Qualitative research relies on collecting and analyzing data to get a better understanding with a person’s belief, experiences, opinions, behaviors, and/or interactions. The research can be used to collect data when investigating a problem or to develop new ideas for research.
Visuals help the viewer to understand large amounts of data more efficiently, which will have a stronger impact with retaining the information. Another benefit with visual communication is being able to convey an idea regardless of cultural, geographical, or language barriers.
A phenomenological study investigates a phenomenon or lived experiences for several participants. The focus of this research is to find a common ground with the participants and reduce the individual experiences to a universal structure.
The two main models for phenomenological studies are hermeneutical and transcendental. Hermeneutical is interpretive while transcendental is descriptive. Hermeneutical research focuses on lived experiences and interpreting life. Transcendental focuses on a description of the participant’s experience.
A narrative study can have several structures that use diverse analytic applications. The types of narrative studies can be a biographical study, auto-ethnography, life history, and oral history. Narrative can be a phenomenon being studied or the method in a study.
The researcher examines stories from one or two people. They are relayed to be able to understand the view of the contributor and how or why they see it in a certain view. Data can be collected through interviews, observation, documents, and photographs.
A grounded theory study moves beyond an already depicted approach to generate or discover a new theory. The researcher collects a copious amount of data on a topic to help develop a system inductively. The inductive approach has three steps: observation, observe the pattern, and develop a theory.
Grounded theory has four main steps involved in the research. The first step is finding an approach collected from interviews or from observation. Second step is organizing the data into groups that relate to a theme. During step three, the groups begin to develop data for the researcher to compare with other theories. The last step is assembling the research together for a concept map or writing a hypothesis.
Case study research involves examining a topic with real life experiences, contemporary context background, or multiple cases during a period. The research can collect lots of data on a topic, which can be an event, a person, place, or anything. Case studies can be explanatory, exploratory, and descriptive.
An example for case study research would be determining a suitable approach for examining the research problem. Next would be to identify the case. After identifying, the next step is data collection for the case that can be obtained through documents, observation, interviews, and archival records. Once the researcher collects the data, it will be analyzed as a whole or a single aspect. The final phase is reporting the data as an instrumental or intrinsic case.
An ethnography study is when the researcher throws themselves in a selected group to be able to understand the culture. The study usually has 20 or so participants. The researcher is interested in examining similar patterns, beliefs, behaviors, and a shared language in a culture-sharing group. With a culture-shared group, the study can be longer to look for working patterns.
Ethnography studies have many types of theory like auto ethnography, feminist ethnography, ethnographic novels, and life history. Realist ethnography is normally written in a third-person view. Critical ethnography advocates for the emancipation of groups marginalized in society.
Source:
Creswell, J. W. (2018). 4: Five Qualitative Approaches to Inquiry; 5: Five Different Qualitative Studies.
In Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches (Third, pp. 69–128).
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