Qualitative Research Methods: Critique

1. CRITIQUE OF
QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH

2. Qualitative Research is Too
Subjective
• Too impressionistic and subjective
• Relying too much on researcher’s views about what is
significant
• Personal relationships between researcher and
participant- because open ended way of asking

3. Difficult to Replicate
• Almost impossible to conduct a true replication
• Hardly any standard procedure followed
• Qualitative researcher as the main tool for data collection
• What is observed is decided by the researcher
• Unstructured nature of qualitative data
• Interpretation profoundly influenced by the subjective
leanings of a researcher

4. Problems of Generalization
• The scope of findings of qualitative research is restricted
• How can just one or two cases be representative of all
cases?
• A case study is not a sample of one drawn from a known
population
• The findings of qualitative research are to generalise to
theory rather than to populations
• Called analytic generalisation by Yin (2009) and theoretical
generalisation by J.C Mitchell(1983)

5. Lack of Transparency
• Difficult to establish what the researcher actually did and
how he or she arrived at study’s conclusions
• How people were chosen for observation or interview
• Also the process of analysis is frequently unclear
• Can not be described fully as in the case of quantitative
studies

6. Is it always like this???
• Qualtitative research is less codified than quantitative one - no
strict guidelines and directions about data collection and analysis
• The researcher begins with general research questions and
narrows it down- theory and concepts are arrived at during and
after the data collection
• Lack of structure in approaches to data collection and analysis-
use of computer assisted qualitative data analysis software-
greater transparency in the procedures used for analysing
qualitative data
• Judgments based on the standards set by quantitative criteria