Qualitative Research

Caroline Magunje
 Qualitative Research

1 2 3
Looks at What, How, Used to understand Emphasises
Why, of human human emotions interpreting meaning
decision making and thoughts, feelings, from social contexts
helps to understand behaviours and
the social world experiences
 Qualitative research goals
Exploration
What are the perceptions of cyber- Identify pattern, themes and
threats among school management an understanding of a
in resource-constrained schools? phenomenon

Description
How do the perceptions of farmers Conveys information with
influence the adoption of agricultural specificity necessary to
IoT in the Western Cape? convey the experience

Interpretation
To reach out for
How does POPIA compliance affect understanding and
organisations operating in South explanation of a
Africa? phenomenon
 Case study- in-depth study of particular situation
or an intensive analysis of an individual unit

Types of Ethnography- study people in their environment

over an extended period of time
Qualitative
Research Phenomonology- the human experience around a
particular phenomenon

Grounded theory-using empirical data without

pre-conceived theories
 Data Collection Methods

Interviews Observations

Documents Focus groups

 Interviews
Semi-structured Interviews Advantages
• Involves having a set of guiding • Provides flexibility
questions but allows for flexibility • Researcher can judge the non-verbal
• Researcher (or participant)can follow behaviour of respondent
topics of interest without having to • Researcher can control order of questions
adhere to a set of structured questions

Disadvantages
Unstructured Interviews
• Can be costly as well as time-consuming
• Interview is more like a conversation,
flexible and unrestricted • Can cause biased, respondent’s answers
can be affected by his reaction to
• Comparing data between interviews can researchers race, class, age etc
be difficult
 Advantages
• "the systematic description • Allows for a detailed
of events, behaviors, and description of behaviours,
intentions, events
artifacts in the social
setting chosen for study"
• Researcher can view
(Marshall and Rossman participants in natural
(1989) environment
Observation
• Participant observation is Disadvantages
the process enabling • Can be time consuming
researchers to learn about
the activities of the people • One cannot study attitudes
under study in the natural and opinions by observing
setting through observing
and participating in those • Can take a lot of time if the
observer has to wait for a
activities. particular event to happen.
 • Advantages
• Researcher can gain a
deeper understanding of
respondents’ emotions
Focus Groups • A focus group includes
dialogue with a group of
• Researcher can observe
non-verbal responses
deliberately selected
participants who discuss a Disadvantages
particular topic. • The presence of other
people can inhibit an
individual and influence an
answer
• Extrovert members can
• Participants’ answers dominate the conversation
influence each other during with an aggressive approach
the discussion to giving feedback
 Advantages
• Any symbolic • Documents are relatively
representation that cheap and quick to access
can be recorded or
Documents retrieved for analysis • Documents make things
visible and are traceable

Disadvantages
• Access can be difficult for
some type of documents
• Involves extracting e.g email
and analysing data • Information may be out of
from existing date or inapplicable.
documents (emails,
policies etc) • The process of evaluating
documents and records
can be time-consuming.
 Qualitative data
analysis (QDA)
• It involves providing coherence and
structure to data set whilst
retaining a hold of the original
accounts and observation

• Concerned with transforming raw

data by searching, evaluating,
recognising, coding, mapping,
exploring and describing patterns,
themes, trends and categories in
the raw data un order to interpret
them and provide underlying
meanings
Types of Qualitative Analysis

Thematic Analysis Content Analysis

Ground theory Discourse Analysis

Analysis

Phenomology/
Narrative Analysis Heurestic Analysis
Thematic Analysis

• A method of identifying, analysing

and reporting themes within data

• It is a descriptive method that

reduces and allows flexibility and
interpretation when analysing data

• care and attention to transparency

should be undertaken with special of
the method in order to ensure
confidence in the findings
 Research Approaches

Deductive Inductive

Data Theory

Theory Data

• Generation of theory based on

• Guided by pre-existing theories or the data
ideas

• Allowing the data to determine

• Involves coming to the data with themes
some preconceived themes
 Steps in Thematic Analysis
1. Familiarise with data
It is important to do a thorough overview of data we collected before
analysing
2. Generate codes
Personally, I am scared using computers because I have never been
trained. I don’t know how to be safe online.
I fear that someone can steal my money. I am afraid of online things. I
don’t know much about computers.
Organisation of codes
3. Generating themes
identify patterns among codes , generate themes.
4. Reviewing themes
Compare themes with data

5. Defining and naming themes

Refining the specifics of each theme and
generating clear definitions and names for them

6. Creating the report

 • A qualitative analysis method that focuses
on identifying patterns in recorded
communication (artefacts from books,
newspaper articles, audio and video
recordings)
• Conceptual content analysis
• Explicit

Content Analysis •
•
Non-interpretational
Frequency of concepts
• Surface-level analysis
• Relational Content analysis
• Implicit
• Interpretational (Relationships of words)
• Focused on meaning in the use of words
and phrases
Strengths Weaknesses
• Can be used on written records • Reliability- involves some level of
subjective interpretation which can
affect the reliability and validity of
findings
• Highly flexible – you can conduct
analysis at any time, in any location • Reductive –Focus on words and
at low cost phrases can result in one missing
context, nuance and culture specific
meanings
• Unobtrusive data collection

• Time intensive and makes it difficult to

work with large data sets
 Steps of Content Analysis
Select Select the content you will analyse

Define Define the units and categorise of analysis

Develop Develop categories and a rules and coding scheme

Code Code the text according to the rules

Analyse Analyse the results and draw conclusion

 Narrative Analysis

Usually most
Interpreting appropriate for
Involves deriving research topics Emperical
human
meaning from the focused on social, evidence in
experiences in the
analysis of personal and narrative form
form of
people’s stories cultural events or
stories/narratives
phemenon
Sources Deductive or inductive
• Interview
Inductive- allows data to speak for itself
without preconceived notion

• Monologues Deductive- use a theory or a framework

that a narrative can be tested against

• Written stories
 Strength Weakness
Can be used on large
number of data Subjectivity and open
sources to interpretation

Offers low reliability,

findings cannot be
easily generalised nor
empirically verified

Time consuming
 Grounded Theory Analysis

A qualitative research methodology that invoves developing theories

directly from data instead of relying on pre-existing theories

It generates insights and understanding about a phenomenon through

systematic analyses of data to uncover patterns, relationships and
concepts

It is inductive in nature as it allows theories to emerge organically from

data rather than being imposed on it
 Steps in grounded theory

Data Collection
(interview,
Open coding Axial coding Selective coding
observation,
document analysis)

Constant Theoretical
Saturation Writing a theory
comparison sampling
Advantages Disadvantages
• Time consuming –iterative process
requires significant time and effort
Emergent theory- Theories
developed from data
allowing fresh insights
• Subjectivity- interpretation
Contextual insight-focuses influenced by researcher bias
on understanding
phenomenon within their
social and cultural context
• Theory ambiguity- generated
Holistic understanding –in- theories might be open to varied
depth immersion in data leads interpretations
to comprehensive insights
 Discourse Analysis
• A qualitative research approach that
emphasise the role of language in social
contexts

• Looks specifically at the subjective

underlying meaning of language in
written or spoken communication within
the context in which it takes place

• Discourse analyst investigate how social

meanings and understanding are
constructed in different contexts,
emphasising the connection between
language and power
• The purpose of discourse analysis is to investigate the functions of
language (i.e., what language is used for) and how meaning is
constructed in different contexts, the social, cultural, political, and
historical backgrounds of the discourse.

Steps in Discourse Analysis

• Decide on your analysis approach
• Choose a data collection methodology
• Investigate the context of your data
• Analysing your data
• Review your work
 • It is a practice that seeks to understand, describe
and interpret human behaviour and the
meanings individuals make of their experiences

• It focuses on what was experienced and how it

was experienced

Deals with perceptions of meaning, attittudes,

Phenomenological beliefs, feelings and emotions
Analysis
• Mostly used in inductive research method that
begins with data and uses it to develop broader
theories

• It is subject-centred

• Be careful of personal bias

Advantages Disadvantages
It can present authentic accounts • Individuality of results makes them
of complex phenomena non-generalisable

It is a humanistic research style

that demonstrates respect for the
whole individual

The descriptions of experience can

tell an interesting story about the
phenomenon and the individual
experiencing it
 References
• Abbaspour Z, Vasel G, Khojastehmehr R. Investigating the lived experiences of abused mothers: a
phenomenological study. Journal of Qualitative Research in Health Sciences. 2021;10(2)2:108-114.
doi:10.22062/JQR.2021.193653.
• Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, 77–
101.
• Caulfield, J. (2023, June 22). How to Do Thematic Analysis | Step-by-Step Guide & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved
March 26, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/thematic-analysis
• Liamputtong P. Qualitative Research Methods. 5th ed. Oxford University Press; 2020.
• Abbaspour Z, Vasel G, Khojastehmehr R. Investigating the lived experiences of abused mothers: a
phenomenological study. Journal of Qualitative Research in Health Sciences. 2021;10(2)2:108-114.
doi:10.22062/JQR.2021.193653.
• Priest, H. (2002). An approach to the phenomenological analysis of data. Nurse Researcher (through
2013), 10(2), 50.
• Smith, J. A., & Nizza, I. E. (2022). What is interpretative phenomenological analysis? In J. A. Smith & I. E.
Nizza, Essentials of interpretative phenomenological analysis (pp. 3–10). American Psychological
Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000259-001
• Smith, J. A., & Nizza, I. E. (2022). What is interpretative phenomenological analysis? In J. A. Smith & I. E. Nizza,
Essentials of interpretative phenomenological analysis (pp. 3–10). American Psychological Association.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0000259-001