Introducing Qualitative Research

A Student′s Guide

Rosaline Barbour

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781446254608, 9781446254592
• eBook ISBN: 9781446293355
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

Rosaline Barbour draws on her extensive teaching experience to provide a clear, user-friendly introduction to the craft of doing qualitative research. Each chapter includes examples of real-life qualitative data and a range of exercises to help students get a feel for the process of generating and analysing qualitative data.

The second edition includes:

• New examples from a range of social science disciplines, making this the perfect book no matter what course you're studying
• More on unobtrusive methods of data collection, such as documentary analysis
• More on internet research methods, mixed methods and visual methods
• A new section on using software in qualitative research
• A brand new companion website full of additional lecturer and student resources.

 

Part I Introduction

This first part aims to introduce the reader to the qualitative research endeavour. It outlines, in Chapter 1, the questions that qualitative research can address and examines its use across a range of disciplines, each of which have put their own ‘stamp’ on the methods they employ. The range of methods employed by qualitative researchers is described, and their usefulness for addressing a variety of questions is discussed. Some broad propositions which underpin most qualitative research projects are presented and, in keeping with the desire to locate qualitative research firmly within the ‘real world’ its relationship with policy and practice issues and concerns is also discussed.

Chapter 2 acknowledges that there is no one definitive qualitative tradition and seeks to introduce the various traditions that have evolved, tracing their historical and disciplinary roots and casting a critical eye over the similarities and differences involved. Philosophical issues are also discussed, including ideas about knowledge and evidence (‘epistemology’) and about what constitutes the social world and how it can best be studied (‘ontology’). The next chapter, Chapter 3, provides guidance on the planning and designing of qualitative studies, emphasizing the importance of matching methods with research questions. A common thread, that runs throughout the whole book, as reflected here, is the need to look ahead, through employing thoughtful sampling strategies, thinking carefully about sequencing of methods and, anticipating analysis – even at this early stage in the process. It is argued that practical and ethical issues are inextricably linked and the challenges involved are considered – not just in terms of securing approval from ethics committees, but in aspiring to conduct ethical research that is mindful of the sensibilities of participants and the political climate. Rather than viewing ethical considerations as a discrete phase at the outset of a study, this chapter locates ethical issues within the unfolding process of qualitative research, highlighting the constant negotiation that is involved.

1 The Scope and Contribution of Qualitative Research

Aims

• This chapter illustrates the range of questions that qualitative research can answer.
• It examines the role of the researcher and her/his dispositions in shaping the questions asked and the approach followed.
• It outlines the range of methods used by qualitative researchers and enables the reader to match particular methods with specific research questions.
• It provides an overview of the potential and challenges involved in more recent developments, including online and visual methods.
• It highlights several broad propositions that appear to be accepted by all qualitative approaches and which render it distinctive.
• It shows how qualitative research has been shaped by the disciplines and professional groups that have espoused it.
• It looks at how qualitative research is positioned in relation to policy, practice and politics and discusses the main challenges involved.

Introduction

There has been some debate within qualitative research as to whether such researchers are ‘born’ or ‘made’, but I suspect that, for most of us, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. In this chapter the role of different dispositions – or types of curiosity – will be explored and its influence on driving the focus and design of qualitative research studies. It is important to acknowledge the researcher's personal interests and situation and their bearing on how the research is framed and carried out. This is what is referred to as being ‘reflexive’ about some of our own assumptions, whether these derive from our previous research experience, disciplinary background, predispositions, or, even, life experiences.

This chapter illustrates what sorts of questions qualitative research can address, arguing that, through its detailed focus on everyday interactions and exchanges, it can make a unique contribution through illuminating aspects of social processes that other methods cannot access.

Next, the chapter will outline the range of methods deployed by qualitative researchers, discussing how these have been harnessed by different disciplines to address a variety of research questions. It will then go on to consider what is distinctive about qualitative research, attempting to dispel some of the common misconceptions and criticisms of qualitative work. Some of these are shown not to be relevant, since these overlook some of the distinctive principles underlying the qualitative research endeavour. If expectations and assumptions are reviewed, however, and these ideas about shortcomings are recast, it is argued that they can, instead, be viewed as strengths.

Dispositions

Tricia Greenhalgh (1998), who trained as an anthropologist prior to studying medicine, consequently has a unique insight into research endeavours situated at the conjunction between the two sets of disciplinary concerns. She points out that qualitative research taps into a different sort of curiosity. Recalling a story told to her by Cecil Helman, she uses the analogy of two children observing leaves falling from trees in autumn, to characterize two different ‘research mindsets’: one which is drawn to counting and calculating the rate of leaf-fall and predicting when trees will become totally bare, and the other which involves pondering the broader context where only some trees lose their leaves and the diversity of sizes, shapes and colours of leaves involved. To paraphrase Greenhalgh (and Helman) the ‘calculators’ are prone to becoming quantitative researchers, while the ‘ponderers’ are much more attuned to qualitative research approaches.

Although this obviously involves some over-simplification, it is certainly the case that we have tended to overlook the importance of the match between researcher and research methods. Trow, writing in 1957, observed:

Every cobbler thinks leather is the only thing – most (researchers) have their favourite research methods with which they are familiar and have some skill in using …. We mostly choose to investigate problems that seem amenable to attack through these methods. (Trow, 1957: 33)

While this does not preclude researchers with a quantitative ‘mindset’ undertaking qualitative projects – or, indeed vice versa – this notion of deeply rooted dispositions helps to explain both why certain broad research questions, or properties of the data produced, ‘grab’ some individuals more than do others. This selectivity can be seen at work in the many examples provided throughout this book.

What Questions can Qualitative Research Answer?

Qualitative research answers very different questions to those addressed by quantitative research, and some criticisms directed against qualitative research have, at times, failed to take this into account. Qualitative methods cannot answer questions such as ‘How many?’; ‘What are the causes?’; ‘What is the strength of the relationship between variables?’ It can, however, provide an understanding of how official figures are created through social processes. Research, such as that done by Lindsay Prior (2003) – on suicide statistics and documentation used in psychiatric hospitals – and Bloor (1991) – on death certification – have examined how the categories are interpreted and employed by those doing the recording. Studies of this sort have also sought to explain how this has come about – due to policy emphases and working practices. Even a seemingly straightforward issue such as how hospital waiting lists are managed has been shown to be subject to fascinating variation, which has as much to do with social processes as it has to do with clinical factors (Pope, 1991).

Qualitative research can make visible and unpick the mechanisms which link particular variables, by looking at the explanations, or accounts, provided by those involved. Quantitative research excels at identifying statistically significant relationships between variables, such as social class and health status, and frequently produces diagrams which show the distribution and strength of this association for people located at different points on the social class spectrum. Further quantitative analyses can, of course, further explain such associations by determining the relative influence of individual variables for sub-samples of the population under study, or by looking at the effect of clusters of related variables. What eludes such approaches, however, is the capacity to explain how the ‘macro’ (i.e. social class position, gender, locality) is translated into the ‘micro’ (i.e. everyday practices, understandings and interactions) to guide individual behaviour. This is where qualitative research can provide a fuller picture.

Although qualitative and quantitative research answer very different questions, researchers often have common interests in seeking to understand a particular phenomenon and the two approaches can be complementary. An interview study of professionals directly involved in providing care for people who were HIV positive or who had AIDS focused on finding out what demands professionals considered that this work made of them, and how they dealt with these challenges (Barbour, 1993; 1995). Semi-structured interviews were used to elicit the perceptions of workers in four Scottish cities, which were characterized by different epidemic patterns and varying histories of service development. By leaving it up to the interviewees to identify which aspects of their work they experienced as most demanding, interviews established that organizational aspects of their work and new professional challenges loomed as large for staff as did the more predictable problems posed by caring for young people (many of whom were already stigmatized by virtue of their drug use or sexuality) who were dying. Although there had been a number of quantitative studies which had sought to measure levels of burnout among AIDS-related workers, these had concentrated mostly on the issues raised by the interface with patients. Had this study been followed by a survey employing a structured questionnaire in order to try to quantify the impact of AIDS-related work on satisfaction or burnout it would certainly have been useful to have augmented these pre-validated scales. Additional questions could have been incorporated which investigated the way in which work was organized, since the interviews had shown that the demands of working in multidisciplinary teams, and responding to particular management styles, allocation of resources and the implications for career development were of particular importance to professionals (Barbour, 1993). Rather than predefining the variables likely to be important to those we study, qualitative approaches allow respondents to identify those issues which are salient for them and to explain how these impact on their daily lives and, in the case above, how these affect how they go about their work and how these affect their job satisfaction. It is for this reason that qualitative methods are often utilized in order to inform development of structured research instruments, such as surveys and mixed methods research is discussed more fully in Chapter 9.

By employing qualitative methods it is possible to study how people understand concepts; what sort of ‘trade-offs’ they might make to themselves in weighing up, for example, health promotion messages and deciding whether or not to take these on board. An early and influential publication in the field of medical sociology explains how individuals process information and make decisions:

A person is unlikely simply to return from the doctor's surgery and take the treatment that he has been prescribed. It is more likely that the doctor's action and the treatment will be discussed and evaluated. Medication decisions will be made in the light of these discussions, in the light of the person's experiences with the treatment, and in the light of past experiences with the doctor and other illness and treatments … People live their problems and illnesses socially; they cannot be viewed as isolated individuals responding automatically to the instructions of their doctors. (Stimson and Webb, 1978: 152)

Researchers are also positioned within the social world and their own life experiences and disciplinary socialization inevitably shape their approach to doing qualitative research – in terms of the questions they seek to address, the methods they employ and the methodological approaches they adopt. This is discussed under the heading of ‘What is distinctive about qualitative research?’

What is Distinctive about Qualitative Research?

Qualitative methods can allow us to access ‘embedded’ processes by focusing on the context of people's everyday lives where such decisions are made and enacted, rather than simply looking at patient characteristics or the content of consultations.

It is not only members of the public – the ‘lay population’ – however, who weigh up information in what might be seen as idiosyncratic ways. A study by Fairhurst and Huby (1998) examined how general practitioners (GPs) evaluated the results of randomized control trials (RCTs) in a specific area of medical practice (the management of hypocholesterolaemia). Drawing on cognitive theories of education they showed that knowledge trickled down to GPs. Very few had actually read the papers in question, but relied on sources of evidence rather than the evidence per se. That is, they were more likely to accept the findings if these were passed on to them by someone they trusted – whether this was a highly-regarded journal summarizing the findings or a respected colleague. Reinforcement was required from several sources before GPs were persuaded of the need to alter their own clinical practice. Thus, although the evidence in question was located at the hard (quantitative) end of the m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• About the Author
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Companion Website
• Overview
• Part I Introduction
• 1 The Scope and Contribution of Qualitative Research
• 2 Qualitative Traditions: Epistemology and Ontology
• 3 Research Design
• 4 Ethics
• Part II Generating Data
• 5 Interviews
• 6 Focus groups
• 7 Ethnography
• 8 Other Sources of Qualitative Data
• Part III Complex Research Designs in Practice
• 9 Mixing Methods
• 10 Action Research
• Part IV Analyzing and Presenting Qualitative Research
• 11 Analysis: Processing, Coding and Interrogating Data
• 12 Theorizing in Qualitative Analysis
• 13 Presenting and Writing-up Qualitative Research
• Glossary
• References
• Author Index
• Index