SOWK 6003 Social Work
Research
Week 9
Qualitative Research and its Analysis
By Dr. Paul Wong
Overview
 Topics Appropriate for Qualitative Research
 Prominent Qualitative Research Paradigms
 Qualitative Sampling Methods
 Strengths and Weaknesses
 Standards for Evaluating Qualitative Studies
 Research Ethics in Qualitative Research
Qualitative Research Methods
 Qualitative research methods attempt to tap
the deeper meanings of particular human
experiences, generating theoretically richer
observations that are not easily reduced to
numbers
 By going directly to the phenomenon under
study, and observing it as completely as
possible, researchers can develop a deeper
understanding of it
Topics Appropriate for Qualitative Research
 Qualitative research is especially appropriate
to the study of topics for which attitudes and
behaviors can best be understood within their
natural setting
 Qualitative research is especially appropriate
for the study of social processes over time
(e.g., rumblings and final explosion of a riot
as events actually occur)
Topics Appropriate for Qualitative Research
Appropriate topics for field research include:
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Practices
Episodes
Encounters
Roles
Relationships
Groups
Organizations
Settlements
Social worlds
Lifestyles or subcultures
Prominent Qualitative Research Paradigms
 Naturalism
– An old tradition that emphasizes observing
people in their everyday settings
– E.g., Ethnography involves naturalistic
observations and holistic understandings of
cultures or subcultures
 Grounded Theory
– Attempts to derive theories from an analysis of
the patterns, themes, and common categories
discovered among observational data
Prominent Qualitative Research Paradigms
 Participatory Action Research
– Implicit belief that research functions not only
as means of knowledge production, but also
as a tool for education and development of
consciousness as well as mobilization for
action
 Case Studies
– Idiographic examinations of a single
individual, family, group, organization,
community or society
Qualitative Sampling Methods
 Probability sampling is sometimes used in
qualitative research, however nonprobability
techniques are much more common
 Nonprobability samples used in qualitative
research are called purposive samples
Qualitative Sampling Methods
Purposive samples include:
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Quota sample
Snowball sample
Deviant case sample
Intensity sample
Critical incidents sample
Maximum variation sample
Strengths and Weaknesses
 Depth of understanding
 Flexibility
 Cost
 Subjectivity
 Generalizibility
Standards for Evaluating Qualitative Studies
 Given the variety of research methods and
paradigms, a general agreement exists that
one key issue in evaluating the rigor of
qualitative research is trustworthiness
Three key threats to trustworthiness:
 Reactivity
 Researcher bias
 Respondent bias
Standards for Evaluating Qualitative Studies
Contemporary Positivist Standards
Strategies to minimize threats:
 Prolonged engagement
 Triangulation
 Peer debriefing and support
 Negative case analysis
 Member checking
 Auditing
Standards for Evaluating Qualitative Studies
Social Constructivist Standards
 This paradigm views trustworthiness and
strategies to enhance rigor more in terms of
capturing multiple subjective realities than of
ensuring the portrayal of an objective social
reality, the objective of contemporary
positivists.
Standards for Evaluating Qualitative Studies
Empowerment Standards
 Those who take a critical social science or
participatory action research approach to
qualitative research include empowerment
standards in critically appraising qualitative
research
 Research must evoke action by participants
to effect desired change and a redistribution
of power
Research Ethics in Qualitative Research
Conducting qualitative research responsibly
involves confronting ethical issues that arise
from the researcher’s direct contact with
participants:
– Is it ethical to talk to people when they don’t know you
will be recording their words?
– Is it ethical to see a severe need for help and not
respond to it directly?
– Is it ethical to “pay” people with trade-offs for access
to their lives and minds?
Qualitative Research:
Specific Methods
PowerPoint presentation developed by:
E. Roberto Orellana & Lin Fang
Overview
 Preparing for the Field
 The Various Roles of the Observer
 Relations to Participants: Emic and Etic
Perspectives
 Qualitative Interviewing
 Focus Groups
 Life History
 Feminist Methods
 Recording Observations
Preparing for the Field
 Search of relevant literature
 Use key informants
 Discuss the group/community with others
who have already studied it
 Discuss the group with one of its members
 Establish initial contacts with the group to be
studied
The Various Roles of the Observer
 Four different positions on a continuum of
participant observation roles are:
− Complete participant
− Participant-as-observer
− Observer-as-participant
− Complete observer
The Various Roles of the Observer
 A complete participant may either be a
genuine participant in what she is studying or
pretend to be a genuine participant. People will
see her only as a participant, not as a
researcher
 A participant-as-observer would participate
fully with the group under study, but would make
it clear that he is also undertaking research
The Various Roles of the Observer
 The observer-as-participant is one who
identifies herself as a researcher and
interacts with the participants in the social
process but makes no pretense of actually
being a participant
 The complete observer observes a social
process without becoming a part of it in any
way. The participants in a study might not
realize they are being studied because of the
researcher’s unobtrusiveness
Relations to Participants:
Emic and Etic Perspectives
Qualitative researchers should learn how to
simultaneously hold two contradictory
perspectives:
• Trying to adopt the beliefs, attitudes, and other
points of view shared by the members of the
culture being studied (the emic perspective)
• Maintaining objectivity as an outsider and raising
questions about the culture being observed that
wouldn’t occur to members of that culture (the
etic perspective)
Qualitative Interviewing
 Qualitative researchers often engage in indepth interviews with the participants,
interviews that are far less structured than
interviews conducted in survey research
 Qualitative interviewing tends to be openended and unstructured. Three forms of
qualitative, open-ended interviewing are:
1. The informal conversational interview
2. The general interview guide approach
3. The standardized open-ended interview
Qualitative Interviewing
 An informal conversational interview is an unplanned
and unanticipated interaction between an interviewer
and a respondent that occurs naturally during the course
of fieldwork observation
 With the interview guide approach to qualitative
interviewing, an interview guide lists in outline form the
topics and issues that an interviewer should cover in the
interview, but it allows the interviewer to adapt the
sequencing and wording of questions to each particular
interview
Qualitative Interviewing
 The standardized open-ended interview
consists of questions that are written out in
advance exactly the way they are to be asked in
the interview. Probes are to be limited to where
they are indicated on the interview schedule
Focus Groups
 To conduct a focus group, researchers bring
participants together to be observed and
interviewed as group
 Focus groups are based on structured, semistructured, or unstructured interviews. They
allow the researcher to question several
individuals systematically and simultaneously
Focus Groups
offer several advantages:
 Inexpensive
 Generate speedy results
 Offer flexibility for probing
 The group dynamics that occur in focus
groups can bring out aspects of the topic that
the researchers may not have anticipated
and that may not have emerged in individual
interviews
Focus Groups
Focus groups however, also have disadvantages:
 Questionable representativeness of participants
 The influence of group dynamics to pressure
people to say things that do not accurately
reflect what they really believe or do
 The difficulty in analyzing the voluminous data
generated
Life History
 Life histories or life stories involve asking
open-ended questions to discover how the
participants in a study understand the significant
events and meaning in their own lives. AKA:
Oral history interviews
 Because life histories provide idiographic
examinations of individuals’ lives, they can be
viewed within the case study paradigm
Recording Observations
 Tape recorders are powerful tools for
qualitative interviewing. It ensures verbatim
recording and frees interviewers to keep their
full attention focused on the respondents
 The field journal is the backbone of
qualitative research, because that is where
the researcher records the observations.
Journal entries should be detailed, yet
concise.
Recording Observations
 Note-taking in qualitative research should include both
the investigator’s empirical observations and the
investigator’s interpretations of them. You should record
what you “know” has happened and what you “think” has
happened.
 If, possible observations should be recorded as they are
made; otherwise, they should be recorded in stages and
as soon as possible. Don’t trust your memory any more
than you have to.