Qualitative Research
An Introduction
AEF 801
Mary.Brennan@ncl.ac.uk
Qualitative Research
• Qualitative research is an interdisciplinary,
transdisciplinary, and sometimes counterdisciplinary field.
It crosses the humanities and the social and physical
sciences. Qualitative research is many things at the same
time. It is multiparadigmatic in focus. Its practitioners
are sensitive to the value of the multimethod approach.
They are committed to the naturalistic perspective, and to
the interpretative understanding of human experience. At
the same time, the field is inherently political and shaped
by multiple ethical and political positions.
• Nelson et al’s (1992, p4)
Qualitative Research
• ‘Qualitative Research…involves finding out what
people think, and how they feel - or at any rate,
what they say they think and how they say they
feel. This kind of information is subjective. It
involves feelings and impressions, rather than
numbers’
• Bellenger, Bernhardt and Goldstucker, Qualitative Research in
Marketing, American Marketing Association
Qualitative Research
• Qualitative research is multimethod in focus,
involving an interpretative, naturalistic approach
to its subject matter.
• Qualitative Researchers study “things” (people
and their thoughts) in their natural settings,
attempting to make sense of, or interpret,
phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring
to them.
Qualitative Research
• 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 meanings
in individuals lives.
• Deploy a wide range of interconnected methods, hoping
always to get a better fix on the subject matter at hand.
The Qualitative Researcher as
Bricoleur
• Bricoleur
• A ‘Jack of all trades or kind of professional DIY person’
• Produces a bricolage, that is a pieced together, close-knit
set of practices that provide solutions to a problem in a
concrete situation
• The solution which is a result of the bricoleurs method is
an emergent construction that changes and takes new
forms as different tools, methods and techniques are added
to the puzzle.
The Qualitative Researcher as
Bricoleur
• The Qualitative Researcher as Bricoleur uses the tools of
his methodological trade . The choice of research practices
depends upon the questions that are asked, and the
questions depend on their context, what is available in the
context, and what the researcher can do in that setting.
• The Bricoleur is adept at performing a large number of
diverse tasks ranging from interviewing to observing, to
interpreting personal and historical documents, to intensive
self-reflection and introspection.
The Qualitative Researcher as
Bricoleur
• The bricoleur understands that research is an interactive
process shaped by his own personal history, biography,
gender, social class, race, and ethnicity and those of the
people in the setting.
• The product of the bricoleur’s labour is a bricolage, a
complex, dense, reflexive, collage-like creation that
represents the researchers images, understanding and
interpretations of the world or phenomenon under analysis.
• The bricolage will connect the parts to the whole, stressing
the meaningful relationships that operate in the situations
and social worlds studied.
Positivist Paradigm
• Emphasises that human reason is supreme and that
there is a single objective truth that can be discovered
by science
• Encourages us to stress the function of objects,
celebrate technology and to regard the world as a
rational, ordered place with a clearly defined past,
present and future
Non-Positivist Paradigm
• Questions the assumptions of the positivist paradigm
• Argues that our society places too much emphasis on science
and technology
• Argues that this ordered, rational view of consumers denies
the complexity of the social and cultural world we live in
• Stresses the importance of symbolic, subjective experience
The Five moments of Qualitative
Research
Traditional Period: 1900’s-World War II
• Wrote objective colonising accounts of field
experiences that were reflective of the positivist
scientist paradigm
• Concerned with offering valid, reliable, and
objective interpretations in their writings.
• The ‘subject’ who was studied was alien, foreign,
and strange.
The Modernist Phase
Post war-1970’s
• The modernist ethnographer and
sociological participant observer attempted
rigorous, qualitative studies of important
social processes, including social control in
the classroom and society
• Researchers were drawn to qualitative
research because it allowed them to give a
voice to society’s ‘underclass’
Blurred Genres
1970-1986
• Researchers had a full complement of paradigms, methods and
strategies
• Applied qualitative research was gaining in stature
• Research strategies ranged from grounded theory to the case study
methodology
• Methods included qualitative interviewing and observational, visual,
personal and documentary methods.
• Computers were becoming more prevalent
• Boundaries between the social sciences and humanities had become
blurred
• Social science was borrowing models, theories and methods of
analysis from the humanities
• Researcher acknowledged as being part of the research process
Crisis of Representation
Mid 1980’s-Current Day
• Caused by the publication of a book called Anthropology
as Cultural Critique (Marcus and Fischer, 1986)
• Made research and writing more reflexive and called into
question the issues of gender, class and race.
• Interpretative theories as opposed to grounded theories
were more common as writers challenge old models of
truth and meaning
• Crisis of Representation and Legitimisation
The Fifth Moment
Current Day
• Defined and shaped by the dual crisis of representation and
legitimisation
• Theories now beginning to be read in narrative terms as
‘tales of the field’
• Concept of an aloof researcher has finally been fully
abandoned
• More action oriented research is on the horizon
• More Social criticism and social critique
• The search for grand narratives is being replaced by
more local, small-scale theories fitted to specific problems
and specific situations
Qualitative v.'s Quantitative
Type of questions
Qualitative
Research
Probing
Quantitative
Research
Limited probing
Sample Size
small
large
Info. Per
respondent
much
varies
Admin
Requires skilled
researcher
Subjective,
interpretative
Exploratory
Fewer specialist
skills required
Statistical
Type of Analysis
Type of research
Descriptive or
causal
Popularity of Qualitative
Research
1 Usually much cheaper than quantitative
research
2 No better way than qualitative research to
understand in-depth the motivations and
feelings of consumers
3 Qualitative research can improve the
efficiency and effectiveness of quantitative
research
Limitations of Qualitative
Research
1 Marketing successes and failures are based on small
differences in the marketing mix.
Qualitative research doesn’t distinguish these differences
as well as quantitative research can.
2 Not representative of the population that is of interest to
the researcher
3 The multitude of individuals who, without formal training,
profess to be experts in the field
Qualitative Research as a Process
• Theory
• Method
• Analysis
• All three interconnect to define the
qualitative research process
Theoretical Approach
Deductive
• Deductive Theoretical Approach
• Seek to use existing theory to shape the approach which you adopt to
the qualitative research process and to aspects of data analysis
• Analytical Procedures
• Pattern Matching
• Involves predicting a pattern of outcomes based on theoretical
propositions to explain what you expect to find
• Explanation Building
• Involves attempting to build an explanation while collecting and
analysing the data, rather than testing a predicted explanation as in
pattern matching
Inductive Approach
• Inductive Theoretical Approach
• Seek to build up a theory which is adequately grounded in a number of
relevant cases. Referred to as Interpretative and Grounded Theory
• Art of Interpretation
• Field Text: Consists of field notes and documents from the field
• Research Text: Notes and interpretations based on the filed text
• Working interpretative document: Writers initial attempt to make
sense out of what he has learned
• Public Text: The final tale of the Field
Qualitative Data Collection
Techniques
•
•
•
•
•
In depth Interviewing
Focus Groups
Participant Observations
Ethnographic Studies
Projective Techniques
Analysis Qualitative Data:
An Approach
• Categorisation
• Unitising data
• Recognising relationships and developing
the categories you are using to facilitate this
• Developing and testing hypotheses to reach
conclusion
Interactive Nature of the
Qualitative Process
• Data collection, data analysis and the development
and verification of relationships and conclusion
are all interrelated and interactive set of processes
• Allows researcher to recognise important themes,
patterns and relationships as you collect data
• Allows you to re-categorise existing data to see
whether themes and patterns and relationships
exist in the data already collected
• Allows you to adjust your future data collection
approach to see whether they exist in other cases
Tools for helping the Analytical
Process
• Summaries
• Should contain the key points that emerge from
undertaking the specific activity
• Self Memos
• Allow you to make a record of the ideas which
occur to you about any aspect of your research,as
you think of them
• Researcher Diary