Limitations Of Qualitative Research Studies

Qualitative research is a method of inquiry employed in many different academic disciplines, including in the social sciences and natural sciences, but also in non-academic contexts including market research, business, and service demonstrations by non-profits.[1]

Contents [hide]

1

Introduction

2

History

3

Data collection, analysis and field research design

4

Specialized uses of qualitative research

5

Data analysis

5.1

Interpretive techniques

5.1.1

Coding

5.2

Recursive abstraction

5.3

Coding and "thinking"

6

Distinct qualitative paradigms

7

Trustworthiness

8

Qualitative research journals

9

Qualitative research in psychology

10

See also

11

References

12

Further reading

13

External links

13.1

Videos

Introduction[edit]

Qualitative research

Becker.[10] As Robert Bogdan and Sari Biklen describe in their education text, "historians of qualitative research have never, for instance, included Freud or Piaget as developers of the qualitative approach, yet both relied on case studies, observations and indepth interviewing".[11]

In the early 1900s, some researchers rejected positivism, the theoretical idea that there is an objective world which we can gather data from and "verify" this data through empiricism. These researchers embraced a qualitative research paradigm, attempting to make qualitative research as "rigorous" as quantitative research and creating myriad methods for qualitative research. Of course, such developments were necessary as qualitative researchers won national center awards, in collaboration with their research colleagues at other universities and departments; and university administrations funded Ph.D.s in both arenas through the ensuing decades. Most theoretical constructs involve a process of qualitative analysis and understanding, and construction of these concepts (e.g., Wolfensberger's social role valorization

In the late 1980s, questions of identity emerged, including issues of race, class, gender, and discourse communities, leading to research and writing becoming more reflexive. Throughout the 1990s, the concept of a passive observer/researcher was rejected, and qualitative research became more participatory and activist-oriented with support from the federal branches, such as the National Institute on Disability Research and Rehabilitation (NIDRR) of the US Department of Education (e.g., Rehabilitation Research and Training Centers for Family and Community Living, 1990). Also, during this time, researchers began to use mixed-method approaches, indicating a shift in thinking of qualitative and quantitative methods as intrinsically incompatible. However, this history is not apolitical, as this has ushered in a politics of "evidence" (e.g., evidence-based practices in health and human services) and what can count as "scientific" research in scholarship, a current, ongoing debate in the