Qualitative Research

Center for Research Quality. (2015, August 13). Overview of qualitative research methods [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsAUNs-IoSQ

• Focus and Quality of Experience:

  • Qualitative research focuses on the quality or meaning of experiences.

  • Emphasizes subjective experiences.

  • Aligned with constructivism or interpretivism.

• Objectives of Qualitative Research:

  • Aims to understand, describe, and discover.

  • Flexible, evolving, or emergent in nature.

  • Research itself is considered the instrument.

• Qualitative Research Approaches:

  • Involves exploration, description, and interpretation.

  • Includes case studies, grounded theory, ethnography, phenomenology, and narrative approaches.

  • Case studies are noted as the most flexible and widely used.

• Data Collection Methods:

  • Utilizes interviews, documents, focus groups, and observations.

  • Researchers prepare and organize data for analysis.

• Data Analysis and Presentation:

  • Involves reducing data into themes.

  • Data can be presented in narrative or graphic form.

• Ensuring Validity:

  • Validity in qualitative research is ensured through:

    • Prolonged engagement.

    • Rich, thick description.

    • Triangulation.

    • Member checking.

    • Discrepant information.

    • Clarifying research biases.

    • Peer debriefing.

    • External audit.

• Choosing Qualitative Research:

  • Considerations include:

    • Nature of the phenomenon.

    • Research objectives.

    • Intent to quantify or describe.

• Preparation for Qualitative Research:

  • Review existing research studies.

  • Consider strengths and weaknesses.

  • Review literature on qualitative research methods.

  • Engage in self-study modules.

Bansal, P., Smith, W. K., & Vaara, E. (2018). New ways of seeing through qualitative research. Academy of Management Journal, 61(4), 1189–1195. https://discovery.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=8d95570f-541c-3d94-91eb-82dc3e4cd855

• Diverse Forms of Qualitative Research:

  • Qualitative research extends beyond case-based positivist approaches with systematically coded data.

  • Encompasses process studies, engaged scholarship, historical studies, discourse studies, paradox as a method, dialectical inquiry, and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis.

• Interpretation and New Insights:

  • Qualitative data necessitates interpretation for discerning patterns and insights.

  • Qualitative research offers new insights and introduces theories in novel directions, enabling a broader framework through inductive theorizing grounded in data.

• Variance-Based Case Studies:

  • Focus on understanding relationships between well-defined constructs that transcend specific contexts.

  • Follows a positivist paradigm and closely relates to quantitative research.

• Process Studies:

  • Explore change, emergence, adaptation, and transformation.

  • Observes flows, changes, and relationality, exploring the morphing and changing of competing logics, goals, and identities over time.

• Engaged Scholarship:

  • Researchers are inseparable from their context, emphasizing connections between researchers and subjects.

  • Real-time engagement that may not always make it to journals due to difficulty in describing experiences.

• Historical Studies:

  • Utilizes historical data to understand social, cultural, and institutional construction of organizational and managerial phenomena.

  • Different approaches include realist, interpretive, and poststructuralist, each offering unique perspectives.

• Discourse Studies:

  • Includes content analysis, conversational analysis, critical discourse analysis, Foucauldian discourse analysis, and narrative studies.

  • Focuses on socially constructed or poststructuralist understanding of social reality through detailed linguistic analysis.

• Core Principles for Qualitative Scholars:

  1. Acknowledge epistemological stance and assumptions.

  2. Ensure internal consistency among research questions, data, and analysis.

  3. Prioritize authenticity, detail, and clarity in argumentation and writing style.

  4. Avoid force-fitting work into existing templates; maintain flexibility and uniqueness.

Denzin, N. K. (2017). Critical qualitative inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 23(1), 8–16. https://journals-sagepub-com.libraryservices.yorkvilleu.ca/doi/full/10.1177/1077800416681864

• Challenges to Quantifiable Evidence:

  • Governments selectively choose evidence, limiting critical examination of assumptions.

  • Need to unsettle traditional concepts of research and evidence.

• Role of Qualitative Research in Social Justice:

  • Qualitative research provides moral authority for resisting oppression and giving voice to marginalized groups.

  • Ethically responsible agenda involves centering oppressed voices, revealing sites for change, affecting social policy, and promoting change in the inquirer's life.

• Critique of Traditional Beliefs in Qualitative Research:

  • Historical focus on objectivism and theoretical interpretation is critiqued as complicit with colonialism.

  • The international qualitative inquiry community adopts a critical interpretive approach, incorporating various disciplines and methods.

• Criticisms of Qualitative Inquiry:

  • Varied criticisms include claims of nonscientific, fictional, or yielding low-quality research.

  • Qualitative research faces challenges in ensuring methodological certainty in the social sciences.

• Themes in New Paradigm Dialogues:

  • Emphasize openness to critique, collaboration across diverse methods, and avoiding oversimplification.

  • Acknowledge complexity, interconnectedness, and the need to respect paradigm shifts.

• Agendas: Intellectual, Advocacy, Operational:

  • Call for a global community of qualitative inquiry with annual events at regional levels.

  • Advocacy agenda involves systematic contacts with political figures, media, and practitioners.

  • Operational agenda includes self-learning, building relationships with organizations, policymakers, and funders.

• Safe Space for Reflection:

  • Importance of a safe space to address issues of racism, sexual and class boundaries, and share painful experiences.

• Social Theater in Qualitative Research:

  • Translates private troubles into public issues, mobilizing social action and critical analysis.

  • Identifies different definitions of problems, exposes the limits of audit procedures, and nurtures critical consciousness.

• After-Event Evaluation:

  • Inquires whether an event exposes and neutralizes internal biases, bears witness to injustice, and contributes to community-building and empowerment.

• Underfunding and Struggles in Qualitative Research:

  • Qualitative scholars face challenges in obtaining funding, obtaining tenure, and lower journal impact scores.