Qualitative Research in Applied Linguistics pp 3–24 Cite as
An Introduction to Qualitative Research
- Robert A. Croker 3
5666 Accesses
24 Citations
Qualitative research — when you first heard the term, your initial thought might have been, ‘What do qualitative researchers actually do?’ It may come as a surprise to you that you are already familiar with many of their activities, and you actually do them yourself — every day — as you watch and listen to what happens around you, and ask questions about what you have seen and heard.
- Qualitative Research
- Data Collection Method
- Sage Publication
- Critical Theory
- Verbal Report
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution .
Buying options
- Available as PDF
- Read on any device
- Instant download
- Own it forever
- Compact, lightweight edition
- Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
- Free shipping worldwide - see info
- Durable hardcover edition
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Alvsesson, M., & Skoldberg, K. (2000). Reflexive methodology: New vistas for qualitative research . London: Sage Publications.
Google Scholar
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (2008). Basics of qualitative research (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Creswell, J. W. (2009). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). Introduction: The discipline and practice of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Dey, I. (1993). Qualitative data analysis: A user-friendly guide for social scientists . London: Routledge.
Book Google Scholar
Glaser, B. (1992). Basics of grounded theory analysis . Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press.
Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory . Chicago: Aldine.
Jones, D. M. (2002). Setting the stage: A look at the concepts of insider and outsider . Unpublished manuscript, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Lazaraton, A. (2003). Evaluative criteria for qualitative research in applied linguistics: Whose criteria and whose research? The Modern Language Journal , 1–12.
Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. B. (2006). Designing qualitative research (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Merriam, S. B. (2002). Introduction to qualitative research. In S. B. Merriam & Associates (Eds.), Qualitative research in practice: Examples for discussion and analysis . San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Merriam, S. B., & Associates (2002). Qualitative research in practice: Examples for discussion and analysis. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Peshkin, A. (1988). In search of subjectivity — one’s own. Educational Researcher , 17(7), 17–22.
Richards, K. (2003). Qualitative inquiry in TESOL . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Richards, L., & Morse, J. M. (2007). Readme first for a user’s guide to qualitative methods (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Richardson, L. (2000). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed.) (pp. 923–948). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Rossman, G. B., & Rallis, S. F. (2003). Learning in the field: An introduction to qualitative research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Schwandt, T. A. (2007). The Sage dictionary of qualitative inquiry (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research . Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications
Download references
Author information
Authors and affiliations.
Nanzan University, Nagoya, Japan
Robert A. Croker ( Associate Professor in the Faculty of Policy Studies )
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar
Editor information
Editors and affiliations.
Sugiyama Jogakuen University, Japan
Juanita Heigham
Nanzan University, Japan
Robert A. Croker
Copyright information
© 2009 Robert A. Croker
About this chapter
Cite this chapter.
Croker, R.A. (2009). An Introduction to Qualitative Research. In: Heigham, J., Croker, R.A. (eds) Qualitative Research in Applied Linguistics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230239517_1
Download citation
DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230239517_1
Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN : 978-0-230-21953-3
Online ISBN : 978-0-230-23951-7
eBook Packages : Palgrave Language & Linguistics Collection Education (R0)
Share this chapter
Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:
Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.
Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative
- Publish with us
Policies and ethics
- Find a journal
- Track your research
Have a language expert improve your writing
Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.
- Knowledge Base
Methodology
- What Is Qualitative Research? | Methods & Examples
What Is Qualitative Research? | Methods & Examples
Published on June 19, 2020 by Pritha Bhandari . Revised on June 22, 2023.
Qualitative research involves collecting and analyzing non-numerical data (e.g., text, video, or audio) to understand concepts, opinions, or experiences. It can be used to gather in-depth insights into a problem or generate new ideas for research.
Qualitative research is the opposite of quantitative research , which involves collecting and analyzing numerical data for statistical analysis.
Qualitative research is commonly used in the humanities and social sciences, in subjects such as anthropology, sociology, education, health sciences, history, etc.
- How does social media shape body image in teenagers?
- How do children and adults interpret healthy eating in the UK?
- What factors influence employee retention in a large organization?
- How is anxiety experienced around the world?
- How can teachers integrate social issues into science curriculums?
Table of contents
Approaches to qualitative research, qualitative research methods, qualitative data analysis, advantages of qualitative research, disadvantages of qualitative research, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about qualitative research.
Qualitative research is used to understand how people experience the world. While there are many approaches to qualitative research, they tend to be flexible and focus on retaining rich meaning when interpreting data.
Common approaches include grounded theory, ethnography , action research , phenomenological research, and narrative research. They share some similarities, but emphasize different aims and perspectives.
Note that qualitative research is at risk for certain research biases including the Hawthorne effect , observer bias , recall bias , and social desirability bias . While not always totally avoidable, awareness of potential biases as you collect and analyze your data can prevent them from impacting your work too much.
Here's why students love Scribbr's proofreading services
Discover proofreading & editing
Each of the research approaches involve using one or more data collection methods . These are some of the most common qualitative methods:
- Observations: recording what you have seen, heard, or encountered in detailed field notes.
- Interviews: personally asking people questions in one-on-one conversations.
- Focus groups: asking questions and generating discussion among a group of people.
- Surveys : distributing questionnaires with open-ended questions.
- Secondary research: collecting existing data in the form of texts, images, audio or video recordings, etc.
- You take field notes with observations and reflect on your own experiences of the company culture.
- You distribute open-ended surveys to employees across all the company’s offices by email to find out if the culture varies across locations.
- You conduct in-depth interviews with employees in your office to learn about their experiences and perspectives in greater detail.
Qualitative researchers often consider themselves “instruments” in research because all observations, interpretations and analyses are filtered through their own personal lens.
For this reason, when writing up your methodology for qualitative research, it’s important to reflect on your approach and to thoroughly explain the choices you made in collecting and analyzing the data.
Qualitative data can take the form of texts, photos, videos and audio. For example, you might be working with interview transcripts, survey responses, fieldnotes, or recordings from natural settings.
Most types of qualitative data analysis share the same five steps:
- Prepare and organize your data. This may mean transcribing interviews or typing up fieldnotes.
- Review and explore your data. Examine the data for patterns or repeated ideas that emerge.
- Develop a data coding system. Based on your initial ideas, establish a set of codes that you can apply to categorize your data.
- Assign codes to the data. For example, in qualitative survey analysis, this may mean going through each participant’s responses and tagging them with codes in a spreadsheet. As you go through your data, you can create new codes to add to your system if necessary.
- Identify recurring themes. Link codes together into cohesive, overarching themes.
There are several specific approaches to analyzing qualitative data. Although these methods share similar processes, they emphasize different concepts.
Qualitative research often tries to preserve the voice and perspective of participants and can be adjusted as new research questions arise. Qualitative research is good for:
- Flexibility
The data collection and analysis process can be adapted as new ideas or patterns emerge. They are not rigidly decided beforehand.
- Natural settings
Data collection occurs in real-world contexts or in naturalistic ways.
- Meaningful insights
Detailed descriptions of people’s experiences, feelings and perceptions can be used in designing, testing or improving systems or products.
- Generation of new ideas
Open-ended responses mean that researchers can uncover novel problems or opportunities that they wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.
Researchers must consider practical and theoretical limitations in analyzing and interpreting their data. Qualitative research suffers from:
- Unreliability
The real-world setting often makes qualitative research unreliable because of uncontrolled factors that affect the data.
- Subjectivity
Due to the researcher’s primary role in analyzing and interpreting data, qualitative research cannot be replicated . The researcher decides what is important and what is irrelevant in data analysis, so interpretations of the same data can vary greatly.
- Limited generalizability
Small samples are often used to gather detailed data about specific contexts. Despite rigorous analysis procedures, it is difficult to draw generalizable conclusions because the data may be biased and unrepresentative of the wider population .
- Labor-intensive
Although software can be used to manage and record large amounts of text, data analysis often has to be checked or performed manually.
If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.
- Chi square goodness of fit test
- Degrees of freedom
- Null hypothesis
- Discourse analysis
- Control groups
- Mixed methods research
- Non-probability sampling
- Quantitative research
- Inclusion and exclusion criteria
Research bias
- Rosenthal effect
- Implicit bias
- Cognitive bias
- Selection bias
- Negativity bias
- Status quo bias
Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, while qualitative research deals with words and meanings.
Quantitative methods allow you to systematically measure variables and test hypotheses . Qualitative methods allow you to explore concepts and experiences in more detail.
There are five common approaches to qualitative research :
- Grounded theory involves collecting data in order to develop new theories.
- Ethnography involves immersing yourself in a group or organization to understand its culture.
- Narrative research involves interpreting stories to understand how people make sense of their experiences and perceptions.
- Phenomenological research involves investigating phenomena through people’s lived experiences.
- Action research links theory and practice in several cycles to drive innovative changes.
Data collection is the systematic process by which observations or measurements are gathered in research. It is used in many different contexts by academics, governments, businesses, and other organizations.
There are various approaches to qualitative data analysis , but they all share five steps in common:
- Prepare and organize your data.
- Review and explore your data.
- Develop a data coding system.
- Assign codes to the data.
- Identify recurring themes.
The specifics of each step depend on the focus of the analysis. Some common approaches include textual analysis , thematic analysis , and discourse analysis .
Cite this Scribbr article
If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.
Bhandari, P. (2023, June 22). What Is Qualitative Research? | Methods & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved April 1, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/qualitative-research/
Is this article helpful?
Pritha Bhandari
Other students also liked, qualitative vs. quantitative research | differences, examples & methods, how to do thematic analysis | step-by-step guide & examples, unlimited academic ai-proofreading.
✔ Document error-free in 5minutes ✔ Unlimited document corrections ✔ Specialized in correcting academic texts
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
The findings of this research revealed that flexibility, cost-effectiveness, electronic research availability, ease of connection to the Internet, and well-designed class interface were students' positive experiences. The students' negative experiences were caused by delayed feedback from instructors, unavailable technical support from ...
coach was the focus of this study. The purpose of this qualitative research was to gauge the extent of pressures, the social and emotional impact, and the advantages and/or disadvantages individuals felt when they were a student having a parent in a position of authority at their school. The findings from the research study substantiated the
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH PAPER 45 Have great discussions of quantitative research methods and useful checklists. Additionally, language from Merriam's, Qualitative Research, can be helpful. Definition of Key Terms Keep this brief, if extensive a glossary is required, which would belong in the appendices
Qualitative Research Practices and Assumptions. Qualitative Research Practices and Assumptions. Qualitative Research Practices and Assumptions. Further Readings. Further Readings. Further Readings. Chapter 3. A Short Chapter on Epistemology (How Do We Know What We Know?) Chapter 4. Finding a Research Question and Approaches to Qualitative ...
definition offered by Nkwi, Nyamongo, and Ryan (2001, p. 1): "Qualitative research involves any research that uses data that do not indicate ordinal values." For these authors, the defining criterion is the type of data generated and/or used. In short, qualitative research involves collecting and/or working with text, images, or sounds.
In this particular book, we present descriptive-interpretive qualitative research by Robert Elliott and Ladislav Timulak. This generic approach is the culmination of many years of method development and research by these authors, who were pioneers in introducing qualitative research to the psycho-therapy field.
For example, some students were sat isfied with their online courses but still struggled with balancing online courses and work responsibilities. Other students found that enrolling in an ... Qualitative research synthesis is an important tool for higher education researchers for myriad reasons (Major & Savin-Baden, 2010). It can help to manage ...
However, for many research projects, there are different sorts of questions that need answering, some requiring quantitative methods, and some requiring qualitative methods. If the question is a qualitative one, then the most appropriate and rigorous way of answering it is to use qualitative methods. For instance, if you
research (see Chapter 2), you can find out a bit abou t why we each love qualitative research, an d wh at we each bring to it as researchers, in Boxes 1.4 and 1.5. [INSERT BOXES 1.4 & 1.5 ABOUT HERE]
tasked with conducting short-term training in qualitative research methods for applied health research. ... examples to help you understand the ideas and refl ect on their application. The chapters are also interspersed with Boxes, Examples, and Exercises to enhance your learning. Exercises will not only check your understanding
research project took shape long before the events of April 16th unfolded. The data were collected and analyzed and the writing of the results had already commenced when our community fell victim to this violence. While this research project was not originally constructed in reaction to the events that unfolded that windy day, the words and ...
Qualitative Research Robert A. Croker Overview Starting out in qualitative research Qualitative research - when you first heard the term, your initial thought ... For example, during your first semester at university, you might have begun to notice regulari-ties of behavior: some students seemed to know each other already; students
Qualitative research involves collecting and analyzing non-numerical data (e.g., text, video, or audio) to understand concepts, opinions, or experiences. It can be used to gather in-depth insights into a problem or generate new ideas for research. Qualitative research is the opposite of quantitative research, which involves collecting and ...
qualitative research is indeed fragmented with confusing language in regard to its orientation and methodological principles of data collection and analysis. Because there is little consensus ... For example, the experiences of high school dropouts, how beginning readers think about their comprehension, how an at-risk school trans - ...
The book aims at achieving e ects in three domains: (a) the. personal, (b) the scholarly, and (c) the practical. The personal goal. is to demystify qualitative methods, give readers a feel for ...
Table 1. Qualitative research. Quantitative research. tends to focus on how people or groups of people can have (somewhat) different ways of looking at reality (usually social or psychological reality) tends to focus on ways of describing and understanding reality by the discovery of general "laws".
The research in instructional communication has focused on teachers' use of verbal and nonverbal behaviors, and the impact of those behaviors on students in traditional, face-to-face communication; however, there is less research on the ways in which
The qualitative researcher today faces a baffling array of options for con-ducting qualitative research. Numerous inquiry strategies (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005), inquiry traditions (Creswell, 1998), qualitative approaches (Miller & Crabtree, 1992), and design types (Creswell, 2007) are available for selec-tion. What criteria should govern whether ...
digms that can serve as foundations for qualitative research. Qualitative research emerged in the past century as a useful framework for social science research, but its history has not been the story of steady, sustained progress along one path. Denzin and Lincoln (1994, 2005) divide the history of 20th-century qualitative social science ...
American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science. 2015. TLDR. This series provides readers with an introduction to qualitative research methods and the primary characteristics of qualitative research include the focus on understanding peoples' experiences with intent to convey experiences into meaning. Expand.
30 participants [21,22,28-32]. Smallest acceptable sample size of interviews in all qualitative research is elsewhere determined at around fifteen, but not exceeding fifty respondents [32]. The inclusion criteria for participation in the study were: (1) enrollment in a BSc Nursing Studies
also an example of an Anglo-American study that explicitly makes reference to and sets out to implement QCA (Kapustka, Howell, Clayton & Thomas, 2009). During recent years, social justice in teacher education has been of increasing concern in the US. At the same time, research about the actual role of social justice in teacher education
word guidelines to highlight the flexibility of this qualitative analytic method. These guidelines. are (1) familiarizing yourself with your data, (2) generating initial codes, (3) The researcher read. throughout each transcript to immerse in the data, (4) reviewing themes, (5) defining and naming.