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Samenvatting Social Research Methods
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Summary of the necessary chapters for the examination of Methods of Qualitative Research.
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Chapter 17 The nature of qualitative researchIntroduction
Qualitative research is a research strategy that usually emphasizes words rather than
quantification in the collection and analysis of data. Three further features are particularly
noteworthy:
● An inductive view of the relationship between theory and research, whereby the
former is generated out of the latter.
● An epistemological position described as interpretivist, meaning that, in contrast to
the adoption of a natural scientific model in quantitative research, the stress is on the
understanding of the social world through an examination of the interpretation of that
world by its participants.
● An ontological position described as constructionist, which implies that social
properties are outcomes of the interactions between individuals, rather than
phenomena ‘out there’ and separate from those involved in its construction.
Although there has been a proliferation of writings on qualitative research since the 1970s,
stipulating what it is and is not as a distinct research strategy is by no means straightforward.
There are three reasons for this state of affairs:
1. As a term, ‘qualitative research’ is sometimes taken to imply an approach to social
research in which quantitative data are not collected or generated. Many writers on
qualitative research are critical of such a rendition of qualitative research, because
the distinctiveness of it does not reside solely in the absence of numbers.
2. Qualitative research has comprised different traditions and stances over the years.
3. Sometimes, qualitative research is discussed in terms of the ways in which it differs
from quantitative research. A potential problem with this tactic is that it means that
qualitative research ends up being addressed in terms of what quantitative research
is not, instead of what it does entail.
Silverman (1993) has been particularly critical of accounts of qualitative research that do not
acknowledge the variety of forms that the research strategy can assume. In other words,
writers such as Silverman are critical of attempts to specify the nature of qualitative research
as a general approach. However, unless we can talk to a certain degree about the nature of
qualitative research, it is difficult to see how it is possible to refer to qualitative research as a
distinctive research strategy.
Several reasons might be proposed for the unease among some writers concerning the
specification of the nature of qualitative research. Two reasons might be regarded as having
particular importance. First, qualitative research incorporates several diverse research
methods that differ from each other considerably. The following are the main research
methods associated with qualitative research:
● Ethnography/participant observation: Approaches to data collection in which the
researcher is immersed in a social setting for some time in order to observe and
listen with a view to gaining an appreciation of the culture of a social group.
● Qualitative interviewing: A very broad term to describe a wide range of interviewing
styles.
● Focus groups: Language-based approaches to the collection of qualitative data, such
as discourse analysis and conversation analysis.
● The collection and qualitative analysis of texts and documents.
,The picture with regard to the very different methods and sources that comprise qualitative
research is made somewhat more complex by the fact that a multimethod approach is
frequently employed.
A second reason why there is some resistance to a delineation of the nature of qualitative
research is that the connection between theory and research is somewhat more ambiguous
than in quantitative research. With the latter research strategy, theoretical issues drive the
formulation of a research question, which in turn drives the collection and analysis of data.
Findings then feed back into the relevant theory. In qualitative research, theory is supposed
to be an outcome of an investigation rather than something that precedes it. However, some
writers have argued that such a depiction of qualitative research is ‘out of tune with the
greater sophistication of contemporary field research design, born out of accumulated
knowledge of interaction and greater concern with issues of reliability and validity’. This is
particularly the case with conversation analysis. However, qualitative research is more
usually regarded as denoting an approach in which theory and categorization emerge out of
the collection and analysis of data. The more general point being made is that such a
difference within qualitative research may account for the unease about depicting the
research strategy in terms of a set of stages.
The main steps in qualitative research
Theory and research
Most qualitative researchers when writing about their craft emphasize a preference for
treating theory as something that emerges out of the collection and analysis of data.
Practitioners of grounded theory - a frequently cited approach to the analysis of qualitative
data - especially stress the importance of allowing theoretical ideas to emerge out of one’s
data. But some qualitative researchers argue that qualitative data can and should have an
important role in relation to the testing of theories as well. Certainly, there is no reason why
qualitative research cannot be employed in order to test theories that are specified in
advance of data collection. In any case, much qualitative research entails testing of theories
in the course of the research process. So in the main steps of qualitative research, the loop
back from Step 5a to Step 5b implies that a theoretical position may emerge in the course of
research and may spur the collection of further data to test that theory. This alternation
,between testing emerging theories and collecting data is a particularly distinctive feature of
grounded theory. Two central features of grounded theory are that it is concerned with the
development of theory out of data and that the approach is iterative, or recursive, meaning
that data collection and analysis proceed in tandem, repeatedly referring back to each other.
Concepts of qualitative research
For most qualitative researchers, developing measures of concepts will not be a significant
consideration, but concepts are very much part of the landscape in qualitative research.
However, the way in which concepts are developed and used tends to be different from that
implied in quantitative research. Blumer’s (1954) distinction between ‘definitive’ and
‘sensitizing’ concepts captures aspects of the different ways in which concepts are thought
about. The idea of definitive concepts is typified by the way in which, in quantitative
research, a concept, once developed, becomes fixed through the elaboration of indicators.
Blumer argued stridently against the use of definitive concepts in social research. Instead,
Blumer recommended that social researchers should recognize that the concepts they use
are sensitizing concepts in that they provide ‘a general sense of reference and guidance in
approaching empirical instances’. For Blumer, then, concepts should be employed in such a
way that they give a very general sense of what to look for and act as a means for
uncovering a variety of forms that the phenomena to which they refer can assume.
Blumer’s distinction is not without problems. It is not at all clear how far a very general
formulation of a concept can be regarded as a useful guide to empirical enquiry. If it is too
general, it will simply fail to provide a useful starting point because its guidelines are too
broad; if too narrow, it is likely to repeat some of the difficulties Blumer identified in relation to
definitive concepts. However, his general view of concepts has attracted some support,
because his preference for not imposing preordained schemes on the social world chimes
with that of many qualitative researchers.
Reliability and validity in qualitative research
Reliability and validity are important criteria in establishing and assessing the quality of
quantitative research. However, there has been some discussion among qualitative
researchers concerning the relevance of these criteria for qualitative research. Moreover,
even writers who do take the view that the criteria are relevant have considered the
possibility that the meanings of the terms need to be altered. A number of different stances
have been taken by qualitative researchers in relation to these issues.
Adapting reliability and validity for qualitative research
One stance is to assimilate reliability and validity into qualitative research with little change of
meaning other than playing down the salience of measurement issues. Mason (1996), for
example, argues that reliability, validity, and generalizability ‘are different kinds of measures
of the quality, rigour and wider potential of research, which are achieved according to certain
methodological and disciplinary conventions and principles’. She sticks very closely to the
meaning of these criteria in quantitative research, where they have been largely developed.
Thus, validity refers to whether you are observing, identifying, or ‘’measuring’’ what you say
you are. LeCompte and Goetz (1982) and Kirk and Miller (1986) also write about reliability
and validity in relation to qualitative research but invest the terms with a somewhat different
meaning from Mason. LeCompte and Goetz write about the following.
● External reliability: the degree to which a study can be replicated. This is a difficult
criterion to meet in qualitative research, since it is impossible to ‘freeze’ a social
setting and the circumstances of an initial study to make it replicable.
, ● Internal reliability: whether, when there is more than one observer, members of the
research team agree about what they see and hear. This is a similar notion to inter-
rater consistency.
● Internal validity: whether there is a correspondence between researchers’
observations and the theoretical ideas they develop. This tends to be a strength of
qualitative research, because the prolonged participation in the social life of a group
allows the researcher to develop congruence between concepts and observations.
● External validity: the degree to which findings can be generalized across social
settings. This represents a problem for qualitative researchers because of their
tendency to employ case studies and small samples.
As this brief treatment suggests, qualitative researchers have tended to employ the terms
reliability and validity in very similar ways to quantitative researchers when seeking to
develop criteria for assessing research.
Alternative criteria for evaluating qualitative research
An alternative position is that qualitative studies should be judged or evaluated according to
quite different criteria from those used by quantitative researchers. Lincoln and Guba (1985)
propose that it is necessary to specify terms and ways of assessing the quality of qualitative
research that provide an alternative to reliability and validity. A major reason for Guba and
Lincoln’s unease about the simple application of reliability and validity standards to
qualitative research is that the criteria presuppose that a single absolute account of social
reality is feasible. In other words, they are critical of the view that there are absolute truths
about the social world that it is the job of the social scientist to reveal. They propose two
primary criteria for assessing a qualitative study: trustworthiness and authenticity.
Trustworthiness is made up of four criteria, each of which has an equivalent criterion in
quantitative research:
● Credibility, which parallels internal validity
If there can be several possible accounts of an aspect of social reality, it is the
credibility of the account that a researcher arrives at that determines its acceptability
to others. Establishing the credibility of findings entails both ensuring that research is
carried out according to the principles of good practice and submitting research
findings to the members of the social world who were studied in order to obtain
confirmation that the investigator has correctly understood that social world. This
latter technique is often referred to as responded validation.
● Transferability, which parallels external validity
Qualitative findings tend to be oriented to the contextual uniqueness and significance
of the aspect of the social world being studied. Qualitative researchers are
encouraged to produce what Geertz (1973) calls thick description - that is, rich
accounts of the details of a culture. Lincoln and Guba argue that a thick description
provides others with what they refer to as a database for making judgements about
the possible transferability of findings to other milieux.
● Dependability, which parallels reliability
As a parallel to reliability in quantitative research, Lincoln and Guba propose the idea
of dependability and argue that researchers should adopt an ‘auditing’ approach. The
idea is to keep an audit trail which entails ensuring that complete records are kept of
all phases of the research process in an accessible manner. Peers would then act as
auditors, possibly enduring the course of the research and certainly at the end to
establish how far proper procedures are being and have been followed.
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