I must admit, when I first read the term "qualitative research", that kind of flew in the fact of everything I knew up to this point about research. Sure, I've done research papers in the liberal arts that were very qualitative and based on people's writings, but I couldn't easily see this being used for a formal study. But the idea is certainly an interesting one.
Hoepfl's definition captured the idea very nicely, stating that qualitative research "...broadly defined, means 'any kind of research that produces findings not
arrived at by means of statistical procedures or other means of quantification'." In short, it's research that doesn't rely on raw numbers.
One first needs to be aware of situations where a qualitative method is appropriate. Hoepfl' writes that these methods are appropriate when one first needs to find the variables for later quantitative testing, or where a researcher determines that a quantitative measure can't "accurately describe or interpret a situation". Thus, the problems tend to be framed as open ended questions that facilitate "discovery of new information".
Hoepfl also synthesized the findings of several writer's viewpoints on qualitative researched and summarized these in a list that defined feature's of qualitative research. First, the research uses a natural setting as the source of data, with the researcher observing and interpreting yet maintaining neutrality. The researcher will also act in the capacity of a "human instrument" of data collection, and will also predominantly be using "inductive data analysis". A qualitative research report will also have some unique characteristics. Among other things, these reports are more descriptive and expressive in their language. There is also what Hoepfl calls an "interpretive character" in the research, "...aimed at discovering the meaning events have for the individuals who experience them". In dealing with all this, a researcher needs to "pay attention to the idiosyncratic as well as the pervasive," and understand what makes each case unique. It must also be understood that this research is of an emergent design, and needs to be judged with special criteria for trustworthiness.
The researcher, being an instrument of the research itself, also has some special considerations. Hoepfl writes they must adopt a stances suggested by characteristics of the naturalist paradigm, and they need to develop an appropriate skill level, as well as prepare their research design to use strategies for naturalistic inquiry. To this end, there are some general steps for the design of a naturalistic inquiry to include determining and planning: a focus for the inquiry, the fit of the research paradigm to the focus, how data is collected, what the phases of the inquiry will be, what other instrumentation may be used, the collection and recording modes for the data, which analysis procedures will be used, logistics of data collection, and techniques for determining trustworthiness. These steps, in turn, have a number of sub-steps and points of consideration.
Overall, Hoepfl recognized that qualitative research can be taxing upon the researcher and consumer a significant amount of time. The researcher will also bear much of the burden for discovering and interpreting the importance of their findings, as well as establishing connections between observations and conclusions. However, this type of research can also yield results not easily acquired through conventional statistical techniques.
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