Characteristics of a Qualitative Research

1. Human understanding and interpretation

2. Active, powerful, and forceful
3. Multiple research approaches and methods
4. Specificity to generalization
5. Contextualization
6. Diversified data in real-life situations
7. Abounds with words and visuals
8. Internal analysis

Types of Qualitative Research:

• Case Study
• Ethnography
• Phenomenology
• Content and Discourse Analysis
• Historical Analysis
• Grounded Theory

Disadvantages or Weaknesses of Qualitative Research

• Involves a lot of the researcher’s subjectivity
• It’s hard to know the validity or reliability of the data
• It’s open-ended questions yield ‘data overload’ that requires long time analysis
• Time consuming
• Involves several processes that greatly depend on the researcher’s views or interpretation

Advantages or Strengths of Qualitative Research

• Adopts a naturalistic approach
• Promotes a full understanding of human behavior or personality traits in their natural setting
• Instrumental for positive societal changes
• It engenders respect for people’s individuality
• Way of understanding and interpreting social interactions
• Increases the interest of the researcher to the study
• Offer various methods of acquiring and examining knowledge

Qualitative Research
• Meaning obtaining world knowledge.
• A research type that puts premium or high value on people’s thinking or point of view conditioned by
their personal traits.
• To gain an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations.

 Ethnography emphasizes the observation of details of everyday life as they naturally

unfold in the real world. This is sometimes called naturalistic research.
 Ethnography is a method of describing a culture or society. This is primarily used in
anthropological research.

 Phenomenology is a school of thought that emphasizes a focus on people’s subjective

experiences and interpretations of the world.
 Phenomenological theorists argue that objectivity is virtually impossible to ascertain, so
to compensate, one must view all research from the perspective of the researcher.
 Phenomenologists attempt to understand those whom they observe from the subjects’
perspective.
 This outlook is especially pertinent in social work and research where empathy and
perspective become the keys to success.

 Field research is a general term that refers to a group of methodologies used by

researchers in making qualitative inquiries.
 The field researcher goes directly to the social phenomenon under study and observes it
as completely as possible.
 The natural environment is the priority of the field researcher. There are no implemented
controls or experimental conditions to speak of.
 Such methodologies are especially useful in observing social phenomena over time.
 Methods

 Participant observation
 Direct observation
 Unstructured or intensive interviewing
 Case studies

 The researcher literally becomes part of the observation.

 Example: One studying the homeless may decide to walk the streets of a given area in an
attempt to gain perspective and possibly subjects for future study.
Quantitative research is used to populate statistics from a high volume sample size to
gain statistically valid results in customer insight. Generally, quantitative customer
research incorporates a survey-based approach to gain feedback in relation to a
populations ideas and opinions.

Here are the importance of quantitative research:

1. More reliable and objective

2. Can use statistics to generalise a finding
3. Often reduces and restructures a complex problem to a limited number of
variables
4. Looks at relationships between variables and can establish cause and effect
in highly controlled circumstances
5. Tests theories or hypotheses
6. Assumes sample is representative of the population
7. Subjectivity of researcher in methodology is recognized less