Summary of the course 'Qualitative Innovation Analytics' with the topics: Theory-building with qualitative methods, Qualitative research design, Case studies, Process research & event analysis, Analysing field discourse and rhetoric, Interviewing in qualitative research, Grounded Theory, and Socio-...
,Lecture 1. Theory-building with qualitative methods
Why social science research methods? Clark et al (2021): “Because social life is fascinating!”
o … we study innovation as a societal demand and challenge
o … we study situations where many different actors are involved
o … we study (required) changes in cultural, social or organizational patterns
o … we study how innovations requires emplacement in society
o … many of the topics we study involve people or human decisions
Social research is based on facts, only experts can do it, finding books, conducting a
controlled experiment and looking up information from official government reports.
What is qualitative research?
“Qualitative research involves an interpretive, naturalistic approach to the world. This means that
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.” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003)
Focus of qualitative researchers
1. People are different to physical phenomena
o People interpret the world and make meaning
o See the world through the eyes of the people studied
o ‘Abductive’ approach: is making a probable conclusion from what you know
i. Deductive: based on facts
ii. Inductive: based on observations (sample)
iii. Abductive: conclusion of what you know
2. Deep attention to context
o Context shapes human behavior and social dynamics
o E.g. History, culture, values, institutions, beliefs, patterns of power, …
3. Emphasis on processes
o E.g. starting assumption that things are always changing
o Detailed and unique processes of change rather than average patterns across many
places
4. Being authentic
o Represent different views fairly (objectively)
o Retain ‘messy’ aspects of social life, including disagreement
o Contribute to research participants e.g. try to offer useful insights in a humble way
(i.e. ally rather than expert)
Quantitative vs. Qualitative research
Quantitative Qualitative
•What? Who? Which? When? Where? • How? Why?
• Conduct research during later stages of research (to • Initial phases of research (to explore)
verify) • Lengthy, tedious data collection and analysis
• Quicker data collection and analysis • Subject data – experiences and interpretations of events
• Objective data – precise measurement and analysis • Open ended questionnaires and surveys
• Close ended questionnaires, surveys, and checklists • Focus groups
• Ex: What is your race? • Diaries
• On a scale of 1-10, how severe is your anxiety? • Un-structured or semi-structured interviews
• Large-scale data sets • Interviews and field notes
, • Random sampling • Case studies
• Structured data • Drawing
Quantitative Qualitative
• Numerical – 9, 16, 3.5 • Numerical – 9, 16, 3.5
• Categorical • Categorical
• Nominal – sex, language, race • Nominal – sex, language, race
• Ordinal – Scale of 1-10, very satisfied to dissatisfied • Ordinal – Scale of 1-10, very satisfied to dissatisfied
• Statistics, p-values • Statistics, p-values
• Clean data • Clean data
So why conduct qualitative research?
Understand behavior, beliefs, opinions and emotions from the perspective of participants
Understand and explain views and behaviors
Understand processes, such as how people make decisions
Understand meaning people attribute to their experiences
Understand social interactions among people and the values shared by them
Identify social, cultural, economic, and physical context in which events take place
Give voice to issues of certain populations that may be overlooked, and examine sensitive
and complex issues (e.g. conflict, debates)
Provide depth, detail, nuance, and context to research issues
Strengths of qualitative research
Gain insider perspectives into issues that are often missed (subtleties and complexities)
Building relationships, causes, and effects and dynamic processes surrounding issues
Allows for ambiguities/contradictions (tegenstrijdig) in the data, which reflect social reality
and duality behind many major issues
Descriptive, narrative style which provides rich data
Limitations of qualitative research
Lengthy and complicated designs
Validity and reliability of subjective data
Difficult to replicate because of centrality of researcher and context
Data analysis and interpretation is time consuming
The role of theory in research
Should we examine a problem and try to work out what caused it and how it might be solved
(inductive reasoning)?
Should we take a generally accepted theory of how things work and find evidence for it in the
problem we examine (deductive reasoning)?
Epistemological considerations
Epistemology: How knowledge is produced. ‘De leer van de kennis, oftewel – filosofische –
kennisleer’
Samenvattend houdt ontologie zich bezig met wat er in de werkelijkheid aanwezig is, en
epistemologie met hoe je kennis kunt opdoen uit die werkelijkheid.
Views about how knowledge should be produced are known as epistemological positions
o Can the social world be studied ‘scientifically’?
o Is it appropriate to apply the methods of the natural sciences to social science
research?
, Relationship between theory and research
Research strategy: Quantitative vs. Qualitative
Stereotypical ways of differentiating between the two strategies:
Epistemology & Ontology
Epistemology: What is (or should be) considered acceptable knowledge? Positivist and
interpretivist epistemologies -> trying to understand the studies (interpretation)
Ontology: Is social reality external to social actors or constructed by them? Objective and
constructionist ontologies -> Try to create objective knowledge free of any interpretations,
more constructive
Positivist epistemology and objectivism
o Natural-science model
o Social reality is regarded as an external, objective reality
o Thus, the social world should be studied according to the same principles and
procedures as in the natural sciences, provide ‘general laws’
Interpretive epistemology and constructionism
o The social world cannot be studied using the natural science model
o We need to pay attention to human consciousness and subjective experience
o Thus, how actors (co)construct the social world surrounding them
Example: Poverty
Seeing through the eyes of those being studies
The interpretive approach is oriented toward systematically discovering and
representing the interpretations of the people experiencing a phenomenon and
is most appropriate for study in areas where prior theory might not necessarily
be applicable (Gioia & Pitre, 1990).
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