of qualitative methods, nor is it to lay down a practical guide for conducting qualitative research.
Readers interested in broader coverage of qualitative research may refer to books such asThe Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research(Denzin and Lincoln, 2005a) andThe Landscape of Qualitative Research: Theories and Issues(Denzin and Lincoln, 2003b; see also McNabb, 2002; Ritchie and Lewis, 2003). Readers interested in more in-depth explanations and how-to guides may look to books such asThe Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry(Denzin and Lincoln, 2003a) orQualitative Inquiry and Research Design(Creswell, 2006; see also Marshall and Rossman, 1995; Miles and Huberman, 1984, 1994), or to volumes addressing specific qualitative research methods or techniques (e.g., Glasser and Strauss, 1967; Rubin and Rubin, 2005; Strauss and Corbin, 1990). There are also some volumes that try to combine the encyclopedic coverage with examples and illustrations of each research technique (Somekh and Lewin, 2005).
10.2 WHAT IS QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
bounded by old theories but guided by what the researcher observes. This is very different from the quantitative approach that stresses hypothesis testing based on theoretical deduction. Many qualitative researchers view the positivist approaches as an ivory-tower type enterprise that aims more at proving existing dogmas than solving actual problems or introducing new theories.
Qualitative research is sometimes seen as research based on in-kind rather than in-degrees differ- ences (Caporoso, 1995). Thus, qualitative variation (differences across categories such as types of government) is not a variation of magnitude as is quantitative variation (differences across the quantities of the same variable, such as income). It is a loose assortment of complex and interconnected concepts, terms, and assumptions that crosscut disciplines, fields, and subject matters and assume different meanings in different historical contexts (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005b). For the purposes of this chapter, the term suggests any combination of the following: ethnography; participant observation; ethnology;
textual, hermeneutic, semiotic, and narrative analysis; analysis through symbolic interactionism;
ethnomethodology; psychoanalysis; feminist inquiry; phenomenology; phenomenography; decon- struction; action research and participatory action research; and case studies.
Perhaps the most important facet of qualitative research is the researcher himself or herself. As Lincoln and Guba (1985) argue, human beings possess unique qualities as instruments of research— they have the capacity to respond to a wide range of hints, to make often unpredictable mental associations and references, to see phenomena from a holistic perspective while detecting atypical features, to process data on the spot, and to test out new knowledge immediately. Many qualitative researchers speak of the importance of what Glasser (1978) labeled as ‘‘theoretical sensitivity,’’
which is defined by Strauss and Corbin (1990) as‘‘the attribute of having insight, the ability to give meaning to data, the capacity to understand, and capability to separate the pertinent from that which isn’t’’ (p. 42). Theoretical sensitivity can stem from mastery of the literature as well as from professional and personal experience.
Qualitative research often implies multiple methodologies. The diversity of methodologies is often called bricolage, and the researcher a bricoleur—a‘‘Jack of all trades or a kind of professional do-it-yourself person’’ (Levi–Strauss, 1966, p. 17). This often implies triangulation—the act of bringing more than one data source or more than one perspective to bear on a single point.
Admittedly, triangulation is not only for qualitative researchers. It has been increasingly used in quantitative studies as well. Nevertheless, triangulation seems to be particularly important for qualitative researchers who attempt to understand multiple meanings and realities.
Based on this, many researchers distinguish between research techniques (tools) and methods (strategies of inquiry). In this view, research method is qualitative if its intent and focus is on interpretation and understanding rather than explanation and prediction. Understanding is seen as more contextual and specific, whereas explaining is seen more like laying down law-like patterns of phenomena under investigation that will apply in the future and similar situations as well.
In essence, this line of reasoning is an argument for defining qualitative research as a paradigm of research with certain assumptions about ontology (reality), epistemology (knowledge), and meth- odology (tools). Such an argumentation rejects the definition of qualitative research as addiction to methods (that many would dismiss as‘‘soft’’science) and tries to picture qualitative research as an expression of nonpositivist scientific paradigm. This brings us to examination of competing paradigms of scientific inquiry.
10.2.2 UNDERLYINGPARADIGMS OFQUALITATIVEINQUIRY
Despite some opposing arguments (Miles and Huberman, 1984, 1994), qualitative research is seen by many as antipositivistic inquiry geared toward understanding rather than explaining. This perception relates to researchers’ assumptions about appropriate ontology and epistemology, which are often used to differentiate research paradigms. As Guba and Lincoln (2005) define, a paradigm is a set of basic beliefs (or metaphysics) that deals with ultimates orfirst principles. It represents a worldview that defines, for its holder, the nature of the world, the individual’s place in
it, and the range of possible relationships to that world and its parts. Guba and Lincoln (1994) compare four alternative inquiry paradigms (Table 10.1).
The positivistic perspective assumes that, given similar structures and incentives, people behave similarly; that there is a clear separation between the researcher and the research participants because the researcher does not influence the participants’behavior; that the researcher can observe the participants’behavior; that by having a control group or controlling for individual characteristics the researcher can correctly test the hypothesis concerning the benefits of a program; and that the application of the researchfindings to the society at large will solve the problem the program is addressing.
The postpositivistic perspective, as Guba and Lincoln (1994) use the term, requires similar designs as from the positivistic perspective. The only difference, perhaps, would be that the former has greater tolerance for error—thefindings would be probable, rather than established and verified laws; they would be considered true until falsified. Qualitative research may be employed to augment what is essentially a positivistic design. For example, some (or all) aspects of participant behavior that cannot be quantified easily will be given to independent experts who, based on unstructured interviews, will grade them according to certain scales, which will later be statistically analyzed. Here the process of interpretation is explicitly incorporated into the research design.
The critical perspective attacks the premise that there is no link between the researcher and the participants. Because the participants know they are participating, their behaviors are affected and become less authentic (the Hawthorne effect). Therefore, the critical perspective is not value-free, but explicit about the values and actively advocating an emancipatory empowerment ethic. Critical qualitative researchers do not aim to assess whether certain incentives influence behaviors, but to understand what causes the behavior—to determine the existing structures that shape undesirable behaviors and to correct the structures. The correction or change can be achieved through a dialogue between the investigator and the participants, which educates and emancipates the participants and transforms unjust structures. For example, the positivistic approach studies the impact of welfare benefits on teen pregnancy by manipulating welfare benefits (e.g., changing benefits, duration, and eligibility) and then observing the behavioral differences. The critical approach, however, requires the researcher to work with teenage girls to understand and transform their awareness of their potential and their prospects as well as improving the conditions that induce undesirable behavior (e.g., poverty and education). This emancipatory action stimulus is part of the criteria by which the qualitative research is evaluated. Consequently, critical research may be better used with a local focus rather than global ambitions.
The constructivist approach asserts that there are multiple realities that are constructed by actors in each particular environment. For example, in examining success in higher education, a constructivist may argue that one cannot compare the experiences (and thus their understanding of the world and their logic of action) of minority students in an urban state university and students from prep schools and Ivy League colleges. Education, grades, and a host of other variables may have different meanings for both groups of students. As a result, although a positivist researcher may ask whether the characteristics of a professor (age, gender, number of publications, tenure, the ability to entertain, etc.) have an impact on the grades achieved by students, a constructivist does not assume any variable beforehand but expects the answers will emerge during the investigation through hermeneutic or dialectical interaction between and among the investigator and respondents.
This four-paradigm classification above is neither exhaustive norfinal. Although positivism is fairly accurately represented, the definitions of other schools of thought are still a subject of controversy. Even positivism is not an obvious creed to which many researchers subscribe. For example, Huberman and Miles (1994)—perhaps the best-known ‘‘positivistic’’ qualitative researchers—see themselves as realists or transcendental realists, rather than positivists. The consensus is even less with other schools of thought.
TABLE10.1 BasicBeliefs(Metaphysics)ofAlternativeInquiryParadigms ItemPositivismPostpositivismCriticalTheoryetal.Constructivism(Naturalism) OntologyNaiverealism—realityisreal andapprehendableCriticalrealism—realityisreal,but onlyimperfectlyandprobabilistically apprehendable;itshouldbe approximatedasmuchaspossible, butcannotbefullycaptured Historicalrealism—realityconsistsof crystallization(reified)structures(thatare realforallpracticalpurposes)thatover timewereshapedbysocial,political, cultural,economicandethnic,andgender factors
Relativism—therearemultiplerealitiesthatare constructed,experiential,local,specific,and dependentfortheirformandcontentonthe individualsorgroupsholdingtheconstructions EpistemologyDualist(clearseparation betweentheknowingsubject andexaminedobjectofthe studywithnoinfluencein eitherdirection)and objectivist;findingsaretrue
Modifieddualist(clearseparation betweentheknowingsubjectand examinedobjectofthestudywithno influenceineitherdirection)and objectivist;criticaltradition;findings probablytrue Transactional=subjectivist(interactivelink andmutualinfluencebetweenthe investigatorandtheinvestigatedobject); findingsarevalue-mediated
Transactional=subjective(interactivelinkand mutualinfluencebetweentheinvestigatorand theinvestigatedobject);findingsareliterally createdastheinvestigationproceeds MethodologyExperimental=manipulative; (propositionsarestatedin formofhypothesesandare subjecttoempiricalorlogical verification;confounding conditionsarecontrolled); methodsemployedarechiefly quantitative
Modifiedexperimental=manipulative; criticalmultiplism(hypothesesarenot verifiedbuttestedagainstpossible falsification);discoveryis reintroducedasanelementininquiry; thereisadrivetoincludequalitative methodsanddoresearchinmore naturesettings Dialogic=dialectical;thedialogbetweenthe investigatorandthesubjectsoftheinquiry mustbedialecticaltotransformignorance andmisapprehensions(acceptingunjust statusquoasimmutable)intomore informedconsciousness(seeingand showinghowthestructurescanbe changed)
Hermeneutic=dialectical;socialconstructions canbeelicitedandrefinedonlythrough interactionbetweenandamonginvestigatorand respondents;constructionsareinterpreted throughhermeneutictechniques,withanaimof creatingmoreinformedandmoresophisticated newconsensus InquiryaimExplanation;predictionand controlExplanation;predictionandcontrolCritiqueandtransformation;restitutionand emancipationUnderstandingandreconstruction Natureof knowledge
Verifiedhypothesesestablished asfactsorlaws Nonfalsifiedhypothesesthatare probablyfactsorlaws
Structural=historicalinsightsIndividualreconstructioncoalescingaround consensus QualitycriteriaInternalvalidity(isomorphism offindingswithreality); externalvalidity (generalizability);reliability (stabilityandreplicability); objectivity(doesnotdepend onobserver)
Internalvalidity;externalvalidity; reliability;objectivity Historicalsituatedness;erosionof ignoranceandmisapprehensions;action stimulus
Trustworthiness(credibility,transferability, dependability,andconfirmability)and authenticity(fairness,enrichment,education, stimulationtoactionandempowerment) Source:AdaptedfromGuba,E.S.andLincoln,Y.S.,inHandbookofQualitativeResearch,N.K.DenzinandY.S.Lincoln(eds.),Sage,ThousandOaks,California,1994,105–117.Reprinted bypermissionofSagePublications.
Nevertheless, more people would agree that qualitative research has increasingly become more interpretive and geared more toward understanding than explaining, with more frequent contestation and fragmentation of the research programs and methodologies (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005a, Atkinson, 2005, Best, 2004), and diverging cultural traditions (Flick, 2005). In social sciences, by the mid 1970s, with more and more serious defeats of positivism and its various offshoots, there was an increasing popularity of new trends (e.g., phenomenology, hermeneutics, semiotics, poststruc- turalism), and given the ability of qualitative methods to work with much richer and more holistic data which positivism failed to explain, qualitative methodologists began to be more explicit in their interpretivist leanings. Since the mid-1980s, postmodernism has deconstructed and questioned nearly every major assumption inherent in research (gender bias, ethnic bias, colonialist bias, political bias, historical bias, etc.). Particularly, the skeptical school of postmodernism sees no truth but the demise of the subject, the death of the author, and the play of words and meanings (Rosenau, 1992). It questions the ability of qualitative researchers to capture lived experience and to accurately represent such an experience. Some even argue that qualitative research may have gone to another extreme by reflecting every major contradiction of postmodernism, which could under- mine the very enterprise of scientific inquiry (Atkinson, 2005).
Overall, it is clear that qualitative research methods are increasingly more interpretivist, relativist, and constructivist. Indeed, the term ‘‘qualitative research’’ increasingly means attitude and substantive focus rather than specific, nonquantitative techniques. Still, one cannot claim in the field of qualitative research methods that postmodernism or constructivism reigns.
For example, Miles and Huberman’s (1984, 1994)‘‘realist’’sourcebook of qualitative methods is very popular. Huberman and Miles (1994) give the best rationale, which we are aware of, for
‘‘cohabitation’’of realist and constructivist approaches to qualitative research, and identification of qualitative research as afield not determined by epistemology. They argue that‘‘there do appear . . . to be some procedural commonalities, in the sequential process of analyzing, concluding, and con- firming findings in a field study format. . . . [T]he researcher shifts between cycles of inductive data collection and analysis to deductive cycles of testing and verification’’(Huberman and Miles, 1994, p. 438).