Qualitative Research

A500.6.3.RB Qualitative Research

Qualitative Research is broadly defined as “research that produces findings not arrived at by means of statistical procedures or other means of quantification” (Strauss and Corbin, 1990, p.17)

Qualitative Research can produce intriguing study results when considering complex fields of study like leadership.   Qualitative research combined with quantitative research can also produce in-depth studies.  The use of qualitative research provides the researcher with additional flexibilities that quantitative research prohibits. 

There have been several documented reasons why qualitative research methods provides the leadership field  advantages over quantitative methods, they are  1) more opportunities to explore leadership phenomena in significant depth (Bryman, 1984), 2) the flexibility to discern and detect unexpected phenomena during the research (Lundberg, 1976) and 3) an ability to investigate processes more  effectively (Conger 1998)

Hoepfl (1997) synthesizes the basic elements of the qualitative research methods below:

1. Qualitative research uses the natural setting as the source of data.
2. The researcher acts as the "human instrument" of data collection.
3. Qualitative researchers predominantly use inductive data analysis.
4. Qualitative research reports are descriptive, incorporating expressive language
5. Qualitative research has an interpretive character, aimed at discovering the meaning events have for the individuals who experience them, and the interpretations of those meanings by the researcher.
6. Qualitative researchers pay attention to the idiosyncratic as well as the pervasive, seeking the uniqueness of each case.
7. Qualitative research has an emergent (as opposed to a predetermined) design, and researchers focus on this emerging process as well as the outcomes or product of the research.
8. Qualitative research is judged using special criteria for trustworthiness

Some of the core elements of qualitative research include participant observation, direct observation and interviewing. There are a number of qualitative research approaches that include ethnographies, phenomology, grounded theory and action research.  The qualitative research must be reliable, valid and an analysis must be completed.

Historically, qualitative research has not been the preferred research method.  However, recent studies have shown that the use of explore the complex field of leadership and has offered the research a vast amount of flexibility to explore the unexpected.   The challenge in qualitative research is to continue to prove to the academic community that use of this type of research can and will produce the desire results that will expand the field of leadership.

References:

Bryman, A.M, (1984).The debate about quantitative and qualitative research:  A question of method or epistemology?, British Journal of Sociology, 35, 75-92

Conger, J.A., (1998). Qualitative research as the cornerstone methodology for understanding leadership, Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 9 (1), pp 107-121

Hoepfl, M. (1997). Choosing qualitative research: a primer for technology education researchers. In M. Sanders (Ed.), Journal of Technology Education, 9(1). Retrieved from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v9n1/hoepfl.html

 

Lundberg, C.C. (1976) Hypothesis creation in organizational behavior research. Academy of Management Review, 1, 5-12

 

Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990), Basics of qualitative research:  Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Education Researcher, 24(3), 31-32