QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND APPROACHES

Copyright © 2008 Wolters Kluwer Health | Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Chapter 9
Developing an Approach for a
Qualitative Study

Typical Phases of Qualitative Design
• Orientation and overview—getting a handle
on what is salient about a phenomenon
• Focused exploration—in-depth exploration of
the phenomenon
• Confirmation and closure—efforts to
ascertain trustworthiness of the findings

Overview of Qualitative Research
Traditions
• Anthropology (Domain: Culture)
– Ethnography; Ethnoscience
• Philosophy (Domain: Lived Experience)
– Phenomenology; Hermeneutics
• Psychology (Domain: Behavior)
– Ethology; Ecological psychology

Overview of Qualitative Research
Traditions (cont’d)
• Sociology (Domain: Social Settings)
– Grounded theory; Ethnomethodology
• Sociolinguistics (Domain: Communication)
– Discourse analysis
• History (Domain: Past Events & Conditions)
– Historical research

Ethnography
• Describes and interprets cultural behavior
• Types of ethnography:
– Macroethnography (broadly defined cultures)
– Microethnography (narrowly defined cultures)
– Autoethnography
– Ethnonursing research
– Ethnoscience (cognitive anthropology)

Ethnography (cont’d)
• Relies on extensive, labor-intensive
fieldwork
• Culture is inferred from the group’s words,
actions, and products
• Assumption: Cultures guide the way people
structure their experiences

Ethnography (cont’d)
• Seeks an emic perspective (insiders’ view)
of the culture
• Relies on a wide range of data sources
• Product: An in-depth, holistic portrait of the
culture under study

Phenomenology
• Focuses on the discovery of the meaning of
people’s lived experience
• Descriptive phenomenology—describes the
meaning of human experience
• Steps: Bracketing, Intuiting, Analyzing,
Describing
• Interpretive phenomenology (hermeneutics)—
interprets human experience

Phenomenology (cont’d)
• Asks: What is the essence of a phenomenon
as experienced by these people, and what
does it mean?
• Four aspects of experience: Lived space,
lived body, lived time, lived human relation
• Main data source: In-depth conversations
with participants

Grounded Theory
Aims to discover theoretical precepts about
social psychological processes and social
structures, grounded in data
– Substantive theory—grounded in data on
a specific substantive topic
– Grounded formal theory—a higher, more
abstract level of theory based on
substantive grounded theory studies

Grounded Theory Studies
• Primary data sources: In-depth interviews
and observations
• Data collection, data analysis, sampling
occur simultaneously
• Constant comparison used to develop and
refine theoretically relevant categories
• Alternative views of grounded theory:
 Glaser and Strauss
 Strauss and Corbin

Historical Research
• Systematically attempts to establish facts
about and relationships among past events
• Types of historical research:
– Biographical history
– Social history
– Intellectual history

Historical Data
• Typically written records (can be physical
remains, photographs, interviews)
• Requires evaluation
– External criticism—authenticity of the source
– Internal criticism—worth of the evidence
• Often found in historical archives
• Can be primary source or secondary source

Other Types of Qualitative Research
Case studies:
Focus on a single entity, or a small
number of entities, with intensive
scrutiny
Narrative analysis:
Focus on story; designed to determine
how individuals make sense of events
in their lives

Other Types of Qualitative Research
(cont’d)
Qualitative outcome analysis (QOA):
An approach to confirming the applicability
of clinical strategies suggested by a
qualitative study and evaluating clinical
outcomes
Qualitative metasynthesis:
Interpretive translations produced by
integrating findings from qualitative studies

Research with Ideological Perspectives
Critical theory research:
Concerned with a critique of existing
social structures and with envisioning
new possibilities

(cont’d)
Feminist research:
Focuses on how gender domination and
discrimination shape women’s lives and
their consciousness

(cont’d)
Participatory action research:
Produces knowledge through close
collaboration with groups/communities
that are vulnerable to control or
oppression

Comparison of Traditional Qualitative
Research and Critical Research

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND APPROACHES

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