Answer the questions
Qualitative Data: Overview
Ok, so last week we talked about collecting data using surveys and experiments—the goal of both surveys and experiments is prediction and control. This is consistent with the post positive paradigm. This week, we are going to change directions a little bit and we’re going to talk about ways that we can go about collecting qualitative data. Now, methods of data collection for qualitative data are more closely aligned with the interpretive and critical paradigms. This is because the goal of this research is to describe, understand, or explain someone’s unique experience. So, instead of trying to generalize, predict, and control—when we collect data using these qualitative and interpretive methods the goal is description and explanation. To make sure y’all understand this point we’re going to discuss a short overview about collecting qualitative data. So, the objective for this lecture is to understand the link between methods of qualitative data collection and the interpretive and critical paradigms.
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THE DIFFERENCE?
DIFFER ON THE GOAL & PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH!
…qualitative data through the eyes of Mark Wahlberg.
| QUANTITATIVE | QUALITATIVE | |
| Goal of research | Relationships among variables | In-depth understanding through the eyes of participants; description of lived experiences |
| Purpose of research | PREDICTION & CONTROL | DESCRIPTION |
Good researchers understand how to use the best method in order to get the information that will provide the BEST explanation for the research question or hypothesis. So, we need to have both quantitative and qualitative methods that we can use because sometimes we may need to gather information about someone’s unique experience. Sometimes we might need to understand someone’s unique story and the best way to get that information is by gathering descriptive data. So, to review, the post-positive paradigm uses primarily quantitative data and we collect that data using surveys and experiments. On the other end of our continuum, the interpretive and critical paradigms use primarily qualitative data and we collect that data using interviews, focus groups, ethnography, and content analysis. The biggest difference between these two being the goal and the purpose of the research! When we collect quantitative data, we’re examining relationships among variables and we’re using methods that will allows us to predict and control the relationships among variables. When we collect qualitative data, we’re trying to get an in-depth understanding of the participant’s lived experiences and the purpose of the data we gather is to provide a rich description of their experience. So, one is not better or worse than the other—they just differ based on the GOAL and the PURPOSE of the research! To help highlight this point, let’s have Mark Wahlberg explain these differences.
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Sometimes we ask questions that cannot be answered using quantitative analyses….
Sometimes we need to get information that cannot be summarized using numbers. For instance, let’s pretend that we want to understand someone’s experience eating at a brand new, fancy restaurant that just opened up. We could have the participant indicate on a scale of 1 to 7 with one being extremely dissatisfied and 7 being completely satisfied, how satisfied they were with their food and the service received at the restaurant. OR, we could sit them down and ask them a few open-ended questions. We could ask them to explain to us what they ordered, what the food tasted like, and we could have them describe what they thought about the service. Both of these options would work in order to get a sense of what their experience was like. But, if our main goal is to understand their experience, then we would be better off gathering qualitative data to help answer this particular question because it would provide a more rich, in-depth, description. The point here being that one paradigm or method is not better or worse than the other. Rather, we need all kinds of methods and data because we live in a complex world—and we have a lot of questions that we need to answer—and we need to have a toolbox full of different kinds of methods that will allow us to gather the best information to answer those questions.
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Sometimes we ask questions that require exploring unique experiences, instead of generalizations…
When we use quantitative analyses, the goal is to find what is the MOST right for the MOST number of people and to generalize our results. Soon we’re going to start talking about descriptive and inferential statistics and those statistics will provide a numerical value that summarizes the data. Those values---for instance, the mean which is simply an average using descriptive statistics—reflect values on average. Sure, there might be some extreme values---we call these extreme values outliers—but we don’t really care about them. We know there will always be a few and while we know that—we still aim to figure out what is the most right—on average—for folks in our study. So, on average what is THE MOST RIGHT. When we deal with qualitative data and analyses the goal is to describe and understand a unique experience. So, when we’re in the interpretive and critical paradigm(s) and we’re gathering qualitative data our whole entire purpose is to UNDERSTAND THE EXPERIENCES OF THOSE FOLKS WHO ARE THE OUTLIERS! We don’t care what is the right for the most number of people because we aren’t trying to generalize. Instead, we’re trying to understand what those folks who have unique experiences are going through.
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Qualitative RESEARCH
So, we’re going to talk about methods of collecting qualitative data for a bit. Specifically, interviews, focus groups, content analysis and ethnographic methods. And remember—these methods are closely aligned with assumptions about the interpretive and critical paradigms. So, they’ll help us gather information that will provide understanding of the meaning behind human behavior---they’ll help us understand subjective things from participant’s unique points of view.
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Qualitative Research Methods
Focus Groups
Interviews
Ethnography
Content Analysis