Transcript hat is qualitative inquiry Southampton 2012

WHAT IS
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH?
Martyn Hammersley
The Open University
University of Southampton, January 2012
A Definition of ‘Qualitative
Research’
A form of social inquiry that tends:
• To adopt a data-driven and flexible research
design;
• To use relatively unstructured data;
• To emphasise the essential role of subjectivity
in the research process;
• To study a small number of naturally occurring
cases in detail; and/or
• To use verbal rather than statistical forms of
analysis.
The Role of Framing Assumptions:
A Joke
When Willie Sutton was in prison, a priest
who was trying to reform him asked him
why he robbed banks.
‘Well’, Sutton replies, ‘that’s where the
money is’. (Garfinkel 1981:21)
Methods or Paradigms?
Qualitative and Quantitative as:
• Methods appropriate for addressing quite
different general types of question. Or as
methods that need to be combined in order to
answer particular research questions.
• Paradigms based on fundamentally discrepant
sets of philosophical assumptions, with one
being treated as legitimate while the other is
dismissed as ‘unscientific’, ‘positivist’, etc. Or,
each approach is viewed as legitimate in its
own terms.
Problems with Quantitative
Research
• Measurement: Do the assumptions built into the
scale match the structure of the feature being
measured? Does the data collected actually
indicate variation on the scale reliably? (See
Michell 2007; Hammersley 2009 and 2012)
• Does the analytic procedure employed, for
example regression analysis, allow the accurate
detection of the causal process concerned?
(See Abell 1971; Abbott 2001; Ragin 2008)
Diverse Forms of Qualitative Inquiry
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Anthropological ethnography
Virtual ethnography
Visual ethnography
Ethnomethodological conversation analysis
Foucault-inspired discourse analysis
Narrative analysis
Participatory action research
Biographical and autobiographical work
Qualitative interview studies and surveys
Qualitative Comparative Analysis
Sources of Diversity
• A concern with different types of phenomena:
e.g. micro vs macro, perspectives vs practices.
• Studies aimed at diverse products: descriptions,
explanations, theories, evaluations,
photographic or video presentations, poetic,
dramatic, or dance performances.
• Constraints and affordances of the data that
can be collected about a topic.
• Conflicting methodological philosophies about
what is possible and desirable: positivism,
interpretivism, ‘critical’ inquiry, constructionism.
Fundamental Divergencies
The key point is that some of the divisions among
qualitative researchers today are deeper, in
philosophical terms, than that between
qualitative and quantitative research:
• Ontology: causality versus construction.
• Epistemology: the very possibility of expert
social knowledge.
• Politics: should research aim to generate
knowledge, critique society, serve political
action, capture lived experience, produce
art works, or exemplify ethical ideals?
The Predominant Attitude?
• Most researchers, understandably, are
preoccupied with getting on with their own
substantive inquiries, operating within
whatever approach (pure or eclectic) they
have inherited or adopted.
• In some respects this is commendable, but
often it amounts to unreflective practice:
reliance upon a range of questionable
methodological ideas that are insufficiently
understood and largely taken for granted.
Pluralism versus Policing?
• Should diversity be celebrated,
tolerated, or controlled? Paradigm war,
détente, or mixed methods integration?
• Even ‘Let a hundred flowers bloom’
involves some policing, so the key
questions are: Where should the
boundaries be drawn, on what basis,
and how? How can or should different
approaches be combined?
The Tolerable and the Intolerable
Tolerable: Variation in aim between description,
explanation, and theory; variation in views
about adequate strategies to achieve these
goals across different types of phenomena.
Intolerable: Versions of the four methodological
philosophies that either deny the possibility of
social scientific knowledge (whether from a
positivist or a ‘postmodernist’ direction) or
seek to redefine the operational goal of
research away from an exclusive concern with
the production of value-relevant knowledge.
Qualitative versus
Quantitative Revisited
• Even the mixed methods movement tends to
accept the quantitative and qualitative
distinction, and thereby to reify the
approaches on each side.
• What is required, in my view, is to look in a
more detailed way at the various decisions
that researchers make in relation to different
aspects of the research process.
Aspects of the Research Process
• Question formulation and mode of research
design: ‘deductive’ vs ‘inductive’.
• Constitution/selection of cases: experimental,
survey, detailed case study.
• Data collection strategies (see handout).
• Data analysis strategies: process-tracing,
comparative analysis (correlational or
configurational).
• Writing formats: standard, flexible, audiencerelative.
References
Abbott, A. (2001) Time Matters, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Abell, P. (1971) Model Building in Sociology, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Bryman, A. (1988) Quantity and Quality in Social Research, London, Unwin Hyman.
Garfinkel, A. (1981) Forms of Explanation, New Haven CT, Yale University Press
Gomm, R. et al (eds.) (2000) Case Study Method, London, Sage.
Hammersley, M. (1992) ‘Deconstructing the qualitative-quantitative divide’, in Brannen, J. (ed.)
Mixing Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Research, Aldershot, Avebury.
Hammersley, M. (2008) Questioning Qualitative Inquiry, London, Sage.
Hammersley, M. (2009) ‘Is social measurement possible, or desirable?’, in Tucker, E., and Walford,
G. (eds.) The Handbook of Measurement, London, Sage.
Hammersley, M. (2012) ‘What’s wrong with quantitative research?’, in Cooper, B. et al (eds.)
Challenging the Qualitative-Quantitative Divide: Explorations in Case-Focused Causal Analysis,
London, Continuum.
Jansen, Harrie (2010). ‘The Logic of Qualitative Survey Research and its Position in the Field of
Social Research Methods’ [63 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum:
Qualitative Social Research, 11(2), Art. 11, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114fqs1002110.
Michell, J. (2007) ‘Measurement’, in Turner, S. P. and Risjord, M. W. (eds.) Philosophy of
Anthropology and Sociology, Amsterdam, Elsevier.
Ragin, C. (2008) Redesigning Social Inquiry: Fuzzy sets and beyond, Chicago, University of
Chicago Press.
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Martyn Hammersley
What is Qualitative Research?
London, Bloomsbury, 2012