Research Psychology (PSYC255) Notes
INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH QUALITATIVE METHODS:
Qualitative Research:
Concerned with exploring, understanding, and answering.
- Explores the DEEPER ISSUES.
- Understanding the WHY and the WHEREFORE of different phenomena.
- Answers DEEP questions.
RATHER than asking HOW MANY, qualitative research asks HOW, WHEN, and WHY
Purpose – to understand how people interpret different issues, experiences, and phenomenon. It is
dynamic.
Viewpoint – from the fir -person st
Aim – to study something holistically for a more complete picture of an issue or an experience.
We do this kind of research because we want to know why people feel the way they do or how an
experience has affected them.
- Answers questions such a s “What do people do under certain conditions?”
It helps reduce distortion and bias between the observers and what is being observed that can be
produced by an instrument.
DATA is collected through:
- Direct behavioral observations
- In-person interviews with participants
- Online interviews and questionnaires
- Secondary data sets that have been collected by other researchers
The data is analyzed in steps:
1. The collected data is organized and prepared
2. Read through the interviews or notes taken regarding behavioral observations
3. Decide on a coding procedure and assign codes to all the data
4. Determine from the coding process what themes and categories will be characterized in the
findings portion of the analysis.
5. Determine how these themes and categories will be characterized in the findings portion of the
analysis.
6. Make an interpretation of the collected data; What was learned from the data.
5 of the MOST COMMON qualitative research methodologies include:
1. Case studies: Social and behavioral researchers use case studies to examine real-life situations in
order to provide the basis for the application of ideas and theories. There are 4 TYPES of case
studies: Illustrative, Cumulative, Exploratory, Critical Instance
2. Phenomenology: Seeks to find the essence or structure of a lived experience by explaining how
complex meanings are built into smaller pieces of a person's inner experience. There are 4 types
of phenomenology: Realistic, Existential, Constitutive, hermeneutical.
3. Grounded Theory: Enables the researcher to support or develop a theory that offers an
explanation about a topic and how that topic is processed or resolved within the study
population (How X affects Y).
4. Ethnography: Ethnographic study comes to research from an anthropological tradition. It studies
the social and cultural implications on different issues. Studies a culture from the perspective of
an insider.
5. Narratives: Involves the use of stories; These stories become the collected data. It looks for first
person accounts of experienced. Groups of participants will be quite small.
PROBLEMS with QUALITATIVE RESEARCH includes:
- Observations and interviews may be very time-consuming.
- The amount of data to transcribe may be much larger.
- Data may be difficult to code.
- Data is difficult to quantify, generalize, or transfer to a larger population.
- Difficult to control research bias.
