Designing Qualitative Research

Uwe Flick, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781473911987
• eBook ISBN: 9781526425980
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

This concise introduction to qualitative research design will help you to think through the questions you need to ask when embarking on your research. Uwe Flick discusses each stage of the process of designing qualitative research,from turning an idea into a research question, selecting a sample, choosing an appropriate strategy, developing a conceptual framework and data source, and preparing for data collecting and analysis.

This book can be used alongside other titles in the SAGE Qualitative Research Kit but can equally be used on its own. It is an invaluable companion to students and scholars embarking on research in in the social sciences, health, business and education.

Chapter One What is qualitative research?

Contents

• Defining qualitative research 2
• Proliferation of qualitative research 3
• Appropriateness as guiding principle 5
• Qualitative research as an academic discipline and in applied contexts 7
• Qualitative research as a moral discourse 8
• Quality and quantity: alternatives, two sides of a coin, combinations? 9
• Research perspectives 12
• Theory and epistemology of qualitative research 13
• Qualitative research: methods and attitudes 15
• Structure of the book and of The SAGE Qualitative Research Kit 16

Chapter Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should:

• recognize common features of qualitative research and, at the same time, its proliferation;
• know about the research perspectives and the role of theory in qualitative research; and
• understand that qualitative research is located in the tension of methods and attitudes.

Defining Qualitative Research

The term ‘qualitative research’ was for a long time used in a distinctive way to describe an alternative to ‘quantitative’ research and was coined against the background of a critique of the latter, and especially how it had developed in the 1960s and 1970s. However, qualitative research has a long history in many disciplines, while social research in general began with approaches that would now be included under qualitative research. The longer the development proceeded, the more a profile of what was meant by this term became clear. This profile is no longer defined ex negativo – qualitative research is not quantitative or not standardized or the like – but it is characterized by several features. Thus, qualitative research uses text as empirical material (instead of numbers), starts from the notion of the social construction of realities under study, and is interested in the perspectives of participants, in everyday practices and everyday knowledge referring to the issue under study. Methods should be appropriate to that issue and should be open enough to allow an understanding of a process or relation (see Flick, 2014a, for more detail). Does this mean that we can see a common understanding of what qualitative research is? In their handbook, Denzin and Lincoln offer an ‘initial, generic definition’:

Qualitative research is a situated activity that locates the observer in the world. It consists of a set of interpretive, material practices that make the world visible. These practices transform the world. They turn the world into a series of representations, including field notes, interviews, conversations, photographs, recordings, and memos to the self. At this level, qualitative research involves an interpretive, naturalistic approach to the world. This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. (2011a, p. 3)

This seems to be a good definition of what qualitative research is about. Nevertheless, if you take conversation analysis as an example (see Rapley, 2018; or ten Have, 1999), researchers are interested in the formal organization of talk about something and not in the meanings people bring to a phenomenon. Nevertheless, conversation analysis is a prominent example of qualitative research. A lot of qualitative research starts from a ‘naturalistic approach to the world’ and a great deal of qualitative research has an interpretive approach to it. But in many contexts, both are seen as something different on the level of epistemology and methodology, which makes it difficult to simply combine ‘interpretive naturalistic’ in one approach. These remarks are not so much meant as a critique of Denzin and Lincoln’s definition; rather, to thus demonstrate the difficulties in formulating such a definition as a generic definition.

Proliferation of Qualitative Research

Qualitative research has been developing for a long time now. The label ‘qualitative research’ is used as an umbrella term for a series of approaches to research in the social sciences. These are also known as hermeneutic, reconstructive or interpretive approaches (see Flick, 2014a, 2014c, and Flick et al., 2004a, for recent overviews). Also, sometimes the term ‘inquiry’ is preferred to ‘research’ or both are given up in favour of naming the whole enterprise ‘ethnography’. Nevertheless, under the label of qualitative research, these approaches and methods, and the results obtained by using them, are attracting increasing attention not only in sociology, but also in education, psychology, health sciences, and the like. In some of these areas, special handbooks of qualitative research (in psychology, for example) are published and at the same time hardly any handbook (in rehabilitation, nursing science or public health, for instance) is published today that does not have a chapter on qualitative research methods. Without going into the details of a history of qualitative research here, we can observe a success story. Indicators for this are the growing numbers of special journals for qualitative research or of established journals opening up to the publication of qualitative research. The number of textbooks, handbooks, monographs and edited books is constantly increasing and in many areas the proportion of qualitative research in funded research is growing considerably. Also, the number of courses and curricula dedicated to qualitative research is growing. Finally, an increasing number of young researchers do their master’s or doctoral thesis against the background of a study using qualitative or a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. These indicators of a success story for qualitative research may differ in their relevance in various disciplines and in different countries, but they describe an overall trend of establishing qualitative research as an approach that is taken seriously in more and more contexts.

At the same time, we cannot see that this trend of establishing qualitative research is accompanied by developing something like a paradigmatic core of what qualitative research is. Although some overall principles can be identified (see above), we are confronted by a continuous proliferation of qualitative research on – at least – five levels:

• First of all, there are different research programmes in qualitative research, which all have different issues of research, specific methods and theoretical backgrounds. Examples may be grounded theory research or discourse analysis, which have different interests and methodological principles, but are both prominent in qualitative research.
• Second, we can see differences in what is understood as qualitative research in the USA, in the UK, or, for example, in Germany (see Knoblauch et al., 2005, for such a comparative view of qualitative research in different countries). The Denzin and Lincoln definition and their handbook, for example, basically represent the understanding in the USA. The first point, of course, is also relevant inside each of these national traditions.
• Third, we find different discourses about qualitative research in different disciplines. Qualitative researchers in psychology have specific interests and problems, as do their colleagues in sociology, for example, but they are not necessarily the same.
• Fourth, we see a growing diversity of area-specific discourses about qualitative research. Examples are contracted qualitative research in health sciences or in management or in evaluation. These areas have their special needs and limitations, which are different from, for example, university research in the context of master’s or doctoral theses or in the context of ‘basic’ research.
• Fifth, we find strong development of qualitative online research. Established methods are transferred and adapted (e.g. online interviewing), and new approaches such as digital ethnography are developed for analyzing Internet-related issues and phenomena.

Someone who expects the development of standards for qualitative research from a long history of research and methodological discussion may be puzzled or disappointed by this proliferation. At times this may produce problems in the acceptance of qualitative research and weaken its position in competition with quantitative researchers, when funding resources are to be allocated. However, this proliferation can also be seen as characteristic of qualitative research due to one of its main features – or guiding principles – the many varieties of qualitative research.

Appropriateness As Guiding Principle

The development of qualitative research is linked to the principle of appropriateness in five ways. Originally, at the beginning of empirical research in several disciplines, there were more issues to be studied than methods to use. We can trace back how the methods used in early studies of qualitative research were developed out of a specific knowledge interest on the one hand and of the features of what should be studied on the other hand. Vidich and Lyman (2000) show how the methods of early ethnography were informed by the researchers’ interests in ‘the Other’, which at that time meant understanding the difference between non-Western cultures and the researchers’ own Western backgrounds. This was then extended to comparative approaches describing different versions of cultures from a comparative and evolutionary point of view, and later on applied to understanding and describing specific parts of one’s own culture in the studies of the Chicago School, for example. Another example is the development of Piaget’s research methods from his interest in understanding children’s development and thinking at different stages. In this phase of development, the need for appropriateness of the methods in (what was later called) qualitative research resulted from the characteristics of the issues that were discovered for research and from the lack of a developed methodology ready to be applied in such studies (see also Flick, 2014a, Chapter 2, for a brief history of qualitative research).

A second link to appropriateness as a principle can be identified much later in the renaissance of qualitative research in the 1960s and 1970s. Here we find a different situation: methodologies had been developed, established, and refined. Disciplines had linked their own development and establishment to a specific method – the experiment in psychology, the use of surveys in sociology, for example. For the latter method, this was complemented by the development of ‘grand theories’ (like the ones of Talcott Parsons, for example: Parsons and Shils, 1951) to describe how societies function in general and in detail. At the same time, both methods and theories missed a growing number of issues that were practically relevant, but more small-scale and difficult to understand. As a result of such developments, a lack of methods (and theories) ready to describe and explain relevant phenomena led to a rediscovery of qualitative research. Examples of how the lack of adequate, appropriate methods has led to the creation of new methods and research programmes for developing empirically ‘grounded theories’ are the studies of Erving Goffman (1959) or Howard Becker, Anselm Strauss and Barney Glaser (Becker et al., 1961). They were interested in using empirical research for discovering and developing theories of practically relevant phenomena, which could not be addressed by surveys or grand theories. In this phase, the principle of appropriateness became relevant for qualitative research because of the gap between established methodologies and the issues that could not be studied adequately with these methodologies. The principle of appropriateness led to the development of a range of qualitative methods – sometimes to a rediscovery and further development of already existing methods – of research programmes and of an extended methodological discourse of qualitative research. For this phase, again, we can trace back methodological features of qualitative research methods (and programmes) to the features of the issues that were studied.

In a third sense, the principle of appropriateness has become relevant in the current situation. Now, we can notice a further proliferation of qualitative research in a variety of research areas. If we have a look at areas like organization studies or management research, or at fields like health research in general or nursing research in particular, we find specific features of the fields and issues to be studied. These have led to the development of methodological discourses that are specific and different from the discourse in qualitative research in general. Management research, for example, is confronted with very specific structures (of organizations). Nursing research often works with people in a very specific situation – the vulnerability of patients or of their relatives confronted with illness and death – which requires specific methods, sensitivities and ethical concerns on the researchers’ side. In the field of qualitative evaluation, for example, restrictions come from routines of practices (to be evaluated) and from the expectations of commissioners of the research (to have practically relevant results available after a relatively short time). These restrictions produce demands and needs different from qualitative research in the context of a dissertation project or of funding in the context of basic research. In all these cases – from management to evaluation – specific methodological discourses have developed driven by the need to have qualitative research that is appropriate to these cases. This becomes evident in the methods that are used, in the discussions of quality of qualitative research in each field, and in the ways of presenting and using results from qualitative research in each of the fields. In this third sense, it is again the proliferation and methodological refinement of qualitative research that creates a new need for taking appropriateness as a principle more seriously and leads to a growing distinctiveness in and between the fields.

In a fourth sense, discussions about globalization of qualitative research and the challenges (see Flick, 2014b) this produces for using established methods, approaches and research examples (see Hsiung, 2012) in this context have become more influential. For example, in relation to new dimensions of appropriateness in using qualitative methods: How is interviewing changed when interpreters are involved (see Littig and Pöchhacker, 2014)? How different are the reception and expectations of grounded theory in different cultural environments (see Charmaz, 2014)? How can epistemologies and practices simply be transferred or have to be adapted?

In a fifth sense, the digitalization of qualitative research produces new challenges for interviewing, ethnography and document analysis in the context of virtual worlds (see Markham, 2018a, 2018b). What are appropriate methods for this context, and what does appropriateness mean in adapting methods to it?...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Sidebar List
• Illustration List
• Table List
• Editorial introduction
• About this book and its second edition
• Chapter One What is qualitative research?
• Chapter Two From an idea to a research question
• Chapter Three How to design qualitative research
• Chapter Four Sampling, selecting and access
• Chapter Five Resources and stumbling blocks
• Chapter Six Quality in qualitative research
• Chapter Seven Ethics in qualitative research
• Chapter Eight Verbal data
• Chapter Nine Ethnography and visual data
• Chapter Ten Analyzing qualitative data
• Chapter Eleven Beyond Method Grounded Theory, triangulation and mixed methods
• Chapter Tweleve Designing qualitative research Some conclusions
• Glossary
• References
• Index