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Importance Of Qualitative Research

Decent Essays

1. Session: Introduction to Qualitative Research in Psychology
Qualitative research not only refers to the techniques used to collect and analyse certain data but also to a field of research in itself. The different philosophical positions have in turn informed the varied approaches to qualitative research.

As an exploratory type of research, it seeks to gather the in-depth understanding of the behaviour of a sample group. The personal opinion, values and experiences of them. It affords the opportunity to observe the participants behaviour as well as allowing the researcher to delve into the participants beliefs and really probe to obtain a greater detailed understanding of the issue.

Qualitative research techniques are flexible and normally conducted in naturalistic settings using semi structured data collection methods as this accommodates the deviation to obtain that greater depth of answer. There are different types of analysis used for example, Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, grounded theory, narrative, thematic and pattern based discourse analysis.

Unlike quantitative research that use numbers as data and statistics, qualitative methods rely on words and meaning. It seeks to understand the problem rather than quantifying it placing more emphasis on subjectivity rather than objectivity.

Qualitative methods tend to use smaller sample sizes due to the personal form of research putting the persons perspective at the centre of the work. The results are

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