9-2 Discussion

Module Overview18.html

Qualitative Research

The Limits of Quantitative Research

Throughout this course, we have covered a wide variety of research designs and statistical tests: t-tests, ANOVAs, multiple regression, and chi-square tests. You may have noticed a few broad similarities in these methods of answering research questions. First, these research designs all rely on quantifying psychological variables so that they can be statistically analyzed. Second, they all rely on analyzing data from multiple participants so that conclusions can be drawn about groups of participants.

Let’s take a closer look at the first broad similarity. Up to this point, all of the research designs we have covered involve quantifying psychological variables. That is, before we can conduct a t-test or compute a regression, we must have numerical data that we can analyze. Even the chi-square test, which is used to analyze categorical variables, relies on having neat categories with frequencies to analyze. Of course, data is not always quantifiable, nor does it always fall into neat categories. Consider a variable that psychologists are interested in—life satisfaction. A researcher could ask you to rate on a 1 to 10 scale how satisfied you are with your life so that the data could be analyzed using an ANOVA. Or, the researcher could have you classify your life satisfaction into one of three categories so that it could be analyzed via a chi-square test. While these may be sound analytical techniques, there is certainly a limitation to such a brief, impersonal measure of life satisfaction. Indeed, you could probably have an hour-long conversation with the psychologist, discussing your life satisfaction from a variety of angles and perspectives. Even though the data that is generated is not easily quantified, this does not mean it is not meaningful! In fact, you would probably provide far richer data than could ever be gathered using a questionnaire, and that data might certainly be worthy of some type of analysis.

Now consider the second broad theme to the research designs we have covered thus far— the reliance on collecting data from multiple participants so conclusions can be drawn about groups of people. There is certainly a lot of value to doing this. Psychologists often want to draw conclusions about broad groups of people (for instance, when understanding how human memory works or when explaining differences between males and females), and testing large groups of participants is a great way to accomplish this. That said, there may very well be a lot of context and detail lost when examining research questions at an aggregated group level. For instance, the individual variability that makes us unique (and that can be quite interesting!) is lost when you only analyze group means or frequency counts. More concretely, when you say that the average life satisfaction score is a 5.2, there is certainly a lot of interesting individual variability that gets glossed over.

Qualitative Research Designs

As indicated in the previous section, there are times when psychologists want to go beyond quantitative data. They may want to collect more rich, contextual data than is allowed by quantitative methods, and/or they may want to study only an individual participant or a small group of participants in great depth. When these are the aims, researchers may very well turn to qualitative research methods.

Here is a list of some of the qualitative methodologies that are covered in this week’s readings:

• Observational Research: In reality, observational research can yield quantitative or qualitative data. That said, this technique is often used to generate qualitative, descriptive data about a group of people/participants. Observational research can become quite involved. For instance, a psychologist might spend weeks or months living with an indigenous tribe to learn more about their cognitive processes.
• Interviews: Rather than give a participant an impersonal survey or experimental task, a researcher may conduct a detailed, in-depth interview. These interviews typically use open-ended response questions in which the participant is able to respond in a free and unconstrained manner.
• Focus Groups: Focus groups are often used to collect qualitative data from small groups of people. A psychologist studying prejudice, for instance, could conduct a focus group with a small group of minorities, asking them questions about their personal experiences.

This is just a sampling of the many different types of qualitative research methods that exist. There is certainly a lot more out there, and in fact, some researchers spend years learning and applying the various types of qualitative methods. That said, the majority of psychologists focus on quantitative methods, and the vast majority of psychology journals publish quantitative work. Thus, although qualitative methods certainly have value, the majority of this course has focused on quantitative research.