Qualitative methods: what and why use them?

Qualitative methods, as the name indicates, are methods that do not involve measurement or statistics.  Because the natural sciences have had such resounding success with quantitative methods, qualitative methods are sometimes looked down upon as less scientific.  That is, of course, a mistake.  Qualitative methods have been in use in philosophy, sociology, and history for centuries,

Interviews: Types and Methods in Management Research

An interview is generally a qualitative research technique which involves asking open-ended questions to converse with respondents and collect elicit data about a subject. The interviewer in most cases is the subject matter expert who intends to understand respondent opinions in a well-planned and executed series of questions and answers. Interviews are similar to focus groups and

Observation Methods – Definition, Types, Examples, Advantages

The observation method is described as a method to observe and describe the behavior of a subject. As the name suggests, it is a way of collecting relevant information and data by observing. It is also referred to as a participatory study because the researcher has to establish a link with the respondent and

Case Study Methodology in Management Research

Case studies are a popular research method in business area. Case studies aim to analyze specific issues within the boundaries of a specific environment, situation or organization. A case study involves an up-close, in-depth, and detailed examination of a particular case or cases, within a real-world context. For example, case studies in medicine may focus on

Overview of Action Research Methodology

What is Action Research? Definition Action research is known by many other names, including participatory research, collaborative inquiry, emancipatory research, action learning, and contextual action research, but all are variations on a theme. Put simply, action research is “learning by doing” – a group of people identify a problem, do something to resolve it,

Content Analysis Method and Examples

Content analysis is a research tool used to determine the presence of certain words, themes, or concepts within some given qualitative data (i.e. text). Using content analysis, researchers can quantify and analyze the presence, meanings and relationships of such certain words, themes, or concepts. As an example, researchers can evaluate language used within a

How phenomenology can help us learn from the experiences of others

What is phenomenology? In simple terms, phenomenology can be defined as an approach to research that seeks to describe the essence of a phenomenon by exploring it from the perspective of those who have experienced it [6]. The goal of phenomenology is to describe the meaning of this experience—both in terms of what was experienced and how it was

Introduction to observation

Observation has one overpowering claim to validity: it deals not with what people say they do but what they actually do – to the extent that their behaviour is open to observation, and insofar as observation is as objective as it seems to be. Two questions follow from this. In the first place why

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Observation and self-report: similarities and Differences

Both self-report (as in questionnaires and interviews) and observation techniques can differ in their degree of struc­ture. The first of these may involve short, prescriptive question-and-answer formats that are easily analysed in quantitative terms. Using structured observation schedules which involve the recording and counting of pre-determined categories of behaviour is an almost exact analogy.

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The uses of observation as research method

The most general use of observation in research is exploratory, as it is in real life. When we take up a new job, enter university, move to a different part of the country (or to a different country), or even just go on holiday to a new region, we look around us. In that

Observation in multi-method research

In the same way that surveys can give the bigger picture within which more in-depth interviews are nested, so can observation provide a wider descriptive framework. In a school, for example, it would make only limited sense to interview teachers about their views on the official dis­ciplinary policy without some account, by direct observation,

Structured observation in practice

For the moment the terms structured, detached and non­participant are used almost interchangeably: that is not quite correct (see page 19) but sufficiently so to equate their meaning. All introductory classifications simplify reality. Structured observation (specifying exact behaviours and recording their frequency over short, usually intermittent, periods of time) is something that figures regularly

Event sampling in Structured observation

1. Event sampling Event sampling is used when the behaviour of interest is discontinuous and low frequency, where you would miss the events if you didn’t observe continuously. The behaviour has to be specified exactly (making a monetary donation, engaging in conversation) so that it can be recorded on an observation schedule in a

Time sampling in Structured Observation

This is also known as interval sampling because you observe for a specified duration at specified intervals – like taking a succession of snapshots, an analogy which is pretty close. Sampling means estimating the frequency of events in a continuous time sequence from a much shorter period (or periods) of time. The main practical

Validating observation sampling

In survey research a sample of the population (however defined) is taken because it is much more economical to do so. A ‘valid’ – i.e. representative – sample is achieved in various ways (not our concern here but see the book in the present series dealing with social surveys (Gillham, 2008)). Validating interval sampling

Semi-structured Observation Method

If observation is a primary technique of real-world social research one can be forgiven for thinking that structured observation, with its ‘count’ emphasis and fragmented character, is not the best way of doing it. Sometimes that level of specificity is necessary and useful and it is to be hoped that we have done justice

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Semi-structured Observation in training, teaching and learning

1. Observation in training In a sense we are all ‘disabled’ when it comes to operating an unfamiliar and relatively complicated piece of equipment: the controls in a new car, the sequence of operations in a new piece of software or a washing machine with a more elaborate choice of programmes – all of

Observation as an Experimental Method

We commonly talk of ‘experimenting’ with things – whether it is a new multi-function mobile phone or an elaborate recipe culled from a magazine – by which we mean trying something out and seeing what happens, what results we get. Formal experiments lie at the heart of scientific research and there are two main

Unstructured Observation: The Rise of Ethnography Method

Observation can vary in its degree of structure – how far the researchers’ approach is pre-formed, in the sense of know­ing what they want to find out or how they plan to do it. But no research, however open-ended, lacks structure. It would be chaotic if it were. So the chapter heading is not

Process of observation methodology

This chapter is written ‘as it happened’ so that much of it has an episodic quality. The chronological form of presentation also demonstrates the nature of the research process, including the development of the author’s thinking. When I first came to work in Glasgow in the mid-1980s one of the things that struck me