Module 9: qualitative research

What is qualitative research?

strategies that collect and analyze non-numerical data

Types of qualitative data

• Primary qualitative data

• Secondary qualitative data

Types of secondary data

company reports

blogs

press releases

When to use qualitative research

• generate insights into less mature topics

• inductive

Types of primary qualitative data

• interviews

• focus groups

• observations

Types of interview

• structured interview

• unstructered interview

• semi-structured interview → favored

Steps in designing semi-structured interview

1. setting the scene→ purpose, recording

2. warm-up questions → easy, non senstive

3. interview → per subtopic, open ended and probing questions (can you explain?)

4. summarize → interpretation

What to do with interview data?

Transcribe it immediately

Focus group

• unstructered interview

• by a moderator

• small group oif participants (8-14)

• free to speak

→ new products/ideas

role of moderator

• everyone participate

• no member dominates

Steps focus group

1. setting the scene → topics, purpose and recording

2. introductions → everyone

3. discussion→ topic guide

4. closing round

Focus group data consist of

• recordings

• notes moderator

• transcripts

Choosing between focus group and interviews

Observational studies

-systematically

-recording behavior

-natural surrounding

Types of observational research

1. complete participant → is part and not revealed purpose

2. complete observer → doesn’t take part and not revealed purpose

3. participant as observer → takes part and reveal purpose

4. observer as participant→ doesn’t take part and reveals purpose

Observational data

• primary observations → notes about what happened

• experiental data → notens on your perceptions of the experience

• contextual data → note setting

Choosing between observations and interviews 

Threats to internal validty qualitative research

• researcher bias → skews process towards specific research outcome → selective perception and interpretation

• respondent bias

2 types of responden tbiases

• authority bias

• conformity bias

How to increase internal validity

• triangulation → analyzing data through different angels (several mod, differen locations)

• peer debriefing → peer debriefing → feedback from someone at a different stage

• member checking

• negative case anlysis → analyzing cases that don’t match the trends

Member checking

• send transcripts for feedback

• mail/verify interpretations

• validation interview

External validity

The qualitative researcher can enhance generalizability by doing a thorough job of describing the research context and the assumptions that were central to the research. The person who wishes to “transfer” the results to a different context is then responsible for judging how sensible the transfer is.