Qualitative Designs and

Approaches

Dr. Sahar Hassan

 Characteristics of Qualitative Research Design
Flexible, elastic
Almost always nonexperimental
Intent to thoroughly describe or explain
Real-world, naturalistic settings
Cross-sectional or longitudinal
Emergent: ongoing analysis guiding design
decisions
Dr. Sahar Hassan
 Intervention, Control, and Masking
Qualitative research is almost always nonexperimental
Do not conceptualize their studies as having independent and
dependent variables,
They rarely control or manipulate any aspect of the people or
environment under study.
Masking???
The goal is to develop a rich understanding of a phenomenon as
it exists and as it is constructed by individuals within their own
context.
Dr. Sahar Hassan
 Comparisons
Qualitative researchers seldom explicitly plan a comparative
study because the intent is to describe and explain a
phenomenon thoroughly.
Inevitably in coding qualitative information and in evaluating
whether categories are saturated, there is a need to compare
thisto that.
comparisons sometimes are planned in qualitative studies (e.g.,a
comparison of nurses and patients perspectives about a
phenomenon).
Dr. Sahar Hassan
 Example of comparisons in a qualitative study
Black and colleagues (2009) studied the phenomenon of
becoming a mother of a medically fragile preterm infant.
They wrote, Each womans experience had unique
features; however, early in the analysis, differences
emerged between experienced mothers and those with no
previous mothering experience. . . Subsequently, within-
group comparisons of experienced and inexperienced
mothers were made to examine similarities and
divergence in their experiences . . . Later, between-group
comparisons were madeDr.(p. 42).
Sahar Hassan
 Ethnography
Describes and interprets a culture and cultural
behavior
Culture is the way a group of people livethe
patterns of activity and the symbolic structures (for
example, the values and norms) that give such
activity significance.
Relies on extensive, labor-intensive fieldwork
Culture is inferred from the groups words, actions,
and products.
Assumption: Cultures guide the way people
structure their experiences.
Dr. Sahar Hassan
 Ethnography (cont.)
Seeks an emic perspective (insiders view) of the culture
Relies on wide range of data sources (interviews,
observations, documents; some may be quantitative.)
Participant observation is a particularly important
source.
Product: an in-depth, holistic portrait of the culture under
study

Dr. Sahar Hassan

 Phenomenology
Focuses on the description and interpretation of peoples lived
experience
Asks: What is the essence of a phenomenon as it is
experienced by people, and what does it mean?
Acknowledges peoples physical ties to their world: being in
the world
Four key aspects of experience: lived space, lived body, lived
time, lived human relation
Main data source: in-depth conversations with a small number
of participants who have experienced the phenomenon
Dr. Sahar Hassan
The topics appropriate to phenomenology are
ones that are fundamental to the life
experiences of humans; for health researchers,
these include such topics as:
the meaning of suffering,
the experience of domestic violence,
the quality of life with chronic pain.

Dr. Sahar Hassan

 Descriptive Phenomenology
Describes human experience
Based on philosophy of Husserl: the "father" of
the philosophical movement known as
phenomenology
Steps: bracketing, intuiting, analyzing, describing
Bracketing (identifying & holding
comments/remarks preconceived views)
May involve maintaining a reflexive journal
Dr. Sahar Hassan
 Example of a descriptive phenomenological
study
Porter (2007) used descriptive
phenomenological methods to describe the day-
to-day experiences of frail older women and the
problems they faced preparing food.

Dr. Sahar Hassan

 Edmund Husserl (18591938)
Suggested that bracketing is away the "natural attitude" could
philosophy becomes its own distinctive & rigorous science
Phenomenology is a science of consciousness rather than of
empirical things
Phenomenology does not proceed from the collection of large
amounts of data
It aims to look at particular examples without theoretical
presuppositions (i.e. the phenomena of intentionality, of love, of
two hands touching each otheretc)
Dr. Sahar Hassan
 Interpretive Phenomenology
Emphasis on interpreting and understanding
experience, not just describing it
Based on philosophy of Heidegger:
Heideggerian hermeneutics
Bracketing does not occur.
Supplementary data sources: texts, artistic
expressions
Dr. Sahar Hassan
 Example of an interpretive phenomenological
study

Frid and co-researchers (2007) used a

hermeneutic approach to explore close
relatives use of imagery to describe the
experience of confronting the brain death of a
loved one.

Dr. Sahar Hassan

 Grounded Theory
Focuses on the discovery of a basic social
psychological problem that a defined group of
people experience
Elucidates social psychological processes and
social structures
Has a number of theoretical rootse.g.,
symbolic interaction
Originally developed by sociologists Glaser and
Strauss
Dr. Sahar Hassan
 Grounded Theory Methods
Primary data sources: in-depth interviews with 20
to 40 people; may be supplemented with
observations, written documents
Data collection, data analysis, and sampling occur
simultaneously
In grounded theory, both the research problem
and the process used to resolve it are discovered
during the study.

Dr. Sahar Hassan

 Grounded Theory Analysis
Constant comparison used to develop and
refine theoretically relevant categories
Focus is on understanding a central concern or
core variable.
A basic social process (BSP) explains how
people come to resolve the problem or
concern.

Dr. Sahar Hassan

 Example of a grounded theory study
Kohara and Inoue (2010) used a grounded theory
approach to study the decision-making process in
patients considering participation in cancer phase I
clinical trials. Using data from both interviews and
observations, the researchers identified the core
problem as searching for a way to live to the end.

Dr. Sahar Hassan

Griffiths and Jasper (2008) used grounded
theory methods to explore military nurses
ability to reconcile the dichotomy between their
caring role and being in an organization
associated with conflict during a period of war.
The core category they identified was Caring
for war: Transition to warrior.

Dr. Sahar Hassan

 Alternative Views of Grounded Theory
Glaser and Strauss (generation of explanatory
theory linking related concepts); called Glaserian
methods
Strauss and Corbin (full conceptual description)
Nurse researchers have used both approaches.
Also constructivist grounded theory

Dr. Sahar Hassan

 Case Studies
Not all qualitative studies are conducted within a
disciplinary tradition. Examples include:
Case studies
These focus on a thorough description and
explanation of a single case or small number of
cases.
Cases can be individuals, families, groups,
organizations, or communities.
Data often are collected over an extended period.
Dr. Sahar Hassan
Example of a multiple case study: Green and
colleagues (2008) conducted a multiple case
study of nursing students experiences studying
abroad in two schools, one in the United
Kingdom and one in Sweden. Individual and
group interviews were con-ducted and
documents (e.g., minutes of meetings)were
analyzed.

Dr. Sahar Hassan

 Example of a case study:
James and colleagues (2007) conducted an in-
depth case study of a family facing a
members death through cancer. Data were
collected over a 10-month period through
interviews, diary notations, and conversations
with all family members.

Dr. Sahar Hassan

 Narrative Analysis
Texts that provide detailed stories are
sometimes analyzed through narrative analysis.
There are numerous approaches to analyzing
texts.
One example is Burkes pentadic dramatism:
analyzes five elements of a story (act, scene,
agent, agency, purpose); meant to be analyzed in
ratios, such as act: agent
Dr. Sahar Hassan
For Burke there are five key elements of a story:
act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose.
Analysis of a story will offer some kind of
answers to these five questions: what was
done (act),when or where it was done
(scene),who did it (agent),how he did
it(agency),and why (purpose)

Dr. Sahar Hassan

Example of a narrative analysis, Burkes approach: One of the
authors of this textbook(Beck, 2006) conducted a narrative
analysis of birth trauma. Eleven mothers sent her their stories of
traumatic childbirth via the Internet. Burkes pentad of terms
was used to analyze these narratives. The most problematic ratio
imbalance was between act and agency. Frequently in the
mothers narratives, it was the How an act was carried out by
the labor and delivery staff that led to the women perceiving
their childbirth as traumatic.

Dr. Sahar Hassan

 Descriptive Qualitative Studies
Many studies do not claim any specific type of
approach or disciplinary tradition.
Such descriptive studies seek to holistically
describe phenomena as they are perceived by
the people who experience them.
The researchers may say that they did a content
analysis of the narrative data with the intent of
understanding important themes and patterns.
Dr. Sahar Hassan
 Example of a descriptive qualitative study:
A descriptive qualitative study by Zehle and
colleagues (2007) explored childhood obesity
through mothers perceptions, beliefs, and
behaviors. In-depth interviews with 16
primiparous mothers with children under age
3 were conducted, and five themes were
identified.

Dr. Sahar Hassan

 Research With Ideological Perspectives
Critical theory research:
Such research is concerned with a critique of existing
social structures and with envisioning new
possibilities.
Transformation is a key objective.
Ethnographies are especially likely to be critical.

Dr. Sahar Hassan

 Example of a critical ethnography: Gardeziand
colleagues (2009) conducted a critical ethnog-
raphy of communication, silence, and power
in the operating room between physicians and
nurses in Canada. Three forms of recurring
silences were observed: absence of
communication, not respond-ing to questions,
and speaking quietly. These silences may be
influenced by institutional and struc-tural
power dynamics. Dr. Sahar Hassan
 Research With Ideological Perspectives
Feminist research:
Focuses on how gender domination and
discrimination shape womens lives and their
consciousness
Participatory action research (PAR):
Produces knowledge through close collaboration
with groups or communities that are vulnerable to
control or oppression

Dr. Sahar Hassan

End of Presentation

Dr. Sahar Hassan