Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Qualitative research is a type of research that aims to gather and analyse non-numerical (descriptive) data in order to gain an understanding of individuals' social reality, including understanding their attitudes, beliefs, and motivation.
A fundamental difficulty with focus groups (and other forms of qualitative research) is the issue of observer dependency: the results obtained are influenced by the researcher or his or her reading of the group's discussion, thus raising questions of the validity of the research (see experimenter's bias).
In the social sciences, triangulation refers to the application and combination of several research methods in the study of the same phenomenon. [1] By combining multiple observers, theories, methods, and empirical materials, researchers hope to overcome the weakness or intrinsic biases and the problems that come from single method, single-observer, and single-theory studies.
The discourse about postqualitative inquiry arose from the question of “what comes next for qualitative research," [6] particularly regarding how to approach "a problem in the midst of inquiry” [7] in a way that allows new ideas to take shape from preconceived ones. St. Pierre suggested that being restricted to method conforms new research to the form of existing research, hindering ...
A survey using a Likert style response set. This is one example of a type of survey that can be highly vulnerable to the effects of response bias. Response bias is a general term for a wide range of tendencies for participants to respond inaccurately or falsely to questions.
An interview in qualitative research is a conversation where questions are asked to elicit information. The interviewer is usually a professional or paid researcher, sometimes trained, who poses questions to the interviewee , in an alternating series of usually brief questions and answers.
For qualitative research, the sample size is usually rather small, while quantitative research tends to focus on big groups and collecting a lot of data. After the collection, the data needs to be analyzed and interpreted to arrive at interesting conclusions that pertain directly to the research question.
Open questions are those questions that invite the respondent to provide answers in their own words and provide qualitative data. Although these types of questions are more difficult to analyze, they can produce more in-depth responses and tell the researcher what the participant actually thinks, rather than being restricted by categories.