The answer is yes.
Qualitative research attempts to explain individual’s behaviour in a holistic way using a range of methods and techniques in order to produce rich and in depth results. It is concerned with richness of description and expresses an interest in individual experiences, opinions, stories and in depth insights. Qualitative research can be just as important as quantitative research, just without the confusing statistics and numbers to make it more complicated. Qualitative research uses techniques such as interviews, observations and focus groups and from this, uses transcription and coding in order to interpret the data. Although transcription and coding is a long process to grasp, at the end of it, rich descriptions of data and results are produced, therefore expressing in depth opinions, experiences and stories from individuals, getting a more realistic approach than if quantitative research methods were used. Qualitative data and quantitative research are striving towards the same goal to investigate a research question but use different techniques and methods to achieve it.
Qualitative research has become particularly useful in different parts of society. In particular focus groups, as not only are group interviews used as a quick and convenient way to collect data from several people, focus groups also use group interaction as an important part of the method. This means that group members interact with one another, sharing experiences and discussing the topic while the researcher takes this information whilst sometimes participating. This is particularly useful when wanting to explore individuals’ knowledge and experiences and not only what individuals think about a certain topic but why and how they do. An example of focus groups being an important way to collect rich data is from http://www.bmj.com/content/311/7000/299.short suggesting that ‘Focus groups were originally used within communication studies to explore the effects of films and television programmes, and are a popular method for assessing health education messages and examining public understandings of illness and of health behaviours. They are widely used to examine people’s experiences of disease and of health services, and are an effective technique for exploring the attitudes and needs of staff’.
In this area, qualitative research is very important as focus groups and the process involved can help individuals to explore and clarify their views with other individuals in ways which would be less easily accessed in a one on one interview. This discussion is particularly appropriate when the researcher has a series of open ended questions and hopes that these questions will encourage the individuals to elaborate on these issues in order to gather as much information on the topic as possible.
Although quantitative research is used more than qualitative research, it is often hard to produce the rich data which is produced from qualitative research as it does not use the methods which strive to gather that richer data. However, although qualitative research is important in the area of psychology, it can sometimes not gather the same information and results collected by quantitative research and are sometimes difficult to analyse and interpret as easily as quantitative research. Sometimes statistics in research are needed in order to gather the information needed for a research question but however, this does not stop qualitative research being important.
In conclusion, I think that qualitative research is just as important as quantitative research as they both strive to investigate a research question but they just use different methods and techniques in order to achieve it.
psuc9d 
Hello Ray,
I thought you had a great structure to your argument and presented some good points persuading us that qualitative research is just as important. There are some aspects of qualitative research, however, that lead people to lose the importance of them. Psychologists value the scientific methods used to gain their knowlegde and understanding on new phenomenon so therefore if a research method is not perceived to be as scientific as another (quantitative), it may not been seen as being important. This follows on to the debate of whether qualitative research is as scientific as quantitative.In Miles and Huberman’s book (1994) Qualitative Data Analysis, Fred Kerlinger states that “There’s no such thing as qualitative data. Everything is either 1 or 0.” They argue that because qualitative research does not need a hypothesis to begin research, it removes it from the category of ‘scientific’. This, however is only one argument in the debate, but is one to consider nevertheless.
hope i wasnt too harsh ray ray,
Happy Blogging 🙂
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Hellooo
Good blog 🙂
I like that you’ve tried to stick up for the qualitative method as it is seen quite negatively by many
Perhaps to strengthen your argument you could have included a bit more information about the disadvantages of quantitative data such as the researcher needing to know exactly what the want to measure prior to the study and that they conduct the research with preconceived ideas which may influence the results decreasing the validity of the findings. Plus the researcher may only have a vague idea of what they want to research and therefore the broadness of the qualitative method would allow them to narrow down their ideas. Also it would actually be more beneficial if researchers didn’t just pick one approach and used the two methods together 🙂
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Hi, Great blog. There is something though that I disagree with in the first paragraph. You stated that, “Qualitative data and quantitative research are striving towards the same goal to investigate a research question but use different techniques and methods to achieve it”. However a researcher may begin research without a research question, this is often the case when a researcher decides to use qualitative data. Qualitative data uses inductive reasoning, which begins with specific observations, formulates a hypothesis that we can explore, and finally end up developing a theory. Quantitative data on the other hand has a research question to start of with. Quantitative research uses deductive reasoning, the opposite to inductive (and often seen as a more scientific approach to research), this starts of with general ideas, narrows down and becomes more specific and collects data to support it.
You could also add, that a reason why people may not believe qualitative data to be as important as quantitative is that it is easier to compare quantitative data and test the reliability of the research. It is easy to conduct say a questionnaire again and see whether the results gain the same numerical score. With qualitative data, it isn’t that easy. Qualitative data uses methods such as transcribing which give detailed answers and the answers are somewhat subject to the researchers opinion. For example, different researchers may pick different themes when transcribing the data and interpret the data differently.
You have added in the second to last paragraph that quantitative data is used more than qualitative data. Is it though? I would say that different disciplines, may use one form of research method more than the other. For example, social sciences tend to use qualitative methods (for example sociology may look at how religion affects society by conducting interviews), whereas medical areas tend to use quantitative research (for example, they test drugs and use critical values such as 0.01 to see whether drugs are beneficial.
Finally, your conclusion could be a bit longer. For example you could say. When looking at whether qualitative research methods are as important as quantitative research methods, the points that have been put across in this blog, seem to suggest that they are. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods have both advantages and disadvantages. Whereas quantitative data may be easily compared to other research, it doesn’t tell us why what has occurred has happened. This is where qualitative data has its advantage as it tells us why say the a research has found what they have, however due to qualitative research’s detail and subjectivity it makes it harder to compare to other research in the same area. You could finish by adding that researcher’s often overcome the hurdle of which research method is most important and best to use by using both methods (mixed methodology), so the advantages and disadvantages from both balance out.
I look forward to reading your next blog !
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Hi, 🙂
I think you’ve taken a nice angle on the topic…though I think it’s already been said.. Nice one for sticking up for qual! Because it seems to get an awful lot of stick, when infact it’s rather useful. Quantitative data is; as you’ve suggested rather useful in terms of data analysis, much simpler. Computer + data = output. ( I wish I could use spss with such ease) but in the real world with researchers who actually know what they’re doing with stats software it’s a really useful research method and tool.
“the defects of its qualities, however, and the defect of quantificationis that it does not always support…the understanding of complex,dynamic,and multi-dimensional wholes” (Paton1975).
Click to access hsresearch00022-0025.pdf
This paper has suggested that more and more health policy researchers are using qualitative methods and finding that infact they don’t just serve as a descriptor, but Also move us to more meaningful explanations of areas we are still uncertain of.
A good read,thanks 🙂
Hello, really good blog. I agreed with all of your points; I think qualitative data is just as important as quantitative research. The only problem I have with qualitative methods is how subjective it could potentially be (http://www.okstate.edu/ag/agedcm4h/academic/aged5980a/5980/newpage21.htm). I found that while we were analysing some of the data for ourselves in our seminar groups, someone would say that one quote meant one thing while I thought it meant something very different. Obviously I would definitely not consider myself to be very good at data analysis and that professionals are probably more trained and much less likely to make errors… but we are all human. Maybe as my exposure to qualitative data increases I will become more confident in it!! Look forward to reading your future blogs. Happy Holidays!
Qualitative research has given light to some of the most interesting phenomena in Psychology through the method of case studies. Case studies focus on rare and interesting aspects of a particular population and offer a highly indepth, longitudinal insight. Often qualitative data can be criticised for not being generalisable to the wider population because often the sample size is so small bit i disagree. I feel that some qualitative research can be generalised to the wider population, for example, the famous case of Little Albert offered insight as to how phobias can occur which could be generalised to others; similarly, the case of Little Albert. Quantitative data, arguably, is not generalisable because it is conducted under such strict conditions which would never be found in the real world.
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Both have there advantages and disadvantages when conducting research. Quantitative has its advantages of stating the research problem in very specific and set terms and clearly specifying both the independent and the dependent variables under investigation. But, it has its weaknesses; its inability to control the environment where the subjects provide the answers to the questions and its inability to encourage the evolving and continuous investigation of a research phenomenon. Qualitative has its advantages of Obtaining a more realistic feel of the world and ability to interact with the research subjects in their own language and on their own terms, the weaknesses is its inability to investigate causality between different research phenomena and difficulty in explaining the difference in the quality and quantity of information obtained from different respondents and arriving at conclusions.
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