Getting Started with Qualitative Research, Explained

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Getting Started with Qualitative Research

Research Methods in Psychology · Chapter 6: Qualitative Research MethodsSection 6.1 · lesson 35 of 9411 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

An introduction to methods that capture meaning, context, and lived experience.

  • Define qualitative research and its contribution
  • Contrast qualitative and quantitative assumptions
  • Identify the major qualitative approaches
  • Apply the criteria of trustworthiness

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Qualitative Research Methods

Getting Started with Qualitative Research

Chapter six turns to a different family of methods entirely. Qualitative research works with words, images, and observations rather than numbers. It exists because some questions are not about how often something happens. They are about what a thing is, and what it means to the people living it. This first section lays the shared foundations that the whole chapter builds on. By the end, you will be able to define qualitative research, and say what it uniquely contributes. You will separate the two traditions on philosophical grounds, not only on methodological ones. You will name the five major qualitative approaches used in social research today. And you will know how to judge whether a piece of qualitative work is any good. That last skill matters, because the familiar quality checks do not apply here.

Why It Matters

What Numbers Do Not Tell You

Start with what numbers do well, and what they do not. Numbers tell you how often something happens. They tell you much less about what it is, or what it means to the people involved. Take a correlation between unemployment and depression. Suppose it comes out around zero point four five, a solid and meaningful pattern. That number tells you the two move together. It stops there. It cannot describe what it feels like to lose a job. It cannot show how unemployment is experienced differently in different households. And it cannot capture how the meaning of unemployment shifts as months pass without work. Those are questions of meaning, context, process, and lived experience. Qualitative research is the family of methods built to answer them.

Three Defining Features

What Every Qualitative Study Shares

Qualitative research is defined less by doctrine than by what it actually does. Three features show up in nearly every qualitative study. First, the data are not numerical. Interview transcripts, field notes, photographs, video recordings, historical documents. Words, images, sounds, and observations, rather than measurements. Second, the focus falls on meaning and context. The researcher wants to know how the people studied make sense of their own experiences. And how those experiences are shaped by social, cultural, and historical context. Notice what that rules out. You are not counting instances of a phenomenon. Third, the analysis is inductive and iterative. It moves from data toward theory, rather than testing hypotheses fixed in advance.

Side By Side

Qualitative and Quantitative Compared

It helps to see the two traditions laid out side by side. Quantitative work focuses on measurement and patterns. Qualitative work focuses on meaning and context. The data differ. Numbers, scores, and frequencies on one side. Words, images, and observations on the other. Samples differ too. Quantitative samples are larger, and often probabilistic. Qualitative samples are small and purposive, chosen for what they can show. Analysis is statistical in one tradition, interpretive and thematic in the other. The goals part company as well, depth and understanding against generalization and prediction. Even the researcher's role flips, from detached observer to active interpreter. Now resist the temptation to line these up as opposing camps. Most experienced researchers treat them as complementary tools, and many studies use both. The choice is not tribal. It follows from the question being asked.

Ontology

What Social Reality Is Taken To Be

Underneath the methods sit two philosophical questions worth naming. The first is ontology, the question of what social reality actually is. Quantitative researchers often adopt a realist stance. On that view, the social world has properties that exist independently of researchers. And those properties can, in principle, be measured. Many qualitative researchers adopt a constructivist stance instead. Social reality, on this view, is constructed through interpretation, language, and shared meaning. If that is true, it carries a methodological consequence. Reality has to be understood from inside the perspectives of the people constructing it. Both views have defensible versions, and researchers vary in how strongly they hold them.

Epistemology

Where the Researcher Stands

The second philosophical question is epistemology. It concerns the relationship between the knower and the known. Quantitative research often aims at objectivity. That means a distanced, neutral stance, where the investigator's characteristics do not influence findings. Qualitative researchers more often acknowledge something less comfortable. The researcher is part of the research situation, and cannot step outside it. Identity, position, and interpretive framework inevitably shape what gets observed. They shape how it gets understood, too. So the response is not to pretend otherwise. The response is reflexivity. Reflexivity is the ongoing examination of the researcher's own role in producing the research. Here is the part students get backwards. Admitting influence is not a confession of weakness.

A Family Of Traditions

Five Major Qualitative Approaches

Qualitative research is not one method. It is a family of traditions. Each was developed to answer a particular kind of question. Case study asks what we can learn from an in-depth study of a particular instance. Ethnography asks how members of a culture understand and live their daily lives. Historical research asks how preserved records can illuminate past events, processes, and meanings. Grounded theory asks what theoretical account emerges from systematic analysis of qualitative data. Phenomenology asks about the essential structure of an experience, as those who live it perceive it. Read those five questions again and notice something. The differences are in the question asked, not in some ranking of rigor. Choosing among these traditions is a matter of fit.

Judging Quality

Trustworthiness Replaces the Old Criteria

Now the question that decides whether qualitative work gets taken seriously. How do you judge quality, when the usual criteria do not transfer? Reliability, validity, and generalizability were built for measurement. So qualitative researchers use a parallel framework, gathered under the heading of trustworthiness. Five criteria sit under that umbrella. Credibility asks whether the findings are a believable account of the participants' experiences. Transferability asks whether the findings can inform understanding of similar settings. Dependability asks whether another researcher could follow the analytical decisions taken. Confirmability asks whether the findings are grounded in the data, not in the researcher's preconceptions. And reflexivity asks whether the researcher examined and reported their own position. Read them together and one pattern appears. Each demands transparency about how the interpretation was produced.

Earning Trust

Techniques That Support Each Criterion

Criteria without practices are just good intentions, so each criterion has techniques attached. Member checking supports credibility. The researcher takes their interpretations back to participants, and asks whether the account resonates. Thick description supports transferability. That means rich, contextual reporting, detailed enough that readers can judge transferability themselves. Notice who does the judging there. The reader, not the author. Audit trails support dependability and confirmability. An audit trail is a documented record of the decisions made during analysis. Anyone can then follow the reasoning from raw material to conclusion. Reflexive memos support reflexivity, the researcher's running notes on their own evolving thinking. None of this is decoration. It is how a qualitative claim earns its credibility.

Common Objections

Misconceptions, and What They Miss

Qualitative research attracts a standard set of dismissals, and each one misreads the method. The first. Qualitative research is just journalism. In fact it uses systematic procedures for sampling, data collection, and analysis. The second. The samples are too small to be valid. Qualitative samples are small by design. The goal is depth, not statistical representativeness. The third. It is purely subjective. It does acknowledge the role of interpretation, then answers it with systematic technique. The fourth. You cannot generalize from qualitative findings. Generalization operates differently here. It works through analytic transferability. And the fifth. Qualitative research is easier than quantitative research. It often demands more time, and more sustained engagement with participants.

Sample Size

Small by Design, Stopped by Saturation

Sample size deserves its own moment, because it is where most arguments start. Picture a reviewer dismissing an interview study because it included only twenty participants. The number sounds small, if you are thinking about statistical power. But statistical power is not what this sample was ever for. Qualitative sampling is purposive, and small on purpose. It aims at depth of understanding, not at representing a population. The relevant standard is saturation. Saturation is the point where more data collection produces no new categories or insights. When fresh interviews stop changing the analysis, the analysis is sufficiently developed. So the honest answer to that reviewer is not an apology about the number. It is an account of what those participants were chosen to reveal.

Asking Better Questions

How to Evaluate Qualitative Work

Finish with the practical habit this section is really teaching. When you evaluate a qualitative study, the useful questions change. Not how many participants, and not what the p value was. Ask instead whether the analysis is grounded in the data. Ask whether the researcher has reflected on their own role in producing it. And ask whether the interpretation shows you something you could not otherwise have seen. That last question is the demanding one, and the one most worth asking. Different methods answer to different standards. The chapter now moves from foundations to the traditions themselves. Next come two of the most widely used, case study and ethnography. Both study the particular in enough depth to illuminate something general.

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Research Methods in Psychology carries a NCCRS credit recommendation. These universities work with NCCRS; some are UPI Study's signed partners. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Getting Started with Qualitative Research

What are the main types of qualitative research?
Five widely used qualitative approaches are case study, ethnography, historical research, grounded theory, and phenomenology. A case study learns from an in-depth study of one particular instance. Ethnography examines how members of a culture understand and live their daily lives. Historical research uses preserved records to illuminate past events, processes, and meanings. Grounded theory builds a theoretical account from systematic analysis of qualitative data. Phenomenology describes the essential structure of an experience as those who live it perceive it.
What are the trustworthiness criteria in qualitative research?
Trustworthiness is the qualitative counterpart to reliability and validity, commonly judged through Lincoln and Guba's credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability, often with reflexivity added. Credibility is supported by member checking, where participants review interpretations. Transferability is supported by thick description. Dependability and confirmability are supported by audit trails documenting analytic decisions. Reflexivity means examining and reporting the researcher's own role and position.
How many participants does a qualitative study need?
There is no fixed number; qualitative studies usually sample until saturation, the point where new data produce no new categories or insights. Samples are purposive and small by design, because the goal is depth of understanding rather than statistical representativeness. A twenty-person interview study is not underpowered in the statistical sense, since statistical power is not its purpose. Researchers should explain what their participants were chosen to reveal.
What is the difference between realist and constructivist views in research?
Realism holds that the social world has properties that exist independently of researchers and can, in principle, be measured, a stance often adopted in quantitative research. Constructivism holds that social reality is built through interpretation, language, and shared meaning, so it must be understood from the perspectives of the people constructing it, a stance common in qualitative research. Both are positions on ontology, the nature of reality.

About the Research Methods in Psychology course

How many college credits is Research Methods in Psychology?
Research Methods in Psychology (Psychology 111) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
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