Which of the following would be considered to be qualitative research studies?

Qualitative research questions differ from quantitative research questions. Qualitative research questions seek to explore or describe phenomena, not provide a neat nomothetic explanation, so they are often more general and vaguely worded. They may include only one concept, though many include more than one. Instead of asking how one variable causes changes in another, we are instead trying to understand the experiences, understandings, and meanings that people have about the concepts in our research question.

Let’s work through an example from our last section. In Table 8.1, a student asked, “What is the relationship between sexual orientation or gender identity and homelessness for late adolescents in foster care?” In this question, it is pretty clear that the student believes that adolescents in foster care who identify as LGBTQ may be at greater risk for homelessness. This is a nomothetic causal relationship—LGBTQ status causes homelessness.

However, what if the student were less interested in predicting homelessness based on LGBTQ status and more interested in understanding the stories of LGBTQ foster care youth that may be at risk for homelessness? In that case, the researcher would be building an idiographic causal explanation. The youths whom the researcher interviews may share stories of how their foster families, caseworkers, and others treated them. They may share stories about how they thought of their own sexuality or gender identity and how it changed over time. They may have different ideas about what it means to transition out of foster care.

Qualitative questions usually look different than quantitative questions because they search for idiographic causal relationships. Table 8.3 below takes the final research questions from Table 8.1 and adapts them for qualitative research. The guidelines for research questions previously described in this chapter still apply, but there are some new elements to qualitative research questions that are not present in quantitative questions. First, qualitative research questions often ask about lived experience, personal experience, understanding, meaning, and stories. These keywords indicate that you will be using qualitative methods. Second, qualitative research questions may be more general and less specific. Instead of asking how one concept causes another, we are asking about how people understand or feel about a concept. They may also contain only one variable, rather than asking about relationships between multiple variables.

Qualitative research questions have one final feature that distinguishes them from quantitative research questions. They can change over the course of a study. Qualitative research is a reflexive process, one in which the researcher adapts their approach based on what participants say and do. The researcher must constantly evaluate whether their question is important and relevant to the participants. As the researcher gains information from participants, it is normal for the focus of the inquiry to shift.

For example, a qualitative researcher may want to study how a new truancy rule impacts youth at risk of expulsion. However, after interviewing some of the youth in their community, a researcher might find that the rule is actually irrelevant to their behavior and thoughts. Instead, their participants will direct the discussion to their frustration with the school administrators or their family’s economic insecurity. This is a natural part of qualitative research, and it is normal for research questions and hypothesis to evolve based on the information gleaned from participants.

Researchers in quantitative research often collect data and analysis to generalize results or make conclusions about a particular phenomenon or subject. Survey researchers can sample a portion of a population and assert that the survey results are indicative of the perspectives of the whole population.

Collecting quantitative data

Generally, quantitative data collection methods are easier than their qualitative data counterparts. Suppose your research question involves measuring foot traffic around a city. In such a project, a researcher could place volunteers at selected places and have them count how many times they cross a street in their view. The volunteers' counts make the quantitative data they need to answer their research questions. Making assertions about the foot traffic in different places is a relatively easy task, given that the numbers are easily collected and readily available for comparison.

Forms of quantitative data

Quantitative data collection relies on structure and a clear understanding of what the numerical values mean to the research. Quantitative researchers can readily take a spreadsheet of test scores, for example, to generate descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The shape of that spreadsheet (e.g., rows and columns) and its content (e.g., numerical data) ultimately make analyzing quantitative data feasible.

Limitations of quantitative data

Some phenomena cannot be reduced to mere numbers. For example, quantitative data may tell you the value of a particular product, but it has significant challenges in helping explain a product's inherent beauty or effectiveness. Such concepts can be difficult for quantitative data to define. After all, what is beautiful to someone will be less so to someone else, and vice versa.

Quantitative research may also have problems measuring people's perspectives. Survey research often relies on Likert scales or rating scales asking respondents to rate something on a numerical scale (e.g., one to five or one to ten). However, is one respondent's idea of a "4" on a five-point scale the same as another? Subjective concepts are thus difficult to capture with numerical data.

Finally, the role of quantitative research is primarily to confirm understanding. Think of quantitative research as a coin sorter dividing coins by size.

Which of the following types of research would be considered qualitative research?

Which of the following are types of qualitative research methods quizlet?

Which of the following data collection methods would you likely find in a qualitative study?

Which of the following could be considered a limitation of qualitative research quizlet?