Qualitative Research And Methods

Qualitative Research and Methods

Introduction

The dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative research and the methods they utilise has been one of the ongoing points of contention in Social Studies (De Lisle, 2011).There is hardly any field which has not been marked by the debate, including softer fields such as the feminism and Gender Studies fields, and Political Science. In Social Sciences it has been traditionally understood that quantitative research relates to a more masculine, positivist and clearly empirical approach, while qualitative research is used primarily for more feminine oriented studies (Oakley, 1997 1998). In the late 1980s and early 1990s this led to a predominant assumption that quantitative research is not suitable for the needs of the softer fields, because it does not capture the full array of nuances and abstract, difficult to pin down concepts, characteristic for such disciplines (Graham, 1983 De Lisle, 2011). One reason is that qualitative research focuses on the values, processes, and meanings of the subject researched, with the contexts and descri ption (Bryman, 2012). This division however simplifies the complexity of the research topics with which Social Studies usually deal with. In any field, the choice of research methods in the study depends on the scale and type of the research question, and the aims and objectives of the study, rather than a previously adopted paradigm (Kelly et al, 1994). This essay will attempt to show why this is the case, and why the choice of methods needs to be determined by the research question, and the social and research environment in which it exists. The essay will argue that the methods need to be adjusted to the research question, and not the other way round choosing research questions to fit previously existing research designs. In order to do this the author will first provide a brief overview of two of the key methods, used by researchers for qualitative research __ interviews and observation, and will then discuss in which situations it would be suitable to use mixed qualitative methods and why. The benefits of qualitative oriented mixed research strategies will also be discussed.

Interviews and qualitative research

Interviews have become one of the most common methods for conducting research in the Social Sciences, and they are suited to a large array of research designs. Interviews are preferred because of their versatility, and their ability to cover aspects of the research which other research might not be able to cover (Bryman, 2012 Sarantakos, 2005). Interviews can be structured, semi-structured, or open (Kvale, 2007). Naturally, the most recognised disadvantage of interviews is that they can be time-consuming, difficult to record/transcribe, and the data collected from them can be challenging to analyse (Kvale, 2007). The latter has been partially tackled with the rise of CAQDAS (Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software) (Mangabeira et al, 2004). Another criticism of interviews is that the approach is too soft and abstract, as well as exploratory and unscientific, compared to some quantitative methods such as questionnaire surveys (Bryman, 2012). With interviews it is important to think about reflexivity the role that the researcher plays in conducting the interviews, and how they are implemented in the particular research design (Letherby, 2003). Interviews allow the researcher to follow the complexity of social processes which are often constructed, rather than previously determined, and to evaluate, and reflect upon these processes. Interviews however are not a universal method and careful consideration of the type and scale of the research question is important. Interviews in social research we usually use when the topic is complex, and to some extent __ abstract (Kvale, 2007).

Studies where the chosen method would be interview can be topics related to the choice of people not to have children, the choice of changing a religion, the impacts of political totalitarian political regimes (communism) on people s political beliefs, or the impact of war on people. For example, the process of choosing not to have children might be the result of a number of social, political or economic considerations, which cannot be captured within the rigid format of the questionnaire. The decision to choose one s religion for example can be the result of significant personal development processes, or key events and the ways in which they were perceived by the participants. And in the complex and challenging study of war, the impact can be psychological, sociological, and like many of the phenomena observed in qualitative research - constructed and flexible, rather than fixed in space and time, and can vary greatly because of the over-reaching impact of war.

Needless to say, these are sensitive, abstract topics, and can be studied in many different ways, which a questionnaire survey will not be able to capture. Another important consideration is the fact that the participants are probably more likely to share their experiences on such issues with an interviewer, in a more personal, relaxed atmosphere, rather than if completing a questionnaire. Of course, these are just general examples which the researcher has used to illustrate the point that certain topics might benefit from the use of interviews, although interviews are often used in conjunction with other methods. One of them is observation, especially in the context of some research designs such as ethnography.

Observation and qualitative research

As a method observation involves the researcher immersing in the world, phenomenon, or a group, with the purpose of gaining deeper understanding of what is being studied (Spradley, 1980). It usually is utilised by the ethnographic research design, although other designs can make use of it too. It is one of the methods in qualitative research which results in reliance on directly witnessing the processes and those involved in them, despite criticisms related to a lack of organisation, and subjectivity (Spradley, 1980). However unlike other methods, observation and participant observation provide an opportunity to observe not only the people or processes, but also the environment in which these take place. The observer needs to make good note of the following profiles of the patricians, any trends and patterns, frequency in their communication or behaviour also need to be studied, as well as specifics of the inter-personal processes taking place power dynamics, relationships that form or have formed prior to the research, internal divisions, etc (Spradley, 1980). Also, unlike other methods observation can capture non-verbal communication, such as facial expressions, body language, or small traces which participants leave behind, which might bring valuable information to the researcher (Spradley, 1980). But for which sort of questions do we use observation and would that bring valid results? Usually, the studies which would benefit from observation or participant observation fall in the ethnographic research design. Such studies are also usually related to social situations Spradley (1980), which need to be carefully selected and may relate to examination of a variety of processes, such as religious, occupational, or those taking place within sub-cultural groups, or a particular community of which the researcher may, or may not be a member (gay, lesbian, prisoners, political activists). The topics which usually rely on observation may fall in the field of anthropology, particularly cultural anthropology, social psychology, and ethnology. Observation is often used in combination with other methods, such as interviews, reflexive journals, or focus groups (Spradley, 1985). The benefits of combining qualitative methods within a research design will be discussed next.

Combining methods in qualitative research

For the purpose of this paper it is important to first define what is meant here by mixed methods or combination of methods. Johnson et al. (2007) define qualitative-dominant mixed methods research as the type of mixed research in which one relies on a qualitative, constructivist-poststructuralist-critical view of the research process, while concurrently recognizing that the addition of quantitative data and approaches are likely to benefit most research projects (Johnson et al, 2007: 143). So it would be useful to note that mixed methods is not always referred to the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, but also to a variety of methods in say, one of the two. As suggested by Mason (2006:10), a qualitative driven approach to mixing methods offers the potential for understanding complex social situations and experiences, benefitting from the ways in which researchers have created constructivist epistemologies, and to address questions which are entirely open to interpretation and explanation. In order to defend the use of qualitatively oriented research methodology, De Lisle (2011) refers to a research study in Trinidad and Tobago. It aimed to examine the challenges to attending secondary school in the country. The researchers embedded qualitative dominant mixed methods design, which enhanced the ability to capture contradictions, paradoxes, and different aspects of the local educational system, and its receivers the children and their families (De Lisle, 2011). The mixture of qualitative research methods included ethnographic field notes, and individual and focus group interviews, which were both structured and unstructured, as well as visual ethnography observations of classrooms (De Lisle, 2011). The methods for this study, despite possible criticism that none of them could exist as a method on its own, were deigned to capture the realities of children s lives, which could be a potential obstacle to their regular attendance, and the resources available at the local schools another possible obstacle. This example illustrates the wide flexibility of qualitative research methods, in a study where the collection of quantitative data via a questionnaire survey would not bring the desired results. The reason is that the problems in education, which Trinidad and Tobago was facing at the time, could hardly be quantified or captured within the strict format of a questionnaire. They were related not only to tangible variables such as income, access to a nearby school, etc, but also to culture, family upbringing, social environment and security, and the even more constructivist concept of perception of education - the way education is perceived by children and their families. In this sense the choice of mixed methods qualitative research design was largely determined by the scale, purpose, and topic of the subject. Despite the fact that Trinidad and Tobago was removed from the list of developing countries in 2011 by OECD (Guardian, 2011), issues of poverty, gang crime, police violence, corruption and drug trafficking are still predominant, affecting society and public institutions at large, education not being an exception. Thus researching any social, political or economic issues in such countries and regions is one good example of why qualitative oriented methodologies are far more applicable. If we study education choices and factors affecting school attendance in a country like Switzerland for example, perhaps the use of a questionnaire survey only would be helpful, as half of the factors which will have to be taken into consideration, compared to the case of Trinidad and Tobago, would be inapplicable, simply because Switzerland does not suffer poverty, gang crime, or drug smuggling, which might affect the choice of school or attendance in a country like Trinidad and Tobago. Of course, it would be an oversimplification to say that any issue in the field of education can be studied with the choice of one method or the other only, having in mind that education is one of the most challenging and complex research fields, where a mixture of methods is often recommended (De Lisle, 2011). What the author has attempted to show by drawing the parallel between Trinidad and Tobago, and Switzerland is that the choice of methods depends largely on the research topic, the field of research, the scope of the study, and the location (if applicable), and the scope of the study.

One of the research designs which relies on the combination of interviews and observation is ethnography (Spradely, 1980 Atkinson, 1990). The combination of methods is usually used to achieve richness and variety of data (Spradely, 1980 Atkinson, 1990). The combination of methods for data collection is a favoured approach in many cases, although its feasibility and implementation would depend on the research question. In general, there are topics and questions which can be addressed with only a single research method/technique. Some examples are questions like: Women s perceptions on the quality and effects of liquid lipsticks , or How do Eastern Europeans in London assess the healthcare system in the UK . These are fictional examples devised to illustrate that some research questions might be addressed with a well-designed questionnaire, unlike others, where the combination of methods is a must.

Ethnographic studies, for example, use a variety of techniques, often because the questions asked there are multi-layered, e.g. observation on the attitude of London based English people towards Muslims in London or observation on the key causes of gang crime in East London , where the research design is more complicated, because the aims and the objectives of the study are far-reaching. Also, usually in the study of a group or a community, which is often the case with ethnography (Atkinson, 1990), the perceptions and the dynamics of the group are intangible, and versatile, therefore hard to quantify or measure with a questionnaire, observation, or an interview only. This is the reason why in those cases there is a combination of methods __ usually observation, as well as individual or focus group interviews with the group members. Such questions also predispose towards a multi-layered research design, not only because usually they have longer duration, but also because the analysis is cross-disciplinary, transcending the boundaries of a single field.

In such cases combination of methods within the qualitative research design is recommended, not only because combined methods bring richer data, but also because of issues of internal and external validity. Internal validity usually relates to coherence between existing theory and the findings of the study, and external validity usually relates to generalisability, or whether the results can be replicated (Bryman, 2012 Sarantakos, 2005). A second method in such studies is usually needed, as a supplementary, to make sure that all residuals of data are captured, but also, to make sure that the work is properly validated. In this sense a combination of qualitative methods for multi-layered research questions can largely contribute to internal/external validity, because the second method (say, the interview), may allow not only for the collection of residual data, but also for the testing of the results collected through the primary method (say, the observation). This is usually the case with the so called embedded designs (Creswell and Clark, 2007), where the dominant design is followed by sequential approaches. In this sense the observation, being the primary method, will be used to make contributions to the major aims and objectives of the study, and it may be followed up by interviews with some of the participants, from the group/community observed.

In order to understand the benefits of combining qualitative methods in a given research design, and the fact that the methods largely depend on the research question, let us try to implement the above mentioned design to some of the earlier examples. If we are to study, for example, the attitudes of London-based English people towards Muslims in London, we might want to use the ethnographic research design, with a mix of qualitative data collection tools. The primary tool could be observation, and the secondary tool could be interviews (semi-structured), with some of the members of the community in question, in our case English people based in London. While the primary method will be the focused observations in area (s) populated by English and Muslim people in London, interviews will be conducted at a later stage, when the observation has been completed, in order to get a closer look at some of the members of the community, and to fill in any gaps left by the primary observations. In addition, the interviews might confirm any relationships between existing assumptions/theory, and the specifics of the findings of the research, thus contributing to the internal validity of the study. Many researchers in this case would opt for an additional questionnaire, in order to measure the frequency of repetition of some acts within the community observed, or the presence of a second observer, to make sure that their observations are accurate. The presence of a second observer in such studies is a common practice, because it is said to potentially reduce the level of bias and subjectivity (Spradely, 1980), as different observers might interpret different acts or behaviours differently. However qualitative studies, because of the usually unique social environments that they observe, and the processes which usually spread across the study of more than one discipline, remain largely subjective, despite the attempt of social researchers to combine a variety of methods within the chosen research designs.

Naturally, we must briefly acknowledge that mixing research methods often has some disadvantages, such as the fact that on many occasions there is no clear recipe for mixing the research methods, which can lead to problems of integration and the study dividing into two separate studies (Yin, 2006). Also, and this is in most cases, one method is always supplementary compared to the other. Critics would probably say that the mixture of the methods does not then guarantee validation, but simply a diversification of data. Even if this is the case, the mixture of qualitative methods within a given design predisposes towards the examination of issues which are multi-faceted, and which cannot be addressed through the implementation of one method only.

Conclusion

This essay has attempted to briefly illustrate the benefits of mixing methods in qualitative research. It has been shown that often researchers in the Social Sciences prefer to mix qualitative methods in a given research design (ethnography was discussed as one example), to achieve a better understanding of the phenomenon, group, or the environment they are studying. Despite some obvious disadvantages, it has been shown that the choice of methods depends largely on the research question, its scope, purposes, and scale. In cases where the question relates to a process, which takes place over a long period of time, and is the result of a variety of social, economic, and political factors, the combination of observation and interviews becomes necessary. In other cases, where the question relates to a short-term problem, phenomena, or process, but it still has some relatively abstract aspects, the researcher may wish to choose only one method on its own. Finally, it can be said that because of the variety of complex issues which became the subject of Social Science since the 1980s, the growing popularity of the qualitative methods is a natural development and one that has been perceived as the norm among researchers. It is no longer a question of warring paradigms which research design is to be chosen for a particular study, because issues related to observation and evaluation, rather than simply measuring and quantification, came within the reach of researchers in the realms of a constantly changing, and globalised world.

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