Introduction
This article is all about qualitative data collection and uses in qualitative research. One of the things about qualitative data in qualitative research that we often come into as a bit of an issue is that we put a lot of time and effort into planning in qualitative research whether it’s focus groups or in-depth interviews or ethnographies or online qual. There are so many different options these days but we have a tendency to put a lot of thought and effort into planning and recruiting and collecting the data as it were in qualitative research. Unfortunately, often cases are seen where not as much time has been spent on how we’re going to plan the written report because in qualitative research projects do end with some sort of written report. It might be a short-form report or a long-form report.
Seven reasons why writing research in qualitative is difficult
Seven reasons why writing qualitative reports in qualitative research is hard especially when we’re trying to write great reports. So there are some issues here that are familiar.
- Qualitative data in qualitative research is very complex so not only are we trying to report unstructured data, the majority of qualitative data in qualitative research but we’ve got complex data. Very often qualitative data these days can include text audio images or video again depending on what the methodology is. So it can be complex.
- Qualitative data in qualitative research is very messy. There’s a lot of messiness, the raw data that we collect from qualitative research methods is often in multiple formats and different file types. So just bringing together all of this data so that one can get arms around.
- It can be really difficult also with qualitative data in qualitative research. We have to deal with inconsistencies. Not every person answers the same question. Not every person interprets every question the same way. Even in observational methods if we’re doing ethnographic research or other observational methods there are also inconsistencies. Just by how different people behave in different situations we may be observing them in online qualitative techniques in qualitative research. We also have challenges because people comply with instructions differently.
- Another reason why reporting qualitative data in qualitative research is so hard is the sheer volume. Whether you’re doing focus groups or interviews or ethnographies or online techniques, the sheer volume of data that you’re collecting is overwhelming. When people do Survey Research it’s a lot easier. So when doing Survey Research automatically creating charts and graphs help one to visualize and explore data not true with qualitative.
- Another issue with qualitative reporting in qualitative research is that it is context-sensitive. When we are writing up our qualitative research reports we have to put a lot of thought and effort into understanding the context. The times that the research was being conducted, the places where their seasonality issues were there. Another context creates an important lens by which we should be interpreting the data from either the overall quality or phases of the study.
- Researcher bias is also an issue. Good qualitative researchers know that we have to be very vigilant about not imposing our own biases into the research. Unfortunately, this can happen because a lot of people who do report in qualitative research, for example, have graduate degrees and they have specific cultural backgrounds. Just the fact that they have a certain educational background can create bias in their observations and as well in the writing of the results. So we have to be careful to keep our own cultural experiences and personal experiences out of it. Does that mean that we don’t use our knowledge to help interpret the data? No, not at all. We just have to make sure we’re doing it objectively,
- Finally the seventh reason why qualitative reporting in qualitative research is so hard is that we know we’re dealing with imperfect and incomplete data. So we have to be vigilant about this because we know when we are either interviewing people or talking to groups or observing people there can be a lot of things going on with the participants. Most specifically there’s often a big disconnect between what people say and what people tell versus what they think or do or feel. And that doesn’t mean that it’s bad data, it just means one has to be vigilant about understanding when one is being told something that is not the full story because again one knows one is going to have imperfect or incomplete data. So there are methods that we use as either moderators or interviewers to try to mitigate that risk but we have to understand when we’re getting ready to write that report that we have to be vigilant about how we’re interpreting the data. Because we may need to point out to our readers that while people are sharing a particular point of view or self-reporting a specific attitude, we know that there are situations where that may not be the whole story. So it’s just important to have a caveat in our reporting.
When you start thinking about different options for writing in qualitative research reports a lot of it is going to come down to your analysis. You know how one is going to analyze and synthesize this unstructured unwieldy data to get the most important value out of it. And you will hear different qualitative researchers use different approaches. You’ll hear about comparative analysis that’s the simplest form of analysis. For example, if you are doing focus group research in say three cities Boston, Chicago, and Dallas. Simply when you do that comparison of the results by the city that would be a simple form of comparative analysis. So that’s very common and then you’ll hear other qualitative researchers in qualitative research refer to framework analysis or grounded theory which ultimately have to do with different ways of extracting value from the data using different types of coding approaches. Some researchers like to do visual exploration.
Visual exploration in Qualitative research
Visual exploration of quantitative data in qualitative research is something about methods that we use related to using diagrams and frameworks to visually display your qualitative research results in qualitative research. There are other types of analysis that you can get into with more academic researchers or people doing large-scale health-related qualitative studies. For example, you’ll hear of researchers using things like semiotics narrative analysis and then just various forms of techniques to get to counting. Say the themes or words or responses in a large-scale qualitative study in qualitative research. So one of the things is to use diagrams but this is a diagram that we use actually in our class on writing in qualitative research reports and it can be modified for many different purposes. But let’s imagine one is doing some qualitative analysis in qualitative research and one is trying to understand the customer experience with a specific product. One can use a simple diagram to help oneself to categorize the results. So for example one’s focus group results are one’s ethnography results and put them into categories based on customer experience. So taking the example of college students studying we’re trying to understand their experience with studying. So the customer experience if you will is about studying.
Why is it also a customer experience? This could be something where the students are customers of either the college or the students or customers of a textbook or online textbook resources. So they’re college students but they’re also customers and in this case what one wants to do is use a very simple way of categorizing their studying behaviors into where, who, what, when, why, and how. And one can do this both on an individual basis. One can diagram each student in terms of what their behaviors were in these six categories or one could do it by groups of students. For example, one finds that the students who attend four-year colleges generally were pretty consistent and different from people who were attending two-year colleges. Then maybe one does one diagram for one’s four-year respondents and another diagram for one’s two-year respondents or one might do it by geography or one might do it by gender right.
The diagrams used in Qualitative reporting
So one might do multiple diagrams to do some of these comparisons. But in the case of studying where, would be where they studied, for example in this case we found that a lot of our college students again in this small case study project study on their bed. They don’t go to a table and they don’t go to a desk. There in their dorm room, they are on their bed, when they study. Who are they studying with? So there’s some information there about people who study solo versus the types of people who study with others and study groups and with friends. What are they doing while they’re studying, what else is going on well when people study on their bed? It turns out that they have different ways of liking to set up all their study supplies. So what they’re doing to make the studying happen is also really interesting. Of course for when they are studying? What day of the week? What time of day? Are there any patterns there? Why are they studying? Are they studying to get good grades? Are they studying because they are trying to impress a professor? Are they studying because they just want to make sure that they get a good enough grade that they could pass? So what’s the motivation there is? There is something there that one can extract and anything about how they are studying. Are they studying using a book or an online resource? Are they studying by making flashcards? If they’re using flashcards, are they using physical flashcards or are they using electronic flashcards? So again simply categorizing their behaviors into where, who, what, when, why, and how can help one to understand where those recurring themes and patterns are. And categorizing also gives one a meaningful way to do some comparative analysis. Again perhaps by gender or location, college type, or maybe major simply creating a diagram, allows one to create a structured approach to the analysis. This does help one to write one’s research report. If one has some form of structured analysis like this for really synthesizing this unwieldy qualitative data in qualitative research it’s going to help one to make sure that one is doing a very thorough objective unbiased reporting of the qualitative data in qualitative research. Without a structured approach or a thoughtful approach even without a visual approach even if you don’t use a die Grahame but having some sort of structured approach does provide a way of writing a great qualitative report in qualitative research. In contrast, if you have a qualitative researcher who’s writing their report in qualitative research basically by recalling what they saw there’s too much risk that is going to be incomplete and not very thoroughly analyzed. Usually, short qualitative research reports are written based on researchers’ recall and their notes and that’s something that creates a lot of risk in terms of one’s ability to create a great qualitative report in qualitative research.
Conclusion
So clearly there are other steps to rating great qualitative reports in qualitative research. If nothing else, give it a try. Try creating some diagrams and if where, who, what, when, why, and how aren’t the most relevant categories for you. What are the categories? There may be other ways that you can diagram it out. So that you again have that consistent thorough way of interpreting the results of the unstructured data.
About Research Journal Global Research Letters
Research Journal Global Research Letters is not just information provided it is a guide to show you the right direction of research. This particular article of Research Journal Global Research Letters deals with all about qualitative data. There are two major types of data which are qualitative or quantitative. One might get stuck on the qualitative approach of data used in a research. The definition and effectiveness of qualitative data has been effectively described in this article by Research journal Global Research Letters.
There is no doubt that Qualitative reporting is hard. Research journal Global research letters describe 7 major reasons that state Qualitative reporting as difficult. There are also some ways mentioned to overcome this difficulty. Also, the role of visual exploration in Qualitative data and how one can make it easy through using them has been clearly stated by the Research Journal Global Research letter. Visual explorations are not just to add in the qualitative reporting it has to be explained to provide clear results. The graphs, charts and pie charts included in research helps one to present the conclusion or research data in a creative manner. One must know how to use this creative means effectively. For this Research Journal Global Research Letters provide all the information required to carry out a research with Qualitative reporting.