Qualitative psychological research |
In the broadest sense qualitative
research is research which uses only dichotomous data – that is, data
which can take only the values 0 (zero) and 1 (one). In psychological research
this definition has been restricted further. In psychology qualitative research has come to be defined as research whose findings
are not arrived at by statistical or other quantitative
procedures.
This definition, however, is entirely negative, describing qualitative research by what it lacks rather than by what it
possesses. Absence of a characteristic is not itself a defining characteristic – journalism, for example, does not estimate
statistical parameters or test null hypotheses, but one would
scarcely claim that it is a form of psychological research. If qualitative research has some goal other than estimating parameters or testing, the important issue is what that goal is. Qualitative
psychological researchers have described other characteristics of qualitative research which they believe also distinguish it
from so-called quantitative
psychological research.
Goals attributed to qualitative psychological research
To many researchers the goal of qualitative psychological research is to develop hypotheses or theory. The crucial question here is the
definitions of hypothesis or theory. If what is meant are hypotheses or theories which can be tested by
quantitative statistical methods, then the definition is operational and objective. However, it is not
universally accepted. Many practitioners reject quantitative methods outright. Other goals have therefore been proposed for
qualitative research.
For example, qualitative research is often said to be naturalistic. That is, its goal is to understand behaviour in a
natural setting. However, quantitative research models and techniques may be used for the same purpose.
Two other goals attributed to qualitative research are understanding a phenomenon from the perspective of the research
participant and understanding the meanings people give to their experience. Again, however, quantitative research may be
conducted for the same purposes.
Qualitative research is sometimes said to have as its goal the understanding of the sample studied, rather than generalizing
from the sample to the population. However, quantitative research may also refrain from generalizing to the population (in
educational research for example, the ability to generalize
is often extremely limited, and studies often restrict themselves to drawing conclusions about the sample studied). Furthermore,
this goal does not account for the renunciation of statistical analysis, which helps researchers to understand samples.
Giving voice to marginalized groups and interpreting historically or culturally significant events are two other goals
attributed to qualitative research which do not distinguish it from quantitative research and to which statistical analysis is
relevant.
Other descriptions which may be taken as descriptions of the goals of qualitative psychological research tend to stipulate
that the research should be carried out in a certain way. That is, in these definitions qualitative research is not defined by
its results (that is, functionally) but by its procedures (that is, causally).
Qualitative psychological research is often said to be inductive. This seems to mean that the research is
non-evaluative rather than that it depends on inductive logic in the
usual sense. However, a reasonable argument could be made that quantitative research is often non-evaluative in the same
sense.
Qualitative psychological research emphasizes fieldwork, and this emphasis has
been offered as a distinguishing mark. However, quantitative researchers also do fieldwork.
Qualitative psychological research is also described as holistic. That is,
qualitative researchers believe in studying phenomena in their entirety rather than concentrating on narrow aspects of the
phenomena defined as independent or dependent variables. However, this assertion is questionable. Karl Popper has argued that we cannot know that we are studying the totality of any
phenomenon and that consequently we cannot study phenomena holistically. Certainly qualitative researchers have provided few
examples of research which attempts to study a phenomenon exhaustively. For one thing, conducting such research would require an
ability which no one has, specifically the knowledge of enough disciplines to conduct such research. For example, qualitative
researchers do not necessarily assess the medical conditions of their human subjects, but those medical conditions may easily
influence their behaviour.
Other proposed distinctions between qualitative and "quantitative" (that is, statistically-based) psychological research are
also questionable – that qualitative research is more intense, for example, that in qualitative research the researcher is
the primary collector and analyst of data, that qualitative research is "richly descriptive" (statistical analysis which can
position a phenomenon accurately within a distribution certainly has some claim to be considered richly descriptive), or that
quantitative researchers assume that researchers do not influence their data (the influence of the experimenter on subjects is an
important research topic in psychology, as is the influence of test administrators on test-takers).
Qualitative psychological research is often treated as the opposite of quantitative research. Qualitative analysis, however,
is at the very least still descriptive research, and relevant quantitative psychometric concerns such as its reliability and validity are critical to its utility.
Origins and methods
The philosophical bases of qualitative psychological research are found in phenomenology, ethnomethodology, and
naturalistic behaviourism. Its research methods are derived from ethnography and anthropology.
In psychology, the research methods commonly classified as qualitative include:
The data collected by researchers using these techniques consist of:
- the results of open-ended interviews
- notes of direct observation
- written documents (answers to questionnaires, diaries, program records, and so on)
After collecting data quantitative psychological researchers then organize them into themes, categories, and case examples.
Their goal is to examine their data in depth and in detail without being constrained by predetermined analytical categories.
Most psychological researchers probably use both types of method. In particular, qualitative methods are widely used as
exploratory methods; the results of qualitative analysis are used to design quantitative research which tests null hypotheses derived from the qualitative observations.
Arguments against quantitative psychological research
Nevertheless, many other psychological researchers reject statistically-based research in favour of qualitative research. They
argue that statistically-based research is invalid because it ignores context and concentrates on tiny parts of phenomena rather
than on the phenomena as wholes. They also argue that quantitative research assumes a unitary reality which does not exist, since
every researcher's perception of reality is influenced by his or her unique perceptions and predispositions.
The validity of these criticisms of quantitative research may be questioned. For example, much research on intelligence is conducted without the researchers assuming that
they are actually measuring a real entity called intelligence. Instead they are assessing a hypothetical
construct, and the value of their assessment will depend on the utility of the construct. On the other hand, many
quantitative researchers, and especially many studying intelligence, have represented and interpreted their research as if it was
research about an actual entity.
Popper's argument against the possibility of holism is also relevant here. but if the qualitative researchers' assertion is
taken simply as an assertion that qualitative research studies more aspects of a phenomenon than quantitative research an
empirical assessment of the claim could be made.
Quantitative psychological researchers often incorporate large numbers of independent variables in multiple linear regression studies, so establishing this claim empirically might be difficult. However,
multiple linear regression studies may demonstrate another deficiency which qualitative researchers ascribe to quantitative
research. Researchers using multiple linear regression often ignore such context as interactions between the independent
variables which reduce the stability of their findings. Such studies constitute classic examples of a deficiency which
qualitative researchers ascribe to quantitative research, although the adequacy of qualitative methods in analyzing large numbers
of variables has not been substantiated. And regardless of the deficiencies of many quantitative researchers, it is still
possible to use multiple linear regression judiciously.
Many qualitative psychological researchers reject the traditional psychometric idea of validity – that is, the idea that
measures should reflect differences in other logically related measures. Since they deny the existence of an external reality
independent of personal interpretation they consequently reject the idea of assessing differences in it. However, many people
have concluded that accepting the premisses of this argument leads to the logical conclusion that research of any kind is futile,
and other qualitative researchers have developed non-quantitative criteria for assessing reliability and validity.
These criteria, however, are based on debatable assumptions. For example, the traditional psychometric concept of reliability
has been rejected by many qualitative researchers in part because some types of reliability require repeated observation, which
the qualitative researchers consider impossible in any useful sense. They have proposed a qualitative analog called
dependability, which requires researchers to explain how changes in context produced changes in observations.
However, claiming that repeated observation is impossible does not demonstrate that the traditional psychometric concept lacks
utility, even if repeated observation is in fact impossible. Furthermore, requiring researchers to explain how changes in context
produced changes in observations raises the psychometric issues of reliability and validity again – researchers cannot
explain changes with invalid measures (including classification systems), and valid measures must be reliable by definition.
Confirmability is a qualitative concept analogous to the concept of objectivity in quantitative research. It is the
degree to which research results can be confirmed by other researchers, while objectivity is the obtaining of identical results
by different investigators. A quantitative test is objective, for example, if different testers assign the same scores to the
same test-takers. Again, quantitative techniques of correlation would seem to
be relevant to the assessment of confirmability.
Transferability has been proposed as a qualitative substitute for psychometric validity. Research findings are
transferable to the extent to which they can be generalized to settings other than the one in which they were made. This
definition, however, does not imply that conventional psychometric methods of assessing validity are not useful for this purpose,
nor that they are less useful than qualitative methods.
Status in psychology
The prevailing opinion in psychology is probably that both approaches offer important benefits, that rejecting one or the
other means renouncing some of those benefits, and that the most useful debate is about the circumstances in which the two
approaches may most profitably be used.
See also qualitative marketing
research
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