QUALITATIVE

RESEARCH DESIGN

BY: TINSAE ABEYA

 Basic Qualitative Research Characteristics
 Design is generally based on a social constructivists
 Research problems become research questions based
on prior research or experience.
 Flexible design and methodology
 Data collection involves interview, observation,
and/or
 Interpretation is based on a combination of
researcher perspective and data collected.
 Cont…
• A research design refers to a plan and structure of the
investigation that is used to obtain evidence in order to answer
the research question/s
McMillan and Schumacher 1997
• Research design guides “the arrangement of condition for
collection and analysis of data in a manner that aims to
combine relevance to the research purpose with economy in
procedure”.
Terre Blanche and Durrheim ,
1999
• Research design is simply a bridge between research
questions and the implementation of the research
 Cont…
Qualitative research designs:
• Less structured than
• Has no a discrete stage
• Flexible “emergent design”
• Cannot be concluded in the early life of the study -evolve
during evolvement of the research, builds over time
• Constant review of decisions and approaches
• Qualitative researchers use these research designs to answer
their research question in the most relevant and economical
way
 Research design?
 What is going on (descriptive research)?
 Why is it going on (explanatory/Exploratory research)?
 Are we going to test the theory?
 Are we going to develop a hypothesis?
 Cont…
• The function of a research design is to ensure that the evidence

obtained enables us to answer the initial question as

unambiguously as possible.
• Research design deals with a logical problem and not a

logistical problem.
 Research design Vs methods
 Research design is different from the method by which
data are collected.
 Many research methods texts confuse research designs
with methods.
 It is not uncommon to see research design treated as a mode of
data collection rather than as a logical structure of the inquiry.
Design and Methods
 Qualitative Research design
1. Grounded Theory

2. Phenomenology

3. Ethnography

4. Case study

5. Narrative/story telling
 Grounded Theory
• While narrative research focuses on individual stories told by

participants and phenomenology emphasizes the common

experiences for a number of individuals, the intent of a
grounded theory study is to move beyond description and to
generate or discover a theory, a “unified theoretical
explanation” (Corbin & Strauss, 2007).
 Cont…
 Developed for health-related topics by Glaser and Strauss
(1967)
 A methodology for:
 Collecting data, conducting interviews
 Coding the interviews, writing memos
 Developing theories/models from the codes and memos
 Grounded theory is not a theory, but rather a methodology for
developing theories
 How GT generates theory
• Theory generation in GT is inductive

• Start with individual interviews, cases, examples,

observations and synthesize them to develop models or
categories to understand them and explain patterns
…..relationships of variables
Generating knowledge
 Constant comparative analysis
 Constant comparative analysis: simultaneous
collection and analysis of qualitative
data(Transcriptions).
 In this process, data are transcribed and examined
for content immediately following data collection.
 Ideas which emerge from the analysis are included in
data collection when the researcher next enters the
field.
 Steps in GT
1. Broader Topic + delay of the literature review
2. Theoretical sampling
3. Simultaneous data collection and analysis
4. Codes and categories derived from data, not from pre-
existing theories, models, hypotheses
5. Development of middle-range theories
6. Progressive memo making to fill out categories and
developing theories
7. Description of the final theory emerging from the study
8. Literature review to relate the theory to other studies
in the literature
 Theoretical Sampling?
 Theoretical sampling is the process of data collection whereby
the researcher simultaneously collects, codes and analyses the
data in order to decide what data to collect next.
 Deciding where to sample next according to the emerging
codes and categories is theoretical sampling.
 E.g.….Indigenous food and feeding practice of pregnant
mothers in X woreda of North Shoa Zone.
 Phenomenology
 It comes from the Greek “phainomenon”, appearance
 Phenomenon refers to an occurrence or experience, logical
refers to a path toward understanding…..
 So, we have a occurrence and a path (let’s go with an
individual’s experience),
 What is phenomenology?
 Historically originated from the protest of Positivism research
paradigm
 Phenomenology literally means the study of phenomena
 A qualitative study design which assesses the phenomena as
we live not as we perceive.
 Type of Phenomenology
 Edmund Husserl(descriptive) and Martin Heidegger
(interpretive).
 Descriptive phenomenology/epistemology is
used when the researcher wants to describe the
phenomenon under study and brackets their biases
(What do we know as persons?)
 Cont…
 Interpretive phenomenology/ontological view is used when
the research question asks for the meaning of the phenomenon
and the researcher does not bracket their biases and prior
engagement with the question under study. (accepted knowing
as what it means to be )
 Six research activities in phenomenology
1. Turning to a phenomenon which seriously interests us
and commits us to the world;
2. Investigating experience as we live it rather than as
we conceptualize it;
3. Reflecting on the essential themes which characterize
the phenomenon;
4. Describing the phenomenon through the art of writing and
rewriting;
5. Maintaining a strong and oriented pedagogical relation to
the phenomenon;
6. Balancing the research context by considering parts and
whole
 Typical topics for qualitative studies incorporating
phenomenology
 Personal (patient) experiences of:
 Chronic disease and treatment of chronic disease (dialysis)
 Mental illness, depression, suicide
 Disability
 Dying
 Childbirth, breastfeeding, motherhood
 Drug addiction, detoxification
 Healthworker experiences of caring for people with
chronic diseases, etc.
Phenomenology as a methodology
 Data collection methods
 Phenomenology defined more by philosophical principles
than by methods.
 Any method possible if it helps to better
document/understand experience
 Primarily unstructured in-depth interviews
 Recently audiotapes, photography, video being incorporated
 Cont…
 Analysis
 Generally very similar to GT
 Sometimes authors state they used GT approach to
analysis
 BUT: Doesn’t go as far toward model development,
could be viewed as “truncated GT”
 Ethnography
• Roots in cultural anthropology, and one of the oldest qualitative
research methods, originating in nineteenth century
Involves fieldwork conducted by a single
investigator who 'lives with and lives like' those who are
studied, usually for a year or more.
 Written description of a particular culture the customs, beliefs,
and behavior based on information collected through
fieldwork.
 Ethnography is a holistic approach to study cultural system
 Cont…
• The work of describing culture using a process of learning
about people by learning from them (Spradley, 1979, Roper &
Shapira, 2000).
• Ethnography study cultural system through;
• Emic perspective
• understanding the study host from their own meaning
• Can be only achieved by being in the host community
and through daily life of the host community
• Etic perspective
• Researcher view, professional view
 Methods that may be involved in
ethnographic fieldwork
1. Key informant interviews
2. Participant observation
3. Documentation of material culture e.g. how do
people make pottery, houses etc.
4. Census and anthropometry assessment ,
5. Learning new language including
developing dictionary, describing grammar
6. Review of historical documents e.g. colonial history,
past development projects etc.
 The steps of ethnographic research
1. Identification of the culture to be studied- Surma…
2. Identifying significant variables within the culture---wedding
3. Literature review
4. Gaining entrance
5. Cultural immersion
6. Acquiring informants
7. Gathering data
8. Analysis of data
9. Description of the culture
10. Theory development
 Case Study
 A case study is characterized by in-depth study of a bounded
system
 Heavily contextualized
 detailed analysis of a single object or phenomena such as a
person, a community, a system, an organization, a course or a
group.
 The case may be a program, event, people or an activity bounded
in time and place.
 The aim is to gain an in-depth and holistic understanding of a
case and the interaction between the phenomenon and the case.
 several sources of data, such as documents, observations,
interviews are used to get a deep understanding of the case.
 Cases can be:
 A life history or part of a life
 An illness episode
 A pregnancy
 A particular event as experienced by many people
 The experience of an organization or program
 Many other possibilities
Sources of information for case studies
•Combination of qualitative and quantitative methods:
◦ Direct Observations
◦ Participant Observations
◦ Interviews
◦ Documentation
◦ Archival records
•Case studies can be entirely quantitative
 Elements of a case study
 The problem
 The context- (set of fact surround the case”)
 The issues….(main inquired to be answer?)
 Chronological presentation
 The “lessons learned”
 Narrative/story telling
• In narrative research, researchers describe the lives of
individuals, collect and tell stories about people’s lives, and
write narratives of individual experiences.
• Narrative typically focuses on studying a single person,
gathering data through the collection of stories, reporting
individual experiences, and discussing the meaning of those
experiences for the individual.
 Key Characteristics of Narrative Designs
• Focuses on individual experiences
• Reports a chronology of the experiences
• use a time sequence of events
• chronology sets narrative apart
• Collects the individual stories told to the researcher or
gathered through field texts
• autobiographies
• interviews
• journals
 Key Characteristics of Narrative Designs
• Restores the individual stories
• Researcher gathers stories and analyzes them for elements of the
story
• Researcher rewrites the story to place it in a chronological
sequence
• Restoring provides a causal link among ideas
• Information would include interaction, continuity, and situation
a temporal,
• Chronological sequence including the past, present and future.