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Qualitative Research
Concepts
Most quantitative research texts
identify three primary types of
research:
Exploratory research on a
concept, people, or situation
that the researcher knows
little about.
Descriptive research on a
concept, people, or situation
that the researcher knows
something about, but just
wants to describe what he/she
has found or observed.
Explanatory involves testing
a hypothesis and deriving that
hypothesis from available
theories.
Generally these types of studies fit within our
understanding of qualitative and quantitative
research.
Exploratory research involves
qualitative studies
(observation, interviews, and
content analysis)
Explanatory research involves
quantitative studies and
hypothesis testing.
Descriptive studies most often
involve quantitative research
techniques or a combination of
qualitative and quantitative
method.
(Please note however, that Rossman & Rollis
use the term descriptive to describe
some types of qualitative research)
When researchers talk about different
approaches to research, they talk about
paradigms.
A paradigm is a worldview
or a set of assumptions about
how things work.
Rossman & Rollis define
paradigm as shared
understandings of reality
Quantitative and qualitative
research methods involve very
different assumptions about
how research should be
conducted and the role of the
researcher.
Differences between
qualitative and quantitative research
Involves Involves
unstructured experiments,
interviews, surveys, testing,
observation, and and structured
content analysis. content analysis,
interviews, and
observation.
Subjective
Objective
Inductive Deductive
Little structure High degree of
Little manipulation structure
of subjects Some manipulation
Takes a great deal of subjects
of time to conduct May take little time
Little social to conduct
distance between Much social
researcher and distance between
subject researcher and
subject
Lets talk about some of the assumptions or values
that are part of qualitative or quantitative
paradigms:
For example, do you think: