MAJOR

CHARACTERISTICS OF
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
1. NATURALISTIC INQUIRY

Studying real-world situations as they unfold

naturally; non-manipulative, unobtrusive, and
non-controlling; openness to whatever emerges—
lack of predetermined constraints on outcomes.
2. INDUCTIVE ANALYSIS

Immersion in the details and specifics of the data to

discover important categories, dimensions, and
interrelationships; begin by exploring genuinely open
questions rather than testing theoretically derived
(deductive) hypotheses.
3. HOLISTIC PERSPECTIVE

The whole phenomenon under study is understood as a

complex system that is more than the sum of its parts;
focus is on complex interdependencies not
meaningfully reduced to a few discrete variables and
linear, cause-effect relationships.
4. QUALITATIVE DATA

Detailed, thick description; inquiry in depth; direct

quotations capturing people‘s personal perspectives
and experiences.
5. PERSONAL CONTACT AND INSIGHT

The researcher has direct contact with and gets close to

the people, situation, and phenomenon under study;
researcher‘s personal experiences and insights are
important part of the inquiry and critical to
understanding the phenomenon.
6. DYNAMIC SYSTEMS

Attention to process; assumes change is constant and

ongoing whether the focus is on an individual or an
entire culture.
7. UNIQUE CASE ORIENTATION

Assumes each case is special and unique; the first level

of inquiry is being true to, respecting, and capturing the
details of the individual cases being studied; crosscase
analysis follows from and depends on the quality of
individual case studies.
8. CONTEXT-SENSITIVITY

Places findings in a social, historical, and temporal

context; dubious of the possibility or meaningfulness
of generalization across time and space.
9. EMPHATIC NEUTRALITY

Complete objectivity is impossible; pure subjectivity undermines

credibility; the researcher‘s passion is understanding the world in all its
complexity – not proving something, not advocating, not advancing
personal agenda, but understanding; the researcher includes personal
experience and empathic insight as part of the relevant data, while
taking a neutral nonjudgmental stance toward whatever content may
emerge.
10. DESIGN FLEXIBILITY

Open to adapting inquiry as understanding deepens

and/or situations change; avoids getting locked into
rigid designs that eliminate responsiveness; pursues
new paths of discovery as they emerge.
 TYPES OF
QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH
1. PHENOMENOLOGY

It is an approach to philosophy and not specifically a method

of inquiry; this has often been misunderstood. It is first and
foremost philosophy, the approach employed to pursue a
particular study should emerge from the philosophical
implications inherent in the question.
 PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

• Identification of a shared experience

• Attempt to locate universal nature of an experience
• Attempt to identify shared experience among various individuals
experiencing shared phenomena
• Attempt to locate essence of an experience
• What was experienced and How he/she experienced it.
 trying to UNDERSTAND what it is like from the point of
view of the participants

PARTICIPANT: RESEARCHER:
trying to make sense trying to make sense
of their personal of the participant
and social world
 METHODS

• Purposive sampling (homogenous sample)

• Research Question
• Involve issues and experiences of considerable significance to the participant/s
• Sample/Recruitment of Participants
• Snowball sampling
• Data Collection
• Semi-structured, one-on-one interviews
2. ETHNOGRAPHY

It is the direct description of a group, culture or community.

Nevertheless, the meaning of the word ethnography can be
ambiguous; it is an overall term for a number of approaches.
Sometimes researchers use it as synonymous with qualitative
research in general, while at other times it‘s meaning is more
specific.
 CHARACTERISTIC OF ETHNOGRAPHIC
RESEARCH
• CONTEXTUAL - The research is carried out in the context in which the subjects normally live
and work
• UNOBTRUSIVE - The research avoids manipulating the phenomena under investigation.
• LONGITUDINAL - The research is relatively long.
• COLLABORATIVE - The research involves the participation of stakeholders other than the
researcher.
• INTERPRETATIVE - The researcher carries out interpretative analyses of the data.
• ORGANIC - There is interaction between questions/ hypotheses and data collection/
interpretation.
 ETHNOGRAPHY AS A METHOD

• (a) People's behavior is studied in everyday contexts, rather than

under experimental conditions created by the researcher. 
• b) Data are gathered from a range of sources, but observation and/or
relatively informal conversations are usually the main ones. 
• c) The approach to data collection is “unstructured” in the sense that
it does not involve following through a detailed plan set up at the
beginning; nor are the categories used for interpreting what people
say and do pre-given or fixed. This does not mean that the research is
unsystematic; simply that initially the data are collected in as raw a
form, and on as wide a front, as feasible. 
d) The focus is usually a single setting or group, of relatively small
scale. In life history research the focus may even be a single
individual. 
e) The analysis of the data involves interpretation of the meanings and
functions of human actions and mainly takes the form of verbal
descriptions and explanations, with quantification and statistical
analysis playing a subordinate role at most.
 METHODOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES

• NATURALISM - This is the view that the aim of social research is to capture the character of
naturally occurring human behavior, and that this can only be achieved by first-hand contact with
it, not by inferences from what people do in artificial settings like experiments or from what they
say in interviews about what they do elsewhere.
• UNDERSTANDING - From this point of view, if we are to be able to explain human actions
effectively we must gain an understanding of the cultural perspectives on which they are based.
That this is necessary is obvious when we are studying a society that is alien to us, since we shall
find much of what we see and hear puzzling.
• DISCOVERY - Another feature of ethnographic thinking is a conception of the research process as
inductive or discovery-based; rather than as being limited to the testing of explicit hypotheses.
• In conducting an ethnographic research, there are also certain ethical
concerns that are being raised every now and then. Over-all, they can
be summarized as:
• informed consent
• privacy
• harm
• exploitation 
3. GROUNDED THEORY

It is a development of theory directly based and

grounded in the data collected by the researcher. It is a
research methodology for discovering theory in a
substantive area.
•  A grounded theory design is a systematic, qualitative procedure used to generate
atheorythe late 1960s- Two sociologists, Barney process, an& Anselm an
interaction • In that explains, at a broad conceptual level, a G. Glaser action, or
L.about a substantive topic (Creswell, 2008). Strauss•
• The phrase "grounded theory" refers to theory that is developed inductively from a
•corpus of data.
• ‘‘Grounded Theory is the most common, widely used, and populer analytic
technicin qualitative analysis’’ (the evidence is: the number of book published on it)
(Gibbs,2010).
• It is mainly used for qualitative research, but is also applicable to other data
(e.g.,quantitative data; Glaser, 1967, chapter VIII).
 WHEN DO YOU USE GROUNDED THEORY?

• when you need a broad theory or explanation of a process.

• especially helpful when current theories about a phenomenon are either inadequate ornonexistent
(Creswell, 2008).
• when you wish to study some process, such as how students develop as writers (Neff,1998) or
how high-achieving African American and Caucasian women’s career develop.
 METHODS

• The basic idea of the grounded theory approach is to read a textual database and "discover" or
label variables (called categories, concepts and properties) and their interrelationships.
• The data do not have to be literally textual -- they could be observations of behavior, such as
interactions and events in a restaurant. Often they are in the form of field notes, which are like
diary entries.
• Data Collection • Interviews • Observations • Documents • Historical Records • Vidoetapes
 TYPES OF GROUNDED THEORY DESIGNS

• There are three dominant designs for grounded theory:

1. Systematic design  (Strauss and Corbin: 1998)
A systematic design in grounded theory emphasizes the use of data analysis
steps of open, axial and selective coding, and the development of a logic paradigm
or avisual picture of the theory generated. In this definition, three phases of
codingexist.
2. Emerging design (Glaser: 1992)
Glaser stresses the importance of letting a theory emerge from the data
rather thanusing specific, preset categories.

3.Constructivist approach (Charmaz: 1990, 2000, 2006)

The constructivist approach has been articulated by Kathy Charmaz. She
focuses onthe importance of meanings individuals attribute to the focus of the
study.Applying active codes, the researcher looks at the participants’ thoughts,
feelings,values, viewpoints, assertions etc. rather than gathering facts and
describing acts.
4. CASE STUDY

It is used for a research approach with specific

boundaries and can be both qualitative and
quantitative. In addition, it is an entity studied as a
single unit, and it has clear confines and a specific
focus and is bound to context.
 WHY CASE STUDY?

• Because you want to investigate a certain phenomena

(learning situation, technology for learning) with a certain
group of people/person

• The case = the people/person

 WHY CASE STUDY?

Allows for exploration

Takes a holistic view of a situation
Accessibility/convenience (situations where sampling can be
difficult)
 A case study is an empirical study that investigates a
contemporary phenomenon in depth and with its real-
life context ”
(Yin, 2009, p18)
 SAMPLES OF CASE STUDY

• Single organization - school: what is happening with a particular tool/strategy

• A particular community - rural village ongoing issue/dispute
• On a particular group ......... Issue to a group
• An individual - career criminal - examination designed to understand motivations of a career
criminal
• A decision – merging to 2 schools, why was decision taken, how was it implemented , what was
outcome
• An event – an election campaign (Henn et al)
 CASE STUDY ALLOWS THE RESEARCHER TO

• Develop holistic and meaningful characteristics of real life event

• Investigate:
• Small group behavior
• Managerial cycles
• Neighborhood change
• School performance
(Yin, 2009) 
Case is not the method,
it is the object of study
(Stake, 1995) 
Read case study examples
What is the case?
What is the research question?
Single or multiple case?
How was data collected?
 CRITICISMS AGAINST CASE STUDY

• Case study is not sampling , can’t understand other cases from it

• Often only weak generalisations made (however sometimes
generalisations inevitable)
• Lack of rigour can be problematic
• Sometimes too long, massive unreadable documents!
• Qualitative - emphasis on interpretation
• All researchers are influenced by their experience (Stake)
• For assertions we draw on understandings deep within us
• Good case study is reflective , patient, willing to see other
views...triangulation
 ASSERTION

Case – Issue –Data – Analysis – Assertion

This could lead to thinking that data could solve an
issue, not really
Assertion really initiates further work
• 6 common sources evidence
• Documents, archival records, interviews, direct observation, participant observation, physical
artefacts ...photos, video...
• Need to master different data collection procedures (Yin)

Main methods
• Observation
• Interview
• Document review
• Survey
• Focus groups (Stake not a fan! Prefers interviews)
5. CONTENT AND DISCOURSE
ANALYSIS
• This requires an analysis or examination of the substance or
content of the mode of communication (letters, books,
journals, photos, video recordings, SMS, online messages,
emails, audio-visual materials, etc.) used by a person, group,
organization, or any institution in communication
6. HISTORICAL ANALYSIS

• Central in this method is the examination of primary

documents to make you understand the connection of past
events to the present time.
• The results of your content analysis will help you specify
phenomenological changes in unchanged aspects of society
through the years.
• A study in the language structures used in the medium of
communication to discover the effects of sociological,
cultural, institutional, and ideological factors on the content
makes it a discourse analysis.