Lecture 4

Question 1

what is qualitative research?

Answer 1

involve the description of phenomena in terms of words/language rather than numbers/statistics

Question 2

how is qualitative theory developed?

Answer 2

through exploration an induction. Not hypothesis testing.

Question 3

what kind of data is collected for qualitative research?

Answer 3

Documents, transcribed interviews, written-down observations

Question 4

when do you do a qualitative study?

Answer 4

• when you know little about the studied phenomena
• When the research question concerns processes, mechanisms, attitudes and social context
• When developing new theory
• When the primary interest is not the magnitude of causal effects

Question 5

case-study design

Answer 5

detailed study of one case. Describing complex and heterogeneous social phenomena.

Question 6

what is the aim of case-study design?

Answer 6

to describe processes and causal mechanisms

Question 7

what is important in qualitative research?

Answer 7

• Seeing through the eyes of the people being studied
• Description and emphasis on context
• Emphasis on process (and mechanisms)
• Flexibility and limited structure (emergent design)
• Concepts and theory grounded in data