The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Qualitative Research Methods

Positivism and interpretivism are two approaches of interpreting social reality, that each employ different methods of research and data collection to better help understand the study of human lived experiences. The positivist-interpretivist debate revolves around the ways in which human behavior should be conceptualized and studied (Pruss 1996: 4). Positivism is the most widely practiced research approach in social science, which regards the nature of social reality independent of consciousness. Positivists believe social reality can be studied independently from the researcher and that social life can be represented using numbers that according to positivists reveal features of social reality. On the other hand, interpretivists favor partipcant observation, interviews and social interaction where the researcher immerses into the informant’s reality to gain knowledge of their everyday human lived experiences.

Positivists utilize the tenets of scientific realism because they feel that the social and psychological world can be evaluated mathematically in the same way that quantitative research explains phenomena in the natural world (p.13).

Tolk (2012) added that the positivist approach is characterized by control, replication and hypothesis testing. These two methods were used to identify the opinions provided by interviewees.

“The major goal of objectivists is aligned with that of the natural scientists – they identify causal explanations and fundamental laws that explain regularities in human social behavior” (Holden & Lynch, 2004). “Logical positivism uses quantitative and experimental methods to test hypothetical deductive generalizations” (Karami, Rowley, & Analoui, 2006). Social “science is characterized by empirical research; all phenomena can be reduced to empirical indicators which represent the truth” (Sale et al., 2002). “positivistic research assumes… social reality is a complex of causal relations between objects and causes of human behavior which are external to the individual” (Schulenberg, 2007). Einstein discovered the laws of the universe. The attempt by objectivists to discover the laws human social interactions logically follows.

Research paradigms are ‘the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by members of a given community’ (Kuhn, 1970, p.175). The three most common paradigms are positivism, constructivism or interpretivism and pragmatism. Each of these can be categorised further by examining their: ontology, epistemology and methodology. Fundamentally, ontology is the nature of reality, epistemology describes the relationship the investigator has with their version of reality, and methodology is the various techniques and tools used to analysis their research.

The social science paradigm also known as Post positivism consists of testing hypothesis and research questions that are developed through reasoning. This is done through measurements and observation. Social scientists aspire to science and they seek to study human behaviour, interaction and thought in an organized way; which we can then measure, generalize and replicate. Like any research, post-positivism needs to be backed up by evidence. When a social science research sets out a research project, it is their goal to find evidence that can either agree or disagree with the hypothesis or theories. Post positivism, compared to positivism allows more interaction with the participants of the research project and seeks to highlight the relationship between universal properties between the variables. The best way to understand post positivism is by comparing it to positivism and the interpretive paradigm. Compared to positivism, post positivism is more tolerant for value-based information, however is not focused on qualitative information like the interpretive paradigm, instead the research is mainly focused on quantitative data.

2.1. Approaches to science 2.1.1. Ontology 2.1.1.1. Objectivism 2.1.1.2. Constructivism 2.1.2. Epismotology 2.1.2.1. Positivism 2.1.2.2. Hermeneutics 2.2. Methodology 2.2.1. Types of research 2.2.2. Types of data 2.2.2.1. Quantitative data 2.2.2.2. Qualitative data 2.2.2.3. Primary and secondary data 2.5 Reliability and

Data were gathered from a self-designed survey, semi-structured bi-weekly interviews for 14 weeks, relevant document collection, and field notes. Each interview took around sixty minutes. The survey was used to understand respondents’ general education background and select suitable participants for the further qualitative data collection. Interviews asked their English and academic learning situations in Taiwan, the processes of studying in graduate programs, present doctoral learning situations, in and out of class academic (writing) activities, academic (writing) challenges they encountered during their academic acculturation, and their perceptions of own academic acculturation. Documents comprised academic information related to

In this proposed study, the researcher will use a mixed methods approach (Jack, Norman & Helen, 2012). Jack, Norman & Helen define a mixed method as a procedure for both quantitative and qualitative data at some stage of the research process, to understand a research problem more completely (Jack, Norman & Helen, 2012). Jack, Norman & Helen (2012) define qualitative research as “research studies that investigate the quality of relationships, activities, situations, or materials” (p. 426). In a qualitative research, people use more explanatory data, and data are collected in the form of words and description rather than numbers and statistics. A qualitative research is a method of analyzing, and interpreting data by observing what people do and say (Jack, Norman & Helen, 2012). In contrast to qualitative researches, a quantitative research is a formal, objective, systematic process in which numerical data are used to obtain information about the world (Burns & Grove, 2005). Data of the quantitative research is in numerical form such as statistics, and percentages.

The four primary research philosophies include pragmatism, realism, positivism, and interpretivism. An ontology based on positivism assumes that social factors have no impact on the nature and objectives of reality. According to the ontology

The method used in this research is qualitative method in which the data is collected, analyzed, and interpreted by observing what both excellent and experience teachers do and say about the lesson plan and learning objectives in the teaching and learning process. Anderson (2006) has defined qualitative method as the exploration of the interviewers towards the respondents’ ideas on the general questions posted to them in order to identify and define their perceptions, opinions and feelings about the topic or idea being discussed. Besides that, qualitative research involves an interpretive, naturalistic approach to the world. This means that interviewers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or to interpret, phenomena

The beginning of knowledge comes from metaphysics, theological and positivism. And these put much on a critical stance in the discourse of method. Little (2011), explains that method is a prescriptive body of doctrines to guide inquiry. The ideal of understanding social world underlies in whether to embrace and use principles and guiding procedures of the natural world where positivism dominates in the epistemological consideration. This method has a considerable influence onto social scientist, in promoting the status of survey research and the quantitative analysis (Atkinson and Hammersley, 2007).

As a research method, this study applies qualitative research which denotes to studying things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of or interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. It means that the research involves the studied usage and collection of a range of empirical materials which portray routine and problematic moments and meaning in individual’s lives (Denzin and Lincoln, 2011: 3-4). Therefore, the role of fieldwork through a long-term interaction with relevant respondents is very beneficial in the qualitative research in order to earn multiple perspectives (Glesne and Peshkin, 1992: 6). This method is the only way of establishing the validity of findings from field research. It can provide a deeper understanding regarding social phenomena than would be obtained from purely quantitative data (Silverman, 2001: 32).

The idea of positivism depends on the presence of an outer social world, which is the reason to use the objective method to test the properties more than subjective induction utilizing instinct, reflection or sensation (Bhattacharya, 2009). Positivism involves the selection of natural logical philosophical techniques (Cheswell, 2003). Positivists notice the social reality, which causes speculations like the law that has been found by physical researchers (Jonker and Pennink, 2010). The hypothesis can be removed and tested utilizing this approach, prompting an exhaustive examination of the law (Bhattacharya, 2009).

Since the twentieth century, there has been a debate about which research paradigm is the most optimal and enables valid and rigorous way to collect data and study social phenomena (Kervin, 2015). A paradigm is defined as the mind-set of a researcher relating to their beliefs around acceptable ways to research, including the questions, the methodology and ways of interpretation (Kervin, 2015). One paradigm, positivism, aims to conduct research in a scientific manner, valuing statistics, replicability and wide generalisations and utilises quantitative methodology to answer questions relating to quantity e.g. ‘how many?’ (Szyjka, 2012; Wahyuni, 2012; Taylor & Medina, 2013). Researchers utilising this paradigm believe in an ‘objective