This introductory guide to literature on qualitative research is designed
for investigators who have, in the past, relied on quantitative research
methods but who wish to begin integrating qualitative methods into their
work. We think it will be particularly useful for researchers in the health
and developmental sciences, but should be useful to anyone who desires
to integrate qualitative methods into their research or evaluation work.
Qualitative research generally seeks to reveal categories, concepts, or understanding that are internal to the group or the domain being studied. It does this using methods that are designed to allow research subjects, usually called "respondents" or "informants," to construct for the researcher their own understanding of the issues at hand. There are a number of variations of these methods-interviews, observations, ethnography-and the number has been growing in recent years. They also have been augmented in lately by a plethora of new methods of analysis. Methods for analyzing text are perhaps foremost among them, but also included in this list are methods for analyzing free lists and similarity data that can be used to model the cultural categories people use to understand their world.
The diversity, and the novelty, of many of these methods has made the field of qualitative research seem a bit murky to many of those who have just begun to investigate them. Added to this is the suspicion cast upon qualitative research by the dominant, positivist paradigm. The canon of positivist, quantitative research is well established. Researchers may occasionally develop new quantitative tools, and sometimes they may misuse time-tested methods, but there is a relatively high degree of agreement about what constitutes a good quantitative research design. Equally standardized are the criteria used to judge whether quantitative data has been collected in a reliable way. The canon for qualitative research is less clear. In fact, due to profound philosophical differences among those who use qualitative methods, there may never be agreement on the "standard" or "good" ways of using qualitative research.
Because of these philosophical debates, the very notion of a research design that mixes qualitative and quantitative methods (or of preassigning a set research method at all) is under fire in some camps. Here we set this debate aside. We believe there is a vast amount of room for methodological innovation, including the mixing of qualitative and quantitative methods in the same research effort. And we are not alone. There remain many qualitative investigators who also use quantitative methods. And there are a ever growing number of quantitative researchers who, while comfortable in their current research paradigms, wish to augment them with the strategic use of qualitative methods. This is the audience we hope to reach. We hope this guide will be a good place for them to start. There is currently a renaissance of sorts in the generation and use of qualitative methods in the social sciences, as well as a growing realization of the practical value of combining qualitative and quantitative research. This guide to qualitative and multimethod research literature is a response to that interest.
Such a guide is much needed for the following reasons. First, as already mentioned, the road to do good qualitative research is by no means obvious. There is more disagreement about how to do "good" qualitative research than there is about how to do "good" quantitative research. Second, most quantitative researchers have had little or no experience with qualitative methods. For many, it is by no means clear where one should start when trying to integrate qualitative methods into a research design. Third, there is a plethora of different qualitative tools, ranging from relatively short term interviewing to full-blown ethnography, and from broad, open-ended inquiry to collection of narrow data about specific domains. Furthermore, qualitative data are analyzed by a wide range of poorly understood techniques, from hermeneutic "interpretation" to rigorous computer-aided text analysis, or mathematical modeling of respondents' cognitive or cultural models. We will try to bring some order to this diversity, while tending to focus on the shorter-term and more rigorous qualitative methods that quantitative researchers are mostly likely to find useful.
Fourth, much of the literature about qualitative methods is written by qualitative researchers and for qualitative researchers. To those originally trained in qualitative research (especially anthropologists and sociologists), certain basic aspects of these methods often become second nature. The burgeoning qualitative methodology literature does not necessarily do a good job of present qualitative methods in a step by step way that would help our audience actually begin to implement qualitative research. We hope to guide you toward the literature that would allow you to do that.
Finally, qualitative data collection and analysis is no picnic. It is difficult, and can be daunting to those not accustomed to it. More than one quantitative investigator has attempted to carry out focus groups or case studies, and has been perplexed about how to get good data-even how do decide what is good data. And collecting the data is often the easier part. Many others have gotten that far and then felt very unsure about how to analyze data, judge its validity and reliability, and present it to colleagues. Even among long time qualitative researchers there is a tendency to report on the results of research while leaving to readers' imagination the details of how it was collected and (especially) analyzed.
Learning qualitative research should best be considered a long-term process. It will involve some trial and error, and at times a steep learning curve. But it can also be very rewarding and useful. It is likely that you are reading this precisely because you have experienced, in one form or another, the power of qualitative methods to open up new lines of inquiry, to clarify perplexing problems in understanding statistical associations, or to shed light on the complex humanity of the people who too often are known simply as "subjects" or "respondents." We also hope this guide will be a celebration of the great potential that qualitative research brings to our understanding of ourselves, and the way it can be used strategically as part of a larger research plan to get the most understanding and explanation possible from the research buck. The potential of qualitative research is well worth the challenge of its implementation.
As the developers of this guide, we also faced big challenges. Foremost were decisions about how to focus the guide, and how to organize it. Given the needs of the audience we are addressing, we have decided to address mainly those who need to design and implement a research plan that mixes qualitative methods with traditional quantitative ones. We present this guide in a way that should help quantitative researchers begin to integrate some qualitative methods into their proposals. Many quantitative researchers face the barrier of getting multimethod proposals approved by other scholars who themselves may not be familiar with how to judge the value of qualitative methods within a given research design. Later, once a proposal is finally accepted, there can be difficulties in implementing them (not the least of which are ethical difficulties). And once data is collected, it needs to be analyzed and presented. Quantitative researchers will certainly find their typical ways of analyzing data to be wanting when it comes to qualitative data, and will find that trusty charts and graphs used for presenting quantitative data may be much less useful.
ORGANIZATION
Following this short introduction, part one begins by looking at how far qualitative research has come in the last century. As part of an assessment of the "state of the art," we go on to consider the questions of validity and reliability with which quantitative researchers usually confront new methods. We suggest some qualitative counterparts to those concerns and then try to "reboot" the researcher with a set of more fundamental considerations about research methods that apply to qualitative and quantitative research alike.
Next, as the main body of the document we present a guide to the qualitative literature. This should be useful in several ways. For one thing, proposal writers will want to be able to cite excellent examples of the use of the qualitative methods they themselves are proposing to use. This will help writers be clearer in their presentation of their proposal, and it will help proposal reviewers to better understand the intent of the investigator. Furthermore, in this way we believe we will begin to build the outlines of a sort of "canon" of qualitative research-one that points to the best examples of how different methods are used. Another use of the bibliography will be to help researchers sort through the literature on different aspects of qualitative methodology and to make some initial decisions about what literature to peruse, and what methods to consider.
Because of the different uses such a bibliography will be put to, it will be presented in two different formats. First there will be a "topical" bibliography. Each section of the topical bibliography will give a short description of that topic, followed by a list of useful literature. We list "how to" literature as well as research reports that constitute excellent examples of the use of a particular technique. In this way the reader will be able to quickly identify some good literature on particular topics of interest. Following the topical bibliography is an annotated bibliography where readers can learn more about the literature. All the entries in the topical bibliography are repeated in the annotated bibliography, in alphabetical order.
Finally we also include two "maps" at the end of this document showing the possible pairings of method or technique with particular goals of a study at different points in time, as well as suggestions of useful sources. For example, if the specific purpose is to define the universe of research questions for a particular study, one might consider starting with an ethnography or conducting participant observation.
While we cannot claim that this guide is exhaustive of all qualitative methods, we feel that it is a fairly comprehensive treatment of the major topics. We hope you will find it useful as you begin your journey in combining qualitative and quantitative methods in your research.