Qualitative research is a kind of research where a researcher from any discipline can inquire about various subject matters. The major goal of qualitative research is to obtain an in-depth understanding of the subject upon which a researcher is working.
Qualitative research in the field of psychology can be used to gain in-depth understanding about certain human behaviors. Qualitative research also helps in understanding the reasons of certain human behaviors and the prevalence of these behaviors. In order to understand certain human behaviors, qualitative research can be conducted by in-depth focus group study, contextual interviews, individual interviews, etc.
Qualitative research is very popular in social sciences like psychology. The reason that qualitative research is very popular is that qualitative research helps in answering many questions—and this is something that quantitative research cannot do. For example, in order to implement certain policies, qualitative research is very useful.
Qualitative research in the field of medicine/nursing can be used in cases where there is a decision making problem due to insufficient information, or due to contradictory information. Consensus methods in medical and health services research are termed as qualitative research. There are basically two types of consensus methods or qualitative research. In this case, they are Delphi Process and the Nominal Group Technique.
Delphi Process in qualitative research is the process that collects and filters knowledge using questionnaires (made by experts), in order to obtain an appropriate and controlled feedback. Qualitative research by controlled feedback means that the feedback obtained is not contradicted.
Nominal Group Technique in qualitative research is the structured variation of small group discussion methods. This method in qualitative research generally involves ideas and views of a group of people, rather than that of an individual. This method in qualitative research generally encourages participation of more passive group members. The basic advantage of this group in qualitative research is that it encourages equal participation of all the group members.
Qualitative research is used extensively in the field of business, especially in market research. Whenever a new company plans to launch a new product, then it performs the pre-launch qualitative research, or a survey based upon the kind of attributes a customer would expect from the product. After launching the product, the company performs post-launch qualitative research, or a survey about the views of the consumers about the new product.
Researchers argue that the qualitative research mentioned above is quite artificial. Thus, more advanced kinds of techniques have been introduced—techniques that are other than qualitative research.
Suppose a company is launching new software and wants to know the market scenario for the product. In this case, the qualitative research involves telephone interviews of people, which in-turn requires the preparation of a questionnaire. The questionnaire involves questions such as the company’s turnover rate, the company’s budget on IT products, etc. Although, the qualitative research involves questions that are very sensitive (like the company’s turnover rate), the response received will depend greatly on the researcher, and how he/she frames the question.
There are various aspects of Qualitative research. The role of group moderators who perform qualitative research is to establish a comfort level with the focus group of participants. The role of facilitators while performing qualitative research is to make the discussion easier for the focus group participants. The role of planners while performing qualitative research is to provide ideas and templates that frame a discussion with focus group participants. The qualitative research consultants are expert professionals on focus groups, individual depth interviews, ethnography, observational research, usability research, idea generation, etc.
The main idea behind the usage and the theory involved in qualitative research is to improve various disciplines of human sciences.
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