A500.6.3.RB_MatsonAlan

Qualitative Research Defined

            Denzin and Lincoln (2005) state that “qualitative research involves an interpretive, naturalistic approach to the world.” Qualitative research involves interpreting subjects of study using a naturalistic approach, where “problems tend to be framed as open-ended questions that will support discovery of new information.” (Hoepfl, 1997). Qualitative research is useful for gaining new perspectives on things that may have previously been studied, and for gaining understanding concerning subjects about which not much is known. The open-ended nature of qualitative research doesn’t lock the researcher into a set of parameters such as would be the case with quantitative research, which makes qualitative research a good starting point for further study, which may include quantitative research.

            An example of an effective use of qualitative research would be when studying the variety of social interactions between leaders and followers. A question asked may be “What effect does non-work related social interactions have on a follower’s chance of advancement in an organization?” This type of question would be difficult if not impossible to research using quantitative analysis, but lends itself well to qualitative research. This type of question also leads to many other questions, an example of which would be “What types of non-work related social activities are most likely to have a positive effect on a follower’s career advancement?”

Elements of Qualitative Research

        Some of the main elements of qualitative research as described by Hoepfl (1997) are:

• It uses the natural setting as the source of data.
• The researcher is the instrument of data collection.
• Researchers predominantly use inductive data analysis.
• Reports employ descriptive and expressive language.
• Research is interpretive in nature, with the researcher’s interpretation of meaning as a focus.
• Qualitative research is emergent in nature in that it leads to more questions, and is focused on the process as the outcome.
• Standards of credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability apply.

Summary

            While it seems that qualitative research is less structured than qualitative research, this is actually its strength. The fact that qualitative focuses on the emergent process as much as the product allows for many new questions to be explored by the researcher. The open-ended questions employed in qualitative research provide both answers and more questions. As long as the standards of this research method are met, the results can be considered a worthy contribution to our body of knowledge on a subject.

References

Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). The sage handbook of qualitative research. (3rd ed., p. 3). Sage Publications, Inc.

Hoepfl, M. C. (1997). Choosing qualitative research: A primer for technology education readers. Journal of technology education, 9(1), Retrieved from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals