2 Qualitative Research
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:
- Define qualitative research.
- Describe how qualitative research differs from quantitative research.
- Differentiate between inductive and deductive reasoning.
- Define the two types of quantitative research.
- Describe how quantitative research differs from qualitative research.
Qualitative Research
Qualitative research is rooted in research that originated in anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Qualitative research is not experimental, it seeks to understand the lived experiences in humans and seeks to understanding meaning, and it is subjective in nature. The overarching goal of qualitative research is theory-generating. It is an inductive process (inductive reasoning). Most often, qualitative research features an interview style. This allows the researcher to ask open-ended questions and the participants share their experiences and/or explanation of particular meanings in life.
Qualitative research differs from quantitative research in that:
- It is completely subjective.
- It utilizes an inductive (versus deductive) approach.
- It does not utilize a hypothesis.
- It generates a theory from the data to explain the social phenomenon that the researchers were interested in.
- The researcher is involved with the participants for data collection.
- The data is analyzed with a thematic nature. That is, themes from the collected narratives are analyzed to see trends or themes in what the participants shared.
- The results are not generalizable to the population.
Inductive versus Deductive Reasoning
- The main difference between inductive and deductive reasoning is that inductive reasoning aims at developing a theory while deductive reasoning aims at testing an existing theory.
- Think of inductive (theory producing) as to qualitative research and deductive (theory testing) as to quantitative research.
- Inductive reasoning moves from specific observations to broad generalizations, and deductive reasoning the other way around.
- Both approaches are used in various types of research, and it’s not uncommon to combine them in one large study.
Quantitative Research
In quantitative research, the goal is to utilize the statistical data to generalize results to the population studied. Some key features include utilizing the statistics to help answer the clinical question and determine whether the hypothesis is indeed statistically supported.
Two Main Types of Quantitative Research
- Experimental: In experimental research, the researcher introduces an intervention or treatment.
- Non-Experimental: In non-experimental research, the researcher does not introduce an intervention or treatment, but instead acts as a bystander. Meaning, they collect data without introducing a treatment.
Quantitative research differs from qualitative research in that:
- It is completely objective.
- It utilizes a deductive (versus inductive) approach.
- It utilizes a hypothesis(es).
- It tests a theory.
- The researcher is usually not directly involved with the participants for data collection in order to minimize bias.
- The data is analyzed statistically in order to generalize results to the larger population.
Summary
There are two main approaches to research designs: quantitative and qualitative. They each seek to answer questions, but quantitative research is meant to generalize its findings to the population whereas qualitative research seeks to understand phenomenon and develop theories about the human lived experiences.
Licensing and Attribution
This chapter is adapted from Chapter Seven: The Two Main Research Types-A Brief Overview in Evidence-Based Practice & Research Methodologies by Tracy Fawns and licensed CC-BY-NC-SA
