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Qualitative Research Essay
The goal of this assignment is to give an understanding of what qualitative research is and
how it can affect a study. To understand what qualitative research there must be an in-depth
definition of what qualitative research is, the main types of research and lastly, what are some
advantages as well as disadvantages of this type of research.
Defining Qualitative Research
Qualitative research, like onions, has layers. You start with a broad research topic, for
example a broad research topic would be anxiety. From that point it gets narrowed down into
more definite questions to research and define like what the major type of anxiety is or how
common is anxiety in the United States. This is where the topic becomes set in stone and not
much changes from that point. This type of research is all about how the research is done. The
focus is not as much on the numbers as compared to other research methods. The focus is the
way that the research is completed through the methods that the research is done. Now that we
have an idea of what qualitative research is let’s find the ways that we can do this type of
research.
Interviewing
Interviews is one of the most common ways to find out information for any subject, we
do interviews for most things like jobs, we ask around about apartment complexes when are
thinking about moving out of our families’ homes and into our own, that is a type of interview.
There was a publication that was done that defines what the process of interviewing is, and it
goes starts by stating that it is “semi-structured interviews contain pre-set, open-ended questions,
with further questions emerging from the discussion.” (Denny & Weckesser, 2022). An
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interview has preset questions such as does your chest ever start feeling tight when you are in a
large group of people? How about sweaty palms when you are standing in front of a crowd?
Focus Groups
Focus groups are the next method for gathering data in qualitative research. Focus groups
are essentially group therapy. They are groups of people who have similar issues, and they sit in
and discuss open ended questions. They generally start with one question and from there the
topic will change as the discussion changes. They can discuss things like symptoms or hardships
that their group has. This is a good method for gathering data as it is open-ended and there is
more room to talk about the things that are more difficult for the group as it is more unstructured
than what an interview would be.
Observation
The final type of qualitative research that we are going to be going over is observation,
while this method is great it can also be a little more difficult to do as it is hard to observe in a
natural setting. Trying to set up something like that in a non-natural setting is almost impossible
as the person being observed will not relax as they would in a natural real-world setting. It is
difficult to observe someone in a real world setting as people generally do not openly say how
they are feeling with their words however in a setting like trying a new medication and seeing
the effects of it would be much simpler as most effects of medication are visible, for example
nausea and or vomiting, lightheaded and dizziness.
Advantages
There are many advantages to this type of research. In this form of research there is very
little research bias as you are generally looking for one specific thing and the people that are
used in this method are generally looking for help with that thing. Selecting people for the
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research is much easier than most method, an example of this would be as described in the
textbook into to research: less fright more insight: a customized version of research, an example
of systematic probability would be “we would select every 10th person on the list, this would give
us a sample of 600 (assuming that there are 6,000 students in the population)” (Crawford, 2018).
Another advantage to this type of research would be the validity of the results, they can be
reproduced easily due to the reduced research bias. Doing similar studies with the same pretenses
that were set on the research can produce almost identical results to the original research
question in this type of research.
Disadvantages
One disadvantage of qualitative research methods is that the research setting is more
times than not natural. They research settings can be fabricated for certain types of qualitative
research so that they can measure the numbers, take the study done in 1963 by Stanely Milgram,
the research that was being done was on the destructiveness of blind obedience. The subjects that
were being tested were put into a room that was specifically designed for this research. In a
natural world setting the outcomes might have been different due to wanting to do what the
researchers were telling them (Crawford, 2018). The second disadvantage to this type of research
is the placebo effect. The placebo effect is defined as “change in the dependent variable due to
the participant believing a change will occur” (Crawford, 2018). If a participant in the study
thinks one thing will happen because of an event then they will find a reason for that event to
happen. For example, if a woman wants to be pregnant, she can start experiencing symptoms of
pregnancy without ever being pregnant to begin with, or if an individual says that more than 2
cups of coffee will give them a panic attack then a 3rd cup of coffee no matter the caffeine level
will give them a panic attack.
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Conclusion
Qualitative research is all about the method of collecting data. The three most common
ways to collect data for this type of research has interviews, group therapy known as focus
groups, and observation. The main advantages to this type of research has very little research
bias and the validity of the research with the ability to replicate the study. The main disadvantage
to qualitative research is that there is non-natural settings for certain studies and the placebo
effect.
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References
Crawford, R. (2018).CIntroduction to research: Less fright, more insight: A customized version of
research methods: Are you equipped?(3rd ed.). Kendall Hunt Publishing.
Denny, E., & Weckesser, A. (2022b). How to do qualitative research? BJOG: An International
Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 129(7), 1166–1167.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-0528.17150
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