbjerg, B. (2006). "Five Misunderstandings About Case Study Research." Qualitative Inquiry, vol. 12, no. 2, April 2006, pp. 219-245.
• Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Kaminski, Marek M. 2004. Games Prisoners Play. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-11721-7.
• Malinowski, B. (1922/1961). Argonauts of the Western Pacific. New York: E. P. Dutton.
• Pamela Maykut, Richard Morehouse. 1994 Beginning Qualitative Research. Falmer Press.
• Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods ( 3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
• Charles C. Ragin, Constructing Social Research: The Unity and Diversity of Method, Pine Forge Press, 1994, ISBN 0-8039-9021-9
• Steven J. Taylor, Robert Bogdan, Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods, Wiley, 1998, ISBN 0-471-16868-8
• Wolcott, H. F. (1995). The art of fieldwork. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
• Wolcott, H. F. (1999). Ethnography: A way of seeing. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
• Ziman, John (2000). Real Science: what it is, and what it means. Cambridge, Uk: Cambridge University Press.

External links

• The Association for Qualitative Research
• Forum: Qualitative Social Research, peer-reviewed open-access journal for qualitative researchers
• Qualitative Research Consultants Association - An international not-for-profit association of consultants involved in the design, implementation, analysis and reporting of qualitative research such as focus groups.
• The Qualitative Data Analysis Program at the University of Pittsburgh - A coding and tool development laboratory.
• The Coding Analysis Toolkit (CAT) developed by the Qualitative Data Analysis Program at the University of Pittsburgh - tools for increasing the reliability and validity of coding and the efficiency of the process.
• Codeshop is a wiki for a fall 2006 NSF-funded workshop "Coding across the Disciplines".