Introduction to qualitative

research
 Defining qualitative research
• Qualitative research is an effort to understand situations
in their uniqueness as part of a particular context and the
interactions there.
• This understanding is an end in itself, so that it is not
attempting to predict what may happen in the future
necessarily, but to understand the nature of that setting-
what it means for the participants to be in that setting,
what their lives are like, what’s going on for them, what
their meaning are, what the world look like in that
particular setting- and in the analysis to be able to
communicate that faithfully to others who are interested
in that setting.
Mat Rempit
LGBT
 Defining qualitative research
• Research that does not involve the use of
measurement or statistical techniques
• Words rather than numbers
• Findings not arrived by means of statistical
procedures or other means of quantification.
 continue
• Qualitative researchers study things in their
natural settings, attempting to make sense of,
or interpret, phenomena in terms of the
meanings people bring to them
 Characteristics of qualitative research
• Naturalistic inquiry
- Study real world phenomena
• Focus on meaning and understanding
- The key concern is understanding the phenomenon of
interest from participant’s perspective, not researcher
• Researcher as primary instrument
- Researcher can expand his u/standing through non
verbal and verbal communication, process data,
check accuracy, explore unusual responses
• Inductive process
- Researchers gather data to build concepts, or
theories.
- Build theory from observations and
understanding
- Interviews, observations, document are
combined to larger themes
• Rich description
- Words and pictures rather than numbers are
used
• Flexibility
- Design flexibility, sampling
• Pengalaman buli di sekolah
• Kemiskinan dan keciciran dalam pendidikan
• Ibu tanpa nikah di sebuah rumah perlindungan
• Infrastruktur komuniti dan hubunganny
dengan golongan transeksual di IPTA
 Research assumptions
Positivism
-approach to research that emphasizes
discovering causal laws, careful empirical
observations and free value research
-assumes that the reality is observable,
stable and measurable
-scientific e.g. experimental design
-quantitative methodology
Interpretivism
-approach to research that emphasizes
meaningful social action, socially
constructed meaning and value relativism
- No single observable reality, multiple
interpretation of a single event
- Constructivism / interpretivism
-qualitative methodology
assumption Questions Qualitative Quantitative

Ontology What is reality? Reality is subjective Objective, apart

and multiple as from researcher
seen by participants
in the study
Epistemology Relationship of Researcher Researcher is
researcher interacts with that independent from
being researched what is being
researched
Axiology Role of values Bias. Values are Value free and
personally relative unbiased
Rhetoric Language of Sometimes informal Formal based on
research set definitions
Methodology Process of research Inductive process Deductive process
Emerging design Cause and effect
Context bound Context free
 Some contrasts between quantitative
and qualitative research
Qualitative Quantitative
Focus of research Quality (nature, essence) Quantity (how much, how
many)
Associated phrases Fieldwork, ethnographic, Experimental, empirical,
naturalistic, grounded statistical
Goal of investigation Understanding, Prediction, control,
description, discovery, description, confirmation,
meaning, hypothesis hypothesis testing
generating
Design Flexible, evolving, Predetermined, structured
emergent
Sample Small, nonrandom, Large, random,
purposeful, theoretical representative
 Qualitative Quantitative
Data collection Researcher as primary Inanimate instruments
instrument, interviews, (scales, test, surveys)
observation, documents
Primary mode of analysis Inductive Deductive
findings Comprehensive, holistic, Precise, numerical
expansive, richly
descriptive