Qualitative Research in Business & Management
Written by: Michael D. Myers
2. Overview of qualitative research
2.1 Why do qualitative research?
Qualitative research methods are designed to help researchers understand people and what
they say and do. They are designed to help researchers understand the social and cultural
contexts within which people live.
The benefits for doing qualitative research is:
- It allows the researcher to see and understand the context within which decisions and
actions take place: it is the context that helps to ‘explain’ why someone acted as they
did.
o This context is best understood by talking with people.
If you want to understand people’s motivations, their reasons, their actions and the context for
their beliefs and actions in an in-depth way, qualitative research is best.
2.2 What is research?
Research is defined as an original investigation undertaken in order to contribute to
knowledge and understanding in a particular field.
- Research is a creative activity leading to new knowledge.
Research typically involves enquiry of an empirical or conceptual nature and is conducted by
people with specialist knowledge about the subject matter, theories, and methods in a specific
field.
It may involve contributing to the intellectual infrastructure of a subject or discipline. As more
research is published, the subject matter, theories and methods used in a particular field may
change over time.
- Scholars write a literature review of previous relevant research to show that they
understand and are up-to-date with the latest thinking.
The only way to tell if the research findings are both sound and original is if those findings are
open to scrutiny (critical observation) and formal evaluation by experts in a particular field
peer review system (system of quality assurance).
- If these experts, in evaluating the research, find that the results are sound, and that
the findings are new to them, then we can say that the research project represents an
original contribution to knowledge.
2.3 Quantitative and qualitative research compared
Quantitative research: focus on numbers Qualitative research: focus on text
Emphasize numbers more than anything else Enables researchers to study social and
cultural phenomena
The interpretation of numbers is viewed as Mostly a record of what people have said (i.e.
strong evidence of how a phenomenon works interviews)
Use of statistical tools and packages to Helps us to understand people, their
analyse data motivations and actions and the broader
context within which they work and live.
Examples: survey, laboratory experiments Examples: action research, case study
research, grounded theory
Quantitative research is best if you want to have a large sample size and you want to
generalize to a large population.
- Objective: study a particular topic across many people or many organizations and
finding out trends or patterns that apply in many different situations.
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