qualitative research methodology format

Chapter 1. Introduction

“Science is in danger, and for that reason it is becoming dangerous” -Pierre Bourdieu, Science of Science and Reflexivity

Why an Open Access Textbook on Qualitative Research Methods?

I have been teaching qualitative research methods to both undergraduates and graduate students for many years.  Although there are some excellent textbooks out there, they are often costly, and none of them, to my mind, properly introduces qualitative research methods to the beginning student (whether undergraduate or graduate student).  In contrast, this open-access textbook is designed as a (free) true introduction to the subject, with helpful, practical pointers on how to conduct research and how to access more advanced instruction.  

Textbooks are typically arranged in one of two ways: (1) by technique (each chapter covers one method used in qualitative research); or (2) by process (chapters advance from research design through publication).  But both of these approaches are necessary for the beginner student.  This textbook will have sections dedicated to the process as well as the techniques of qualitative research.  This is a true “comprehensive” book for the beginning student.  In addition to covering techniques of data collection and data analysis, it provides a road map of how to get started and how to keep going and where to go for advanced instruction.  It covers aspects of research design and research communication as well as methods employed.  Along the way, it includes examples from many different disciplines in the social sciences.

The primary goal has been to create a useful, accessible, engaging textbook for use across many disciplines.  And, let’s face it.  Textbooks can be boring.  I hope readers find this to be a little different.  I have tried to write in a practical and forthright manner, with many lively examples and references to good and intellectually creative qualitative research.  Woven throughout the text are short textual asides (in colored textboxes) by professional (academic) qualitative researchers in various disciplines.  These short accounts by practitioners should help inspire students.  So, let’s begin!

What is Research?

When we use the word research , what exactly do we mean by that?  This is one of those words that everyone thinks they understand, but it is worth beginning this textbook with a short explanation.  We use the term to refer to “empirical research,” which is actually a historically specific approach to understanding the world around us.  Think about how you know things about the world. [1] You might know your mother loves you because she’s told you she does.  Or because that is what “mothers” do by tradition.  Or you might know because you’ve looked for evidence that she does, like taking care of you when you are sick or reading to you in bed or working two jobs so you can have the things you need to do OK in life.  Maybe it seems churlish to look for evidence; you just take it “on faith” that you are loved.

Only one of the above comes close to what we mean by research.  Empirical research is research (investigation) based on evidence.  Conclusions can then be drawn from observable data.  This observable data can also be “tested” or checked.  If the data cannot be tested, that is a good indication that we are not doing research.  Note that we can never “prove” conclusively, through observable data, that our mothers love us.  We might have some “disconfirming evidence” (that time she didn’t show up to your graduation, for example) that could push you to question an original hypothesis , but no amount of “confirming evidence” will ever allow us to say with 100% certainty, “my mother loves me.”  Faith and tradition and authority work differently.  Our knowledge can be 100% certain using each of those alternative methods of knowledge, but our certainty in those cases will not be based on facts or evidence.

For many periods of history, those in power have been nervous about “science” because it uses evidence and facts as the primary source of understanding the world, and facts can be at odds with what power or authority or tradition want you to believe.  That is why I say that scientific empirical research is a historically specific approach to understand the world.  You are in college or university now partly to learn how to engage in this historically specific approach.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe, there was a newfound respect for empirical research, some of which was seriously challenging to the established church.  Using observations and testing them, scientists found that the earth was not at the center of the universe, for example, but rather that it was but one planet of many which circled the sun. [2]   For the next two centuries, the science of astronomy, physics, biology, and chemistry emerged and became disciplines taught in universities.  All used the scientific method of observation and testing to advance knowledge.  Knowledge about people , however, and social institutions, however, was still left to faith, tradition, and authority.  Historians and philosophers and poets wrote about the human condition, but none of them used research to do so. [3]

It was not until the nineteenth century that “social science” really emerged, using the scientific method (empirical observation) to understand people and social institutions.  New fields of sociology, economics, political science, and anthropology emerged.  The first sociologists, people like Auguste Comte and Karl Marx, sought specifically to apply the scientific method of research to understand society, Engels famously claiming that Marx had done for the social world what Darwin did for the natural world, tracings its laws of development.  Today we tend to take for granted the naturalness of science here, but it is actually a pretty recent and radical development.

To return to the question, “does your mother love you?”  Well, this is actually not really how a researcher would frame the question, as it is too specific to your case.  It doesn’t tell us much about the world at large, even if it does tell us something about you and your relationship with your mother.  A social science researcher might ask, “do mothers love their children?”  Or maybe they would be more interested in how this loving relationship might change over time (e.g., “do mothers love their children more now than they did in the 18th century when so many children died before reaching adulthood?”) or perhaps they might be interested in measuring quality of love across cultures or time periods, or even establishing “what love looks like” using the mother/child relationship as a site of exploration.  All of these make good research questions because we can use observable data to answer them.

What is Qualitative Research?

“All we know is how to learn. How to study, how to listen, how to talk, how to tell.  If we don’t tell the world, we don’t know the world.  We’re lost in it, we die.” -Ursula LeGuin, The Telling

At its simplest, qualitative research is research about the social world that does not use numbers in its analyses.  All those who fear statistics can breathe a sigh of relief – there are no mathematical formulae or regression models in this book! But this definition is less about what qualitative research can be and more about what it is not.  To be honest, any simple statement will fail to capture the power and depth of qualitative research.  One way of contrasting qualitative research to quantitative research is to note that the focus of qualitative research is less about explaining and predicting relationships between variables and more about understanding the social world.  To use our mother love example, the question about “what love looks like” is a good question for the qualitative researcher while all questions measuring love or comparing incidences of love (both of which require measurement) are good questions for quantitative researchers. Patton writes,

Qualitative data describe.  They take us, as readers, into the time and place of the observation so that we know what it was like to have been there.  They capture and communicate someone else’s experience of the world in his or her own words.  Qualitative data tell a story. ( Patton 2002:47 )

Qualitative researchers are asking different questions about the world than their quantitative colleagues.  Even when researchers are employed in “mixed methods” research ( both quantitative and qualitative), they are using different methods to address different questions of the study.  I do a lot of research about first-generation and working-college college students.  Where a quantitative researcher might ask, how many first-generation college students graduate from college within four years? Or does first-generation college status predict high student debt loads?  A qualitative researcher might ask, how does the college experience differ for first-generation college students?  What is it like to carry a lot of debt, and how does this impact the ability to complete college on time?  Both sets of questions are important, but they can only be answered using specific tools tailored to those questions.  For the former, you need large numbers to make adequate comparisons.  For the latter, you need to talk to people, find out what they are thinking and feeling, and try to inhabit their shoes for a little while so you can make sense of their experiences and beliefs.

Examples of Qualitative Research

You have probably seen examples of qualitative research before, but you might not have paid particular attention to how they were produced or realized that the accounts you were reading were the result of hours, months, even years of research “in the field.”  A good qualitative researcher will present the product of their hours of work in such a way that it seems natural, even obvious, to the reader.  Because we are trying to convey what it is like answers, qualitative research is often presented as stories – stories about how people live their lives, go to work, raise their children, interact with one another.  In some ways, this can seem like reading particularly insightful novels.  But, unlike novels, there are very specific rules and guidelines that qualitative researchers follow to ensure that the “story” they are telling is accurate , a truthful rendition of what life is like for the people being studied.  Most of this textbook will be spent conveying those rules and guidelines.  Let’s take a look, first, however, at three examples of what the end product looks like.  I have chosen these three examples to showcase very different approaches to qualitative research, and I will return to these five examples throughout the book.  They were all published as whole books (not chapters or articles), and they are worth the long read, if you have the time.  I will also provide some information on how these books came to be and the length of time it takes to get them into book version.  It is important you know about this process, and the rest of this textbook will help explain why it takes so long to conduct good qualitative research!

Example 1 : The End Game (ethnography + interviews)

Corey Abramson is a sociologist who teaches at the University of Arizona.   In 2015 he published The End Game: How Inequality Shapes our Final Years ( 2015 ). This book was based on the research he did for his dissertation at the University of California-Berkeley in 2012.  Actually, the dissertation was completed in 2012 but the work that was produced that took several years.  The dissertation was entitled, “This is How We Live, This is How We Die: Social Stratification, Aging, and Health in Urban America” ( 2012 ).  You can see how the book version, which was written for a more general audience, has a more engaging sound to it, but that the dissertation version, which is what academic faculty read and evaluate, has a more descriptive title.  You can read the title and know that this is a study about aging and health and that the focus is going to be inequality and that the context (place) is going to be “urban America.”  It’s a study about “how” people do something – in this case, how they deal with aging and death.  This is the very first sentence of the dissertation, “From our first breath in the hospital to the day we die, we live in a society characterized by unequal opportunities for maintaining health and taking care of ourselves when ill.  These disparities reflect persistent racial, socio-economic, and gender-based inequalities and contribute to their persistence over time” ( 1 ).  What follows is a truthful account of how that is so.

Cory Abramson spent three years conducting his research in four different urban neighborhoods.  We call the type of research he conducted “comparative ethnographic” because he designed his study to compare groups of seniors as they went about their everyday business.  It’s comparative because he is comparing different groups (based on race, class, gender) and ethnographic because he is studying the culture/way of life of a group. [4]   He had an educated guess, rooted in what previous research had shown and what social theory would suggest, that people’s experiences of aging differ by race, class, and gender.  So, he set up a research design that would allow him to observe differences.  He chose two primarily middle-class (one was racially diverse and the other was predominantly White) and two primarily poor neighborhoods (one was racially diverse and the other was predominantly African American).  He hung out in senior centers and other places seniors congregated, watched them as they took the bus to get prescriptions filled, sat in doctor’s offices with them, and listened to their conversations with each other.  He also conducted more formal conversations, what we call in-depth interviews, with sixty seniors from each of the four neighborhoods.  As with a lot of fieldwork , as he got closer to the people involved, he both expanded and deepened his reach –

By the end of the project, I expanded my pool of general observations to include various settings frequented by seniors: apartment building common rooms, doctors’ offices, emergency rooms, pharmacies, senior centers, bars, parks, corner stores, shopping centers, pool halls, hair salons, coffee shops, and discount stores. Over the course of the three years of fieldwork, I observed hundreds of elders, and developed close relationships with a number of them. ( 2012:10 )

When Abramson rewrote the dissertation for a general audience and published his book in 2015, it got a lot of attention.  It is a beautifully written book and it provided insight into a common human experience that we surprisingly know very little about.  It won the Outstanding Publication Award by the American Sociological Association Section on Aging and the Life Course and was featured in the New York Times .  The book was about aging, and specifically how inequality shapes the aging process, but it was also about much more than that.  It helped show how inequality affects people’s everyday lives.  For example, by observing the difficulties the poor had in setting up appointments and getting to them using public transportation and then being made to wait to see a doctor, sometimes in standing-room-only situations, when they are unwell, and then being treated dismissively by hospital staff, Abramson allowed readers to feel the material reality of being poor in the US.  Comparing these examples with seniors with adequate supplemental insurance who have the resources to hire car services or have others assist them in arranging care when they need it, jolts the reader to understand and appreciate the difference money makes in the lives and circumstances of us all, and in a way that is different than simply reading a statistic (“80% of the poor do not keep regular doctor’s appointments”) does.  Qualitative research can reach into spaces and places that often go unexamined and then reports back to the rest of us what it is like in those spaces and places.

Example 2: Racing for Innocence (Interviews + Content Analysis + Fictional Stories)

Jennifer Pierce is a Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota.  Trained as a sociologist, she has written a number of books about gender, race, and power.  Her very first book, Gender Trials: Emotional Lives in Contemporary Law Firms, published in 1995, is a brilliant look at gender dynamics within two law firms.  Pierce was a participant observer, working as a paralegal, and she observed how female lawyers and female paralegals struggled to obtain parity with their male colleagues.

Fifteen years later, she reexamined the context of the law firm to include an examination of racial dynamics, particularly how elite white men working in these spaces created and maintained a culture that made it difficult for both female attorneys and attorneys of color to thrive. Her book, Racing for Innocence: Whiteness, Gender, and the Backlash Against Affirmative Action , published in 2012, is an interesting and creative blending of interviews with attorneys, content analyses of popular films during this period, and fictional accounts of racial discrimination and sexual harassment.  The law firm she chose to study had come under an affirmative action order and was in the process of implementing equitable policies and programs.  She wanted to understand how recipients of white privilege (the elite white male attorneys) come to deny the role they play in reproducing inequality.  Through interviews with attorneys who were present both before and during the affirmative action order, she creates a historical record of the “bad behavior” that necessitated new policies and procedures, but also, and more importantly , probed the participants ’ understanding of this behavior.  It should come as no surprise that most (but not all) of the white male attorneys saw little need for change, and that almost everyone else had accounts that were different if not sometimes downright harrowing.

I’ve used Pierce’s book in my qualitative research methods courses as an example of an interesting blend of techniques and presentation styles.  My students often have a very difficult time with the fictional accounts she includes.  But they serve an important communicative purpose here.  They are her attempts at presenting “both sides” to an objective reality – something happens (Pierce writes this something so it is very clear what it is), and the two participants to the thing that happened have very different understandings of what this means.  By including these stories, Pierce presents one of her key findings – people remember things differently and these different memories tend to support their own ideological positions.  I wonder what Pierce would have written had she studied the murder of George Floyd or the storming of the US Capitol on January 6 or any number of other historic events whose observers and participants record very different happenings.

This is not to say that qualitative researchers write fictional accounts.  In fact, the use of fiction in our work remains controversial.  When used, it must be clearly identified as a presentation device, as Pierce did.  I include Racing for Innocence here as an example of the multiple uses of methods and techniques and the way that these work together to produce better understandings by us, the readers, of what Pierce studied.  We readers come away with a better grasp of how and why advantaged people understate their own involvement in situations and structures that advantage them.  This is normal human behavior , in other words.  This case may have been about elite white men in law firms, but the general insights here can be transposed to other settings.  Indeed, Pierce argues that more research needs to be done about the role elites play in the reproduction of inequality in the workplace in general.

Example 3: Amplified Advantage (Mixed Methods: Survey Interviews + Focus Groups + Archives)

The final example comes from my own work with college students, particularly the ways in which class background affects the experience of college and outcomes for graduates.  I include it here as an example of mixed methods, and for the use of supplementary archival research.  I’ve done a lot of research over the years on first-generation, low-income, and working-class college students.  I am curious (and skeptical) about the possibility of social mobility today, particularly with the rising cost of college and growing inequality in general.  As one of the few people in my family to go to college, I didn’t grow up with a lot of examples of what college was like or how to make the most of it.  And when I entered graduate school, I realized with dismay that there were very few people like me there.  I worried about becoming too different from my family and friends back home.  And I wasn’t at all sure that I would ever be able to pay back the huge load of debt I was taking on.  And so I wrote my dissertation and first two books about working-class college students.  These books focused on experiences in college and the difficulties of navigating between family and school ( Hurst 2010a, 2012 ).  But even after all that research, I kept coming back to wondering if working-class students who made it through college had an equal chance at finding good jobs and happy lives,

What happens to students after college?  Do working-class students fare as well as their peers?  I knew from my own experience that barriers continued through graduate school and beyond, and that my debtload was higher than that of my peers, constraining some of the choices I made when I graduated.  To answer these questions, I designed a study of students attending small liberal arts colleges, the type of college that tried to equalize the experience of students by requiring all students to live on campus and offering small classes with lots of interaction with faculty.  These private colleges tend to have more money and resources so they can provide financial aid to low-income students.  They also attract some very wealthy students.  Because they enroll students across the class spectrum, I would be able to draw comparisons.  I ended up spending about four years collecting data, both a survey of more than 2000 students (which formed the basis for quantitative analyses) and qualitative data collection (interviews, focus groups, archival research, and participant observation).  This is what we call a “mixed methods” approach because we use both quantitative and qualitative data.  The survey gave me a large enough number of students that I could make comparisons of the how many kind, and to be able to say with some authority that there were in fact significant differences in experience and outcome by class (e.g., wealthier students earned more money and had little debt; working-class students often found jobs that were not in their chosen careers and were very affected by debt, upper-middle-class students were more likely to go to graduate school).  But the survey analyses could not explain why these differences existed.  For that, I needed to talk to people and ask them about their motivations and aspirations.  I needed to understand their perceptions of the world, and it is very hard to do this through a survey.

By interviewing students and recent graduates, I was able to discern particular patterns and pathways through college and beyond.  Specifically, I identified three versions of gameplay.  Upper-middle-class students, whose parents were themselves professionals (academics, lawyers, managers of non-profits), saw college as the first stage of their education and took classes and declared majors that would prepare them for graduate school.  They also spent a lot of time building their resumes, taking advantage of opportunities to help professors with their research, or study abroad.  This helped them gain admission to highly-ranked graduate schools and interesting jobs in the public sector.  In contrast, upper-class students, whose parents were wealthy and more likely to be engaged in business (as CEOs or other high-level directors), prioritized building social capital.  They did this by joining fraternities and sororities and playing club sports.  This helped them when they graduated as they called on friends and parents of friends to find them well-paying jobs.  Finally, low-income, first-generation, and working-class students were often adrift.  They took the classes that were recommended to them but without the knowledge of how to connect them to life beyond college.  They spent time working and studying rather than partying or building their resumes.  All three sets of students thought they were “doing college” the right way, the way that one was supposed to do college.   But these three versions of gameplay led to distinct outcomes that advantaged some students over others.  I titled my work “Amplified Advantage” to highlight this process.

These three examples, Cory Abramson’s The End Game , Jennifer Peirce’s Racing for Innocence, and my own Amplified Advantage, demonstrate the range of approaches and tools available to the qualitative researcher.  They also help explain why qualitative research is so important.  Numbers can tell us some things about the world, but they cannot get at the hearts and minds, motivations and beliefs of the people who make up the social worlds we inhabit.  For that, we need tools that allow us to listen and make sense of what people tell us and show us.  That is what good qualitative research offers us.

How Is This Book Organized?

This textbook is organized as a comprehensive introduction to the use of qualitative research methods.  The first half covers general topics (e.g., approaches to qualitative research, ethics) and research design (necessary steps for building a successful qualitative research study).  The second half reviews various data collection and data analysis techniques.  Of course, building a successful qualitative research study requires some knowledge of data collection and data analysis so the chapters in the first half and the chapters in the second half should be read in conversation with each other.  That said, each chapter can be read on its own for assistance with a particular narrow topic.  In addition to the chapters, a helpful glossary can be found in the back of the book.  Rummage around in the text as needed.

Chapter Descriptions

Chapter 2 provides an overview of the Research Design Process.  How does one begin a study? What is an appropriate research question?  How is the study to be done – with what methods ?  Involving what people and sites?  Although qualitative research studies can and often do change and develop over the course of data collection, it is important to have a good idea of what the aims and goals of your study are at the outset and a good plan of how to achieve those aims and goals.  Chapter 2 provides a road map of the process.

Chapter 3 describes and explains various ways of knowing the (social) world.  What is it possible for us to know about how other people think or why they behave the way they do?  What does it mean to say something is a “fact” or that it is “well-known” and understood?  Qualitative researchers are particularly interested in these questions because of the types of research questions we are interested in answering (the how questions rather than the how many questions of quantitative research).  Qualitative researchers have adopted various epistemological approaches.  Chapter 3 will explore these approaches, highlighting interpretivist approaches that acknowledge the subjective aspect of reality – in other words, reality and knowledge are not objective but rather influenced by (interpreted through) people.

Chapter 4 focuses on the practical matter of developing a research question and finding the right approach to data collection.  In any given study (think of Cory Abramson’s study of aging, for example), there may be years of collected data, thousands of observations , hundreds of pages of notes to read and review and make sense of.  If all you had was a general interest area (“aging”), it would be very difficult, nearly impossible, to make sense of all of that data.  The research question provides a helpful lens to refine and clarify (and simplify) everything you find and collect.  For that reason, it is important to pull out that lens (articulate the research question) before you get started.  In the case of the aging study, Cory Abramson was interested in how inequalities affected understandings and responses to aging.  It is for this reason he designed a study that would allow him to compare different groups of seniors (some middle-class, some poor).  Inevitably, he saw much more in the three years in the field than what made it into his book (or dissertation), but he was able to narrow down the complexity of the social world to provide us with this rich account linked to the original research question.  Developing a good research question is thus crucial to effective design and a successful outcome.  Chapter 4 will provide pointers on how to do this.  Chapter 4 also provides an overview of general approaches taken to doing qualitative research and various “traditions of inquiry.”

Chapter 5 explores sampling .  After you have developed a research question and have a general idea of how you will collect data (Observations?  Interviews?), how do you go about actually finding people and sites to study?  Although there is no “correct number” of people to interview , the sample should follow the research question and research design.  Unlike quantitative research, qualitative research involves nonprobability sampling.  Chapter 5 explains why this is so and what qualities instead make a good sample for qualitative research.

Chapter 6 addresses the importance of reflexivity in qualitative research.  Related to epistemological issues of how we know anything about the social world, qualitative researchers understand that we the researchers can never be truly neutral or outside the study we are conducting.  As observers, we see things that make sense to us and may entirely miss what is either too obvious to note or too different to comprehend.  As interviewers, as much as we would like to ask questions neutrally and remain in the background, interviews are a form of conversation, and the persons we interview are responding to us .  Therefore, it is important to reflect upon our social positions and the knowledges and expectations we bring to our work and to work through any blind spots that we may have.  Chapter 6 provides some examples of reflexivity in practice and exercises for thinking through one’s own biases.

Chapter 7 is a very important chapter and should not be overlooked.  As a practical matter, it should also be read closely with chapters 6 and 8.  Because qualitative researchers deal with people and the social world, it is imperative they develop and adhere to a strong ethical code for conducting research in a way that does not harm.  There are legal requirements and guidelines for doing so (see chapter 8), but these requirements should not be considered synonymous with the ethical code required of us.   Each researcher must constantly interrogate every aspect of their research, from research question to design to sample through analysis and presentation, to ensure that a minimum of harm (ideally, zero harm) is caused.  Because each research project is unique, the standards of care for each study are unique.  Part of being a professional researcher is carrying this code in one’s heart, being constantly attentive to what is required under particular circumstances.  Chapter 7 provides various research scenarios and asks readers to weigh in on the suitability and appropriateness of the research.  If done in a class setting, it will become obvious fairly quickly that there are often no absolutely correct answers, as different people find different aspects of the scenarios of greatest importance.  Minimizing the harm in one area may require possible harm in another.  Being attentive to all the ethical aspects of one’s research and making the best judgments one can, clearly and consciously, is an integral part of being a good researcher.

Chapter 8 , best to be read in conjunction with chapter 7, explains the role and importance of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) .  Under federal guidelines, an IRB is an appropriately constituted group that has been formally designated to review and monitor research involving human subjects .  Every institution that receives funding from the federal government has an IRB.  IRBs have the authority to approve, require modifications to (to secure approval), or disapprove research.  This group review serves an important role in the protection of the rights and welfare of human research subjects.  Chapter 8 reviews the history of IRBs and the work they do but also argues that IRBs’ review of qualitative research is often both over-inclusive and under-inclusive.  Some aspects of qualitative research are not well understood by IRBs, given that they were developed to prevent abuses in biomedical research.  Thus, it is important not to rely on IRBs to identify all the potential ethical issues that emerge in our research (see chapter 7).

Chapter 9 provides help for getting started on formulating a research question based on gaps in the pre-existing literature.  Research is conducted as part of a community, even if particular studies are done by single individuals (or small teams).  What any of us finds and reports back becomes part of a much larger body of knowledge.  Thus, it is important that we look at the larger body of knowledge before we actually start our bit to see how we can best contribute.  When I first began interviewing working-class college students, there was only one other similar study I could find, and it hadn’t been published (it was a dissertation of students from poor backgrounds).  But there had been a lot published by professors who had grown up working class and made it through college despite the odds.  These accounts by “working-class academics” became an important inspiration for my study and helped me frame the questions I asked the students I interviewed.  Chapter 9 will provide some pointers on how to search for relevant literature and how to use this to refine your research question.

Chapter 10 serves as a bridge between the two parts of the textbook, by introducing techniques of data collection.  Qualitative research is often characterized by the form of data collection – for example, an ethnographic study is one that employs primarily observational data collection for the purpose of documenting and presenting a particular culture or ethnos.  Techniques can be effectively combined, depending on the research question and the aims and goals of the study.   Chapter 10 provides a general overview of all the various techniques and how they can be combined.

The second part of the textbook moves into the doing part of qualitative research once the research question has been articulated and the study designed.  Chapters 11 through 17 cover various data collection techniques and approaches.  Chapters 18 and 19 provide a very simple overview of basic data analysis.  Chapter 20 covers communication of the data to various audiences, and in various formats.

Chapter 11 begins our overview of data collection techniques with a focus on interviewing , the true heart of qualitative research.  This technique can serve as the primary and exclusive form of data collection, or it can be used to supplement other forms (observation, archival).  An interview is distinct from a survey, where questions are asked in a specific order and often with a range of predetermined responses available.  Interviews can be conversational and unstructured or, more conventionally, semistructured , where a general set of interview questions “guides” the conversation.  Chapter 11 covers the basics of interviews: how to create interview guides, how many people to interview, where to conduct the interview, what to watch out for (how to prepare against things going wrong), and how to get the most out of your interviews.

Chapter 12 covers an important variant of interviewing, the focus group.  Focus groups are semistructured interviews with a group of people moderated by a facilitator (the researcher or researcher’s assistant).  Focus groups explicitly use group interaction to assist in the data collection.  They are best used to collect data on a specific topic that is non-personal and shared among the group.  For example, asking a group of college students about a common experience such as taking classes by remote delivery during the pandemic year of 2020.  Chapter 12 covers the basics of focus groups: when to use them, how to create interview guides for them, and how to run them effectively.

Chapter 13 moves away from interviewing to the second major form of data collection unique to qualitative researchers – observation .  Qualitative research that employs observation can best be understood as falling on a continuum of “fly on the wall” observation (e.g., observing how strangers interact in a doctor’s waiting room) to “participant” observation, where the researcher is also an active participant of the activity being observed.  For example, an activist in the Black Lives Matter movement might want to study the movement, using her inside position to gain access to observe key meetings and interactions.  Chapter  13 covers the basics of participant observation studies: advantages and disadvantages, gaining access, ethical concerns related to insider/outsider status and entanglement, and recording techniques.

Chapter 14 takes a closer look at “deep ethnography” – immersion in the field of a particularly long duration for the purpose of gaining a deeper understanding and appreciation of a particular culture or social world.  Clifford Geertz called this “deep hanging out.”  Whereas participant observation is often combined with semistructured interview techniques, deep ethnography’s commitment to “living the life” or experiencing the situation as it really is demands more conversational and natural interactions with people.  These interactions and conversations may take place over months or even years.  As can be expected, there are some costs to this technique, as well as some very large rewards when done competently.  Chapter 14 provides some examples of deep ethnographies that will inspire some beginning researchers and intimidate others.

Chapter 15 moves in the opposite direction of deep ethnography, a technique that is the least positivist of all those discussed here, to mixed methods , a set of techniques that is arguably the most positivist .  A mixed methods approach combines both qualitative data collection and quantitative data collection, commonly by combining a survey that is analyzed statistically (e.g., cross-tabs or regression analyses of large number probability samples) with semi-structured interviews.  Although it is somewhat unconventional to discuss mixed methods in textbooks on qualitative research, I think it is important to recognize this often-employed approach here.  There are several advantages and some disadvantages to taking this route.  Chapter 16 will describe those advantages and disadvantages and provide some particular guidance on how to design a mixed methods study for maximum effectiveness.

Chapter 16 covers data collection that does not involve live human subjects at all – archival and historical research (chapter 17 will also cover data that does not involve interacting with human subjects).  Sometimes people are unavailable to us, either because they do not wish to be interviewed or observed (as is the case with many “elites”) or because they are too far away, in both place and time.  Fortunately, humans leave many traces and we can often answer questions we have by examining those traces.  Special collections and archives can be goldmines for social science research.  This chapter will explain how to access these places, for what purposes, and how to begin to make sense of what you find.

Chapter 17 covers another data collection area that does not involve face-to-face interaction with humans: content analysis .  Although content analysis may be understood more properly as a data analysis technique, the term is often used for the entire approach, which will be the case here.  Content analysis involves interpreting meaning from a body of text.  This body of text might be something found in historical records (see chapter 16) or something collected by the researcher, as in the case of comment posts on a popular blog post.  I once used the stories told by student loan debtors on the website studentloanjustice.org as the content I analyzed.  Content analysis is particularly useful when attempting to define and understand prevalent stories or communication about a topic of interest.  In other words, when we are less interested in what particular people (our defined sample) are doing or believing and more interested in what general narratives exist about a particular topic or issue.  This chapter will explore different approaches to content analysis and provide helpful tips on how to collect data, how to turn that data into codes for analysis, and how to go about presenting what is found through analysis.

Where chapter 17 has pushed us towards data analysis, chapters 18 and 19 are all about what to do with the data collected, whether that data be in the form of interview transcripts or fieldnotes from observations.  Chapter 18 introduces the basics of coding , the iterative process of assigning meaning to the data in order to both simplify and identify patterns.  What is a code and how does it work?  What are the different ways of coding data, and when should you use them?  What is a codebook, and why do you need one?  What does the process of data analysis look like?

Chapter 19 goes further into detail on codes and how to use them, particularly the later stages of coding in which our codes are refined, simplified, combined, and organized.  These later rounds of coding are essential to getting the most out of the data we’ve collected.  As students are often overwhelmed with the amount of data (a corpus of interview transcripts typically runs into the hundreds of pages; fieldnotes can easily top that), this chapter will also address time management and provide suggestions for dealing with chaos and reminders that feeling overwhelmed at the analysis stage is part of the process.  By the end of the chapter, you should understand how “findings” are actually found.

The book concludes with a chapter dedicated to the effective presentation of data results.  Chapter 20 covers the many ways that researchers communicate their studies to various audiences (academic, personal, political), what elements must be included in these various publications, and the hallmarks of excellent qualitative research that various audiences will be expecting.  Because qualitative researchers are motivated by understanding and conveying meaning , effective communication is not only an essential skill but a fundamental facet of the entire research project.  Ethnographers must be able to convey a certain sense of verisimilitude , the appearance of true reality.  Those employing interviews must faithfully depict the key meanings of the people they interviewed in a way that rings true to those people, even if the end result surprises them.  And all researchers must strive for clarity in their publications so that various audiences can understand what was found and why it is important.

The book concludes with a short chapter ( chapter 21 ) discussing the value of qualitative research. At the very end of this book, you will find a glossary of terms. I recommend you make frequent use of the glossary and add to each entry as you find examples. Although the entries are meant to be simple and clear, you may also want to paraphrase the definition—make it “make sense” to you, in other words. In addition to the standard reference list (all works cited here), you will find various recommendations for further reading at the end of many chapters. Some of these recommendations will be examples of excellent qualitative research, indicated with an asterisk (*) at the end of the entry. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. A good example of qualitative research can teach you more about conducting research than any textbook can (this one included). I highly recommend you select one to three examples from these lists and read them along with the textbook.

A final note on the choice of examples – you will note that many of the examples used in the text come from research on college students.  This is for two reasons.  First, as most of my research falls in this area, I am most familiar with this literature and have contacts with those who do research here and can call upon them to share their stories with you.  Second, and more importantly, my hope is that this textbook reaches a wide audience of beginning researchers who study widely and deeply across the range of what can be known about the social world (from marine resources management to public policy to nursing to political science to sexuality studies and beyond).  It is sometimes difficult to find examples that speak to all those research interests, however. A focus on college students is something that all readers can understand and, hopefully, appreciate, as we are all now or have been at some point a college student.

Recommended Reading: Other Qualitative Research Textbooks

I’ve included a brief list of some of my favorite qualitative research textbooks and guidebooks if you need more than what you will find in this introductory text.  For each, I’ve also indicated if these are for “beginning” or “advanced” (graduate-level) readers.  Many of these books have several editions that do not significantly vary; the edition recommended is merely the edition I have used in teaching and to whose page numbers any specific references made in the text agree.

Barbour, Rosaline. 2014. Introducing Qualitative Research: A Student’s Guide. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.  A good introduction to qualitative research, with abundant examples (often from the discipline of health care) and clear definitions.  Includes quick summaries at the ends of each chapter.  However, some US students might find the British context distracting and can be a bit advanced in some places.  Beginning .

Bloomberg, Linda Dale, and Marie F. Volpe. 2012. Completing Your Qualitative Dissertation . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.  Specifically designed to guide graduate students through the research process. Advanced .

Creswell, John W., and Cheryl Poth. 2018 Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five Traditions .  4th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.  This is a classic and one of the go-to books I used myself as a graduate student.  One of the best things about this text is its clear presentation of five distinct traditions in qualitative research.  Despite the title, this reasonably sized book is about more than research design, including both data analysis and how to write about qualitative research.  Advanced .

Lareau, Annette. 2021. Listening to People: A Practical Guide to Interviewing, Participant Observation, Data Analysis, and Writing It All Up .  Chicago: University of Chicago Press. A readable and personal account of conducting qualitative research by an eminent sociologist, with a heavy emphasis on the kinds of participant-observation research conducted by the author.  Despite its reader-friendliness, this is really a book targeted to graduate students learning the craft.  Advanced .

Lune, Howard, and Bruce L. Berg. 2018. 9th edition.  Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences.  Pearson . Although a good introduction to qualitative methods, the authors favor symbolic interactionist and dramaturgical approaches, which limits the appeal primarily to sociologists.  Beginning .

Marshall, Catherine, and Gretchen B. Rossman. 2016. 6th edition. Designing Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.  Very readable and accessible guide to research design by two educational scholars.  Although the presentation is sometimes fairly dry, personal vignettes and illustrations enliven the text.  Beginning .

Maxwell, Joseph A. 2013. Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive Approach .  3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. A short and accessible introduction to qualitative research design, particularly helpful for graduate students contemplating theses and dissertations. This has been a standard textbook in my graduate-level courses for years.  Advanced .

Patton, Michael Quinn. 2002. Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.  This is a comprehensive text that served as my “go-to” reference when I was a graduate student.  It is particularly helpful for those involved in program evaluation and other forms of evaluation studies and uses examples from a wide range of disciplines.  Advanced .

Rubin, Ashley T. 2021. Rocking Qualitative Social Science: An Irreverent Guide to Rigorous Research. Stanford : Stanford University Press.  A delightful and personal read.  Rubin uses rock climbing as an extended metaphor for learning how to conduct qualitative research.  A bit slanted toward ethnographic and archival methods of data collection, with frequent examples from her own studies in criminology. Beginning .

Weis, Lois, and Michelle Fine. 2000. Speed Bumps: A Student-Friendly Guide to Qualitative Research . New York: Teachers College Press.  Readable and accessibly written in a quasi-conversational style.  Particularly strong in its discussion of ethical issues throughout the qualitative research process.  Not comprehensive, however, and very much tied to ethnographic research.  Although designed for graduate students, this is a recommended read for students of all levels.  Beginning .

Patton’s Ten Suggestions for Doing Qualitative Research

The following ten suggestions were made by Michael Quinn Patton in his massive textbooks Qualitative Research and Evaluations Methods . This book is highly recommended for those of you who want more than an introduction to qualitative methods. It is the book I relied on heavily when I was a graduate student, although it is much easier to “dip into” when necessary than to read through as a whole. Patton is asked for “just one bit of advice” for a graduate student considering using qualitative research methods for their dissertation.  Here are his top ten responses, in short form, heavily paraphrased, and with additional comments and emphases from me:

• Make sure that a qualitative approach fits the research question. The following are the kinds of questions that call out for qualitative methods or where qualitative methods are particularly appropriate: questions about people’s experiences or how they make sense of those experiences; studying a person in their natural environment; researching a phenomenon so unknown that it would be impossible to study it with standardized instruments or other forms of quantitative data collection.
• Study qualitative research by going to the original sources for the design and analysis appropriate to the particular approach you want to take (e.g., read Glaser and Straus if you are using grounded theory )
• Find a dissertation adviser who understands or at least who will support your use of qualitative research methods. You are asking for trouble if your entire committee is populated by quantitative researchers, even if they are all very knowledgeable about the subject or focus of your study (maybe even more so if they are!)
• Really work on design. Doing qualitative research effectively takes a lot of planning.  Even if things are more flexible than in quantitative research, a good design is absolutely essential when starting out.
• Practice data collection techniques, particularly interviewing and observing. There is definitely a set of learned skills here!  Do not expect your first interview to be perfect.  You will continue to grow as a researcher the more interviews you conduct, and you will probably come to understand yourself a bit more in the process, too.  This is not easy, despite what others who don’t work with qualitative methods may assume (and tell you!)
• Have a plan for analysis before you begin data collection. This is often a requirement in IRB protocols , although you can get away with writing something fairly simple.  And even if you are taking an approach, such as grounded theory, that pushes you to remain fairly open-minded during the data collection process, you still want to know what you will be doing with all the data collected – creating a codebook? Writing analytical memos? Comparing cases?  Having a plan in hand will also help prevent you from collecting too much extraneous data.
• Be prepared to confront controversies both within the qualitative research community and between qualitative research and quantitative research. Don’t be naïve about this – qualitative research, particularly some approaches, will be derided by many more “positivist” researchers and audiences.  For example, is an “n” of 1 really sufficient?  Yes!  But not everyone will agree.
• Do not make the mistake of using qualitative research methods because someone told you it was easier, or because you are intimidated by the math required of statistical analyses. Qualitative research is difficult in its own way (and many would claim much more time-consuming than quantitative research).  Do it because you are convinced it is right for your goals, aims, and research questions.
• Find a good support network. This could be a research mentor, or it could be a group of friends or colleagues who are also using qualitative research, or it could be just someone who will listen to you work through all of the issues you will confront out in the field and during the writing process.  Even though qualitative research often involves human subjects, it can be pretty lonely.  A lot of times you will feel like you are working without a net.  You have to create one for yourself.  Take care of yourself.
• And, finally, in the words of Patton, “Prepare to be changed. Looking deeply at other people’s lives will force you to look deeply at yourself.”
• We will actually spend an entire chapter ( chapter 3 ) looking at this question in much more detail! ↵
• Note that this might have been news to Europeans at the time, but many other societies around the world had also come to this conclusion through observation.  There is often a tendency to equate “the scientific revolution” with the European world in which it took place, but this is somewhat misleading. ↵
• Historians are a special case here.  Historians have scrupulously and rigorously investigated the social world, but not for the purpose of understanding general laws about how things work, which is the point of scientific empirical research.  History is often referred to as an idiographic field of study, meaning that it studies things that happened or are happening in themselves and not for general observations or conclusions. ↵
• Don’t worry, we’ll spend more time later in this book unpacking the meaning of ethnography and other terms that are important here.  Note the available glossary ↵

An approach to research that is “multimethod in focus, involving an interpretative, naturalistic approach to its subject matter.  This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them.  Qualitative research involves the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical materials – case study, personal experience, introspective, life story, interview, observational, historical, interactional, and visual texts – that describe routine and problematic moments and meanings in individuals’ lives." ( Denzin and Lincoln 2005:2 ). Contrast with quantitative research .

In contrast to methodology, methods are more simply the practices and tools used to collect and analyze data.  Examples of common methods in qualitative research are interviews , observations , and documentary analysis .  One’s methodology should connect to one’s choice of methods, of course, but they are distinguishable terms.  See also methodology .

A proposed explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation.  The positing of a hypothesis is often the first step in quantitative research but not in qualitative research.  Even when qualitative researchers offer possible explanations in advance of conducting research, they will tend to not use the word “hypothesis” as it conjures up the kind of positivist research they are not conducting.

The foundational question to be addressed by the research study.  This will form the anchor of the research design, collection, and analysis.  Note that in qualitative research, the research question may, and probably will, alter or develop during the course of the research.

An approach to research that collects and analyzes numerical data for the purpose of finding patterns and averages, making predictions, testing causal relationships, and generalizing results to wider populations.  Contrast with qualitative research .

Data collection that takes place in real-world settings, referred to as “the field;” a key component of much Grounded Theory and ethnographic research.  Patton ( 2002 ) calls fieldwork “the central activity of qualitative inquiry” where “‘going into the field’ means having direct and personal contact with people under study in their own environments – getting close to people and situations being studied to personally understand the realities of minutiae of daily life” (48).

The people who are the subjects of a qualitative study.  In interview-based studies, they may be the respondents to the interviewer; for purposes of IRBs, they are often referred to as the human subjects of the research.

The branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge.  For researchers, it is important to recognize and adopt one of the many distinguishing epistemological perspectives as part of our understanding of what questions research can address or fully answer.  See, e.g., constructivism , subjectivism, and  objectivism .

An approach that refutes the possibility of neutrality in social science research.  All research is “guided by a set of beliefs and feelings about the world and how it should be understood and studied” (Denzin and Lincoln 2005: 13).  In contrast to positivism , interpretivism recognizes the social constructedness of reality, and researchers adopting this approach focus on capturing interpretations and understandings people have about the world rather than “the world” as it is (which is a chimera).

The cluster of data-collection tools and techniques that involve observing interactions between people, the behaviors, and practices of individuals (sometimes in contrast to what they say about how they act and behave), and cultures in context.  Observational methods are the key tools employed by ethnographers and Grounded Theory .

Research based on data collected and analyzed by the research (in contrast to secondary “library” research).

The process of selecting people or other units of analysis to represent a larger population. In quantitative research, this representation is taken quite literally, as statistically representative.  In qualitative research, in contrast, sample selection is often made based on potential to generate insight about a particular topic or phenomenon.

A method of data collection in which the researcher asks the participant questions; the answers to these questions are often recorded and transcribed verbatim. There are many different kinds of interviews - see also semistructured interview , structured interview , and unstructured interview .

The specific group of individuals that you will collect data from.  Contrast population.

The practice of being conscious of and reflective upon one’s own social location and presence when conducting research.  Because qualitative research often requires interaction with live humans, failing to take into account how one’s presence and prior expectations and social location affect the data collected and how analyzed may limit the reliability of the findings.  This remains true even when dealing with historical archives and other content.  Who we are matters when asking questions about how people experience the world because we, too, are a part of that world.

The science and practice of right conduct; in research, it is also the delineation of moral obligations towards research participants, communities to which we belong, and communities in which we conduct our research.

An administrative body established to protect the rights and welfare of human research subjects recruited to participate in research activities conducted under the auspices of the institution with which it is affiliated. The IRB is charged with the responsibility of reviewing all research involving human participants. The IRB is concerned with protecting the welfare, rights, and privacy of human subjects. The IRB has the authority to approve, disapprove, monitor, and require modifications in all research activities that fall within its jurisdiction as specified by both the federal regulations and institutional policy.

Research, according to US federal guidelines, that involves “a living individual about whom an investigator (whether professional or student) conducting research:  (1) Obtains information or biospecimens through intervention or interaction with the individual, and uses, studies, or analyzes the information or biospecimens; or  (2) Obtains, uses, studies, analyzes, or generates identifiable private information or identifiable biospecimens.”

One of the primary methodological traditions of inquiry in qualitative research, ethnography is the study of a group or group culture, largely through observational fieldwork supplemented by interviews. It is a form of fieldwork that may include participant-observation data collection. See chapter 14 for a discussion of deep ethnography. 

A form of interview that follows a standard guide of questions asked, although the order of the questions may change to match the particular needs of each individual interview subject, and probing “follow-up” questions are often added during the course of the interview.  The semi-structured interview is the primary form of interviewing used by qualitative researchers in the social sciences.  It is sometimes referred to as an “in-depth” interview.  See also interview and  interview guide .

A method of observational data collection taking place in a natural setting; a form of fieldwork .  The term encompasses a continuum of relative participation by the researcher (from full participant to “fly-on-the-wall” observer).  This is also sometimes referred to as ethnography , although the latter is characterized by a greater focus on the culture under observation.

A research design that employs both quantitative and qualitative methods, as in the case of a survey supplemented by interviews.

An epistemological perspective that posits the existence of reality through sensory experience similar to empiricism but goes further in denying any non-sensory basis of thought or consciousness.  In the social sciences, the term has roots in the proto-sociologist August Comte, who believed he could discern “laws” of society similar to the laws of natural science (e.g., gravity).  The term has come to mean the kinds of measurable and verifiable science conducted by quantitative researchers and is thus used pejoratively by some qualitative researchers interested in interpretation, consciousness, and human understanding.  Calling someone a “positivist” is often intended as an insult.  See also empiricism and objectivism.

A place or collection containing records, documents, or other materials of historical interest; most universities have an archive of material related to the university’s history, as well as other “special collections” that may be of interest to members of the community.

A method of both data collection and data analysis in which a given content (textual, visual, graphic) is examined systematically and rigorously to identify meanings, themes, patterns and assumptions.  Qualitative content analysis (QCA) is concerned with gathering and interpreting an existing body of material.    

A word or short phrase that symbolically assigns a summative, salient, essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute for a portion of language-based or visual data (Saldaña 2021:5).

Usually a verbatim written record of an interview or focus group discussion.

The primary form of data for fieldwork , participant observation , and ethnography .  These notes, taken by the researcher either during the course of fieldwork or at day’s end, should include as many details as possible on what was observed and what was said.  They should include clear identifiers of date, time, setting, and names (or identifying characteristics) of participants.

The process of labeling and organizing qualitative data to identify different themes and the relationships between them; a way of simplifying data to allow better management and retrieval of key themes and illustrative passages.  See coding frame and  codebook.

A methodological tradition of inquiry and approach to analyzing qualitative data in which theories emerge from a rigorous and systematic process of induction.  This approach was pioneered by the sociologists Glaser and Strauss (1967).  The elements of theory generated from comparative analysis of data are, first, conceptual categories and their properties and, second, hypotheses or generalized relations among the categories and their properties – “The constant comparing of many groups draws the [researcher’s] attention to their many similarities and differences.  Considering these leads [the researcher] to generate abstract categories and their properties, which, since they emerge from the data, will clearly be important to a theory explaining the kind of behavior under observation.” (36).

A detailed description of any proposed research that involves human subjects for review by IRB.  The protocol serves as the recipe for the conduct of the research activity.  It includes the scientific rationale to justify the conduct of the study, the information necessary to conduct the study, the plan for managing and analyzing the data, and a discussion of the research ethical issues relevant to the research.  Protocols for qualitative research often include interview guides, all documents related to recruitment, informed consent forms, very clear guidelines on the safekeeping of materials collected, and plans for de-identifying transcripts or other data that include personal identifying information.

Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods Copyright © 2023 by Allison Hurst is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• What Is Qualitative Research? | Methods & Examples

What Is Qualitative Research? | Methods & Examples

Published on 4 April 2022 by Pritha Bhandari . Revised on 30 January 2023.

Qualitative research involves collecting and analysing 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 analysing 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, and history.

• 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 organisation?
• 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, 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 emphasise different aims and perspectives.

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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 analysing 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 organise 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 categorise 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 analysing qualitative data. Although these methods share similar processes, they emphasise 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 analysing 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 analysing 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 generalisability

Small samples are often used to gather detailed data about specific contexts. Despite rigorous analysis procedures, it is difficult to draw generalisable conclusions because the data may be biased and unrepresentative of the wider population .

• Labour-intensive

Although software can be used to manage and record large amounts of text, data analysis often has to be checked or performed manually.

Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, while qualitative research deals with words and meanings.

Quantitative methods allow you to test a hypothesis by systematically collecting and analysing data, while qualitative methods allow you to explore ideas and experiences in depth.

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 organisation 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 organisations.

There are various approaches to qualitative data analysis , but they all share five steps in common:

• Prepare and organise 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 .

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31 Writing Up Qualitative Research

Jane F. Gilgun, School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

• Published: 04 August 2014
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This chapter provides guidelines for writing journal articles based on qualitative approaches. The guidelines are part of the tradition of the Chicago School of Sociology and the author’s experience as a writer and reviewer. The guidelines include understanding experiences in context, immersion, interpretations grounded in accounts of informants’ lived experiences, and research as action-oriented. The chapter also covers writing articles that report findings based on ethnographies, autoethnographies, performances, poetry, and photography and other graphic media.

How researchers write up results for journal publications depends on the purposes of the research and the methodologies they use. Some topics are standard, such as statements about methods and methodologies, but how to represent other topics, like related research and theory, reflexivity, and informants’ accounts, may vary. For example, articles based on ethnographic research may be structured differently from writing up research whose purpose is theory development. Journal editors and reviewers often are familiar with variations in style of write-ups, but, when they are not, they may ask for modifications that violate the methodological principles of the research. A common reviewer request is for percentages, which has little meaning in almost all forms of qualitative research because the purpose of the research is to identify patterns of meanings and not distributions of variables. For example, Irvine’s (2013) ethnography of the meanings of pets to homeless people shows a variety of meaning without giving the number of participants from which she drew.

Authors sometimes move easily through the review process, but most often they do not, not only because reviewers might not “get it,” but also because authors have left out, underemphasized, or been less than clear about aspects of their research that reviewers and editors believe are important. Working with editors and reviewers frequently results in improved articles.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide guidelines for writing journal articles based on qualitative approaches. My intended audience is composed of researchers, reviewers for journals, and journal editors. Reviewers for funding agencies may also find this chapter useful. I use the terms “journal article” and “research report” as synonyms, even though some journal articles are not reports of research. I have derived the guidelines from ideas associated with the Chicago School of Sociology and my experience as an author and reviewer. Although the Chicago School was, as Becker (1999) wrote, “open to various ways of doing sociology” (p. 10), the ideas in this chapter are part of the tradition, but they are not representative of the entire tradition. Furthermore, the ideas are not fixed but are open-ended because they evolve over time. I have followed the principles of the Chicago School of Sociology throughout my career, augmented by updates to these ideas, experiments with other traditions, and the sense I make of my own experiences as researcher, author, and reviewer.

The ideas on which I draw include understanding experiences in context, immersion, interpretations grounded in accounts of informants’ lived experiences, and research as action-oriented ( Bulmer, 1984 ; Faris, 1967 ; Gilgun, 1999 d ; 2005 a ; 2012 a ; 2013 b ). To follow these principles, researchers do in-depth studies that take into account the multiple contextual factors that influence meanings and interpretations, seek multiple points of view, and often use multiple methods such as interviews, observations, and document analysis. Researchers do this style of research not only because what they learn is interesting, but because they want to do useful research; that is, research that leads to social actions and even transformations in policies, programs, and interventions. Authors and reviewers pay attention to these principles. Authors convey them in their write-ups, and reviewers look for them as they develop their appraisals.

Excellent writing up of qualitative research matches these principles. In other words, write-ups convey lived experience within multiple contexts, multiple points of view, and analyses that deepen understandings. In addition, if the research is applied, then authors write about how findings may contribute to quality of life. Qualitative researchers from other traditions may follow similar or different guidelines in their write-ups, and I sometimes note other styles of write-ups. Often these variations are related to terminology and not procedures. The reach of the Chicago School of Sociology is wide and deep.

Following these guidelines does not guarantee an easy review process, but this article will be helpful to researchers as they plan and craft their articles and as they respond to reviewers’ and editors’ comments. After almost thirty years of publishing research based on qualitative approaches, almost as many years as a reviewer, and the editing of three collections of qualitative research reports ( Gilgun, Daly, & Handel, 1992 ; Gilgun & Sussman, 1996 : Gilgun & Sands, 2012 ), I am positioned to offer helpful guidelines, not only to authors but also to reviewers and journal editors.

I begin this chapter with a discussion of general principles and then cover the content of typical sections of research reports. Some of the general material fits into various sections of reports, such as methods and findings. In those cases, I do not repeat material already covered and assume that my writing is clear enough so that readers know how the general material fits into particular sections of articles.

Although most of this chapter addresses the writing of conventional research reports, I also cover writing articles that report findings through ethnographies, autoethnographies, performances, poetry, and photography and other graphic media. Ethnographies are based on researchers’ immersion in the field, where they do extensive observations, interviews, and often document analysis (see Block, 2012 ). Geertz’s (1973) notion of “thick description” is associated with ethnographies. Thick description is characterized by research reports that show the matrix of meanings that researchers identify and attempt to represent in their reports. Autoethnographies are in-depth reflective accounts of individual lives that the narrators themselves write ( Ellis, 2009 ). Ethnographies and autoethnographies involve reflections on meanings, contexts, and other wider influences on individual lives. They are studies of intersections of individual lives and wider cultural themes and practices. Reports of these types of research can look different from conventional research reports in that they appear less formal; the usual sections of methods, literature review, findings, and analysis may have different names; and the sections may be in places that fit the logical flow of the research and not the typical structure of introductory material, methods, results, and discussion. Despite these superficial differences, researchers who write these kinds of articles seek to deepen understandings and hope to move audiences to action through conveying lived experience in context and through multiple points of view. They also typically seek transformations of persons and societies. Links between these forms of research and Chicago School traditions are self-evident.

Some General Principles

Research reports that have these characteristics depend on the quality of the data on which the reports are based, the quality of the analysis, and the skills of researchers in conveying the analysis concisely and with “grab” ( Glaser, 1978 ), which means writing that is vivid and memorable ( Gilgun, 2005 b ). Grab brings findings to life. With grab, human experiences jump off the page. Priority is given to the voices of research participants, whom I call informants, with citations and the wisdom of other researchers providing important contextual information. The voices and analyses of researchers do not dominate ( Gilgun, 2005 c ), except in some articles whose purpose is theory development or the presentation of a theory. Researcher analyses often are important, especially in putting forth social action recommendations that stem from the experiences of informants.

A well-done report shows consistency between research traditions and the writing-up of research. For example, reflexivity statements, writing with grab, and copious excerpts from fieldnotes, interviews, and documents of various sorts are consistent with phenomenological approaches whose emphasis is on lived experience and interpretations that informants make of their experiences. Researchers new to qualitative research, however, often mix their traditions without realizing it, which works when the traditions are compatible. When the traditions are not compatible, the write-ups can be confusing and even contradictory ( Gilgun, 2005 d ). Some authors may write in distanced, third-person styles while attempting to convey informants’ lived experiences. These scholars may, therefore, have difficulty getting their articles accepted. Hopefully, this chapter will facilitate the writing of research reports that show consistency across their many parts and save scholars from rejections of work over which they have taken much care.

Details on These General Principles

In this section, I provide more detail on writing up qualitative research. I begin with a discussion of the need for high-quality data, high-quality analysis, and grab. I then move on to the details of the report, such as the place of prior research and theory, contents of methods sections, organization of findings, and the balance between descriptive material and authors’ interpretations. Dilemmas abound. Writing up qualitative research is not for the faint of heart.

High-Quality Data

Since qualitative researchers seek to understand the subjective experiences of research informants in various contexts, high-quality data result in large part from the degree that researchers practice immersion and to the degree that both researchers and informants develop rapport and engage with each other. Through active engagement, informants share their experiences with the kind of detail that brings their experiences to life. How to develop rapport is beyond the scope of this article, but openness and acceptance of whatever informants say are fundamental to engagement. Interviewers do not have to agree with the values that informants’ accounts convey, as when I interview murderers and rapists ( Gilgun, 2008 ), but we do maintain a neutrality that allows the dialogue to continue ( Gilgun & Anderson, 2013 ). The content of interviews is not about us and our preferences, but about understanding informants.

Prolonged engagement can result in quality data. In interview research, prolonged engagement allows for informants’ multiple perspectives to emerge, including inconsistencies, contradictions, ambiguities, and ambivalences. In addition, prolonged engagement facilitates the kind of trust needed for informants to share personal, sensitive information in detail, which are the kinds of data that qualitative researchers seek. Prolonged engagement also gives researchers time to reflect on what they are learning and experiencing through the interviews. This provides opportunities to develop new understandings and test new understandings through subsequent research. Their understandings thus deepen and broaden. Informants, too, can reflect, reconsider, and deepen the accounts they share.

Prolonged engagement means in-depth interviews, typically multiple interviews of more than an hour each. As mentioned earlier, time between interviews allows researchers and informants to reflect on the previous interview and prepare for the next. Researchers can do background reading, discuss emerging ideas with others, and formulate pertinent new questions. Informants may retrieve long-forgotten memories and interpretations through interviews. If they have only one interview, they have no opportunity to share with researchers the material that arises after the single interview is concluded.

There are exceptions to multiple interviews as necessary for immersion and high-quality data. When researchers have expertise in interviewing and when the topic is focused, one interview of between ninety minutes to two hours could provide some depth. Even under these conditions, however, more than one interview is ideal. I did a study that involved one ninety-minute interview with perpetrators of child sexual abuse in order to understand the circumstances under which their abusive behaviors became known to law enforcement. Thus, the interview was focused. The interviewees were volunteers who had talked about the topic many times in the course of their involvement in sex abuse treatment programs. They shared their stories with depth and breadth. I, too, was well-prepared. By then, I had had about twenty-five years of experience interviewing people about personal, sensitive topics. The informants provided accounts not only because the topic was focused, but because they were willing to share and I was willing to listen and to ask questions about their sexually abusive behaviors. With one interview, however, I knew relatively little about their social histories and general worldviews. Thus, I did not have the specifics necessary to place their accounts into context. The material they provided remained valuable and resulted in one publication ( Sharma & Gilgun, 2008 ) and others in planning stages. I prefer two or more interviews because of the importance of contextual data.

In observational studies, prolonged engagement means that researchers do multiple observations over time to obtain the nuances and details that compose human actions. Observational studies often have interview components and also may have document analysis as well. In document analysis, prolonged engagement means researchers base their analyses on an ample storehouse of documents and not just flit in and out of the documents. The quality of document analysis depends on whether the analysis shows multiple perspectives, patterns, and variations within patterns. Ethnographies have these characteristics. Block’s (2012) ethnographic research on AIDS orphans in Lesotho, Africa, is an example of a well-done ethnography.

Sample Size

In principle, the size of the sample and the depth of the interview affect whether researchers can claim immersion. The more depth and breadth each case in a study has, the smaller the sample size can be. For example, researchers can engage in immersion through a single in-depth case study when they do multiple interviews and if multiple facets of the case are examined. Case studies are investigations of single units. The case can be composed of an individual, a couple, a family, a group, a nation, or a region. Single case studies are useful in the illustration, development, and testing of theories, as well as in in-depth descriptions.

The more focused the questions, the larger the sample will be. A study on long-term marriage would require a minimum of two or three interviews because the topic is complicated. The sample would include at least ten participants and up to twenty or thirty, depending on the number of interviews, to account for some of the many patterns that are likely to emerge in a study of a topic this complex. In the one-interview study I did of how sexual abuse came to the notice of law enforcement, one interview was adequate because of the tight focus of the question. Yet, I used a sample size of thirty-two to maximize the possibility of identifying a variety of patterns, which the study accomplished. As mentioned, the one interview, however, did not allow me to contextualize the stories the informants told. Fortunately, I have another large sample that involved multiple, in-depth interviews in which informants discussed multiple contexts over time. This other study was helpful to me in understanding the accounts from the single-interview study.

Recruitment can be difficult. When it is, researchers may not be able to obtain an adequate sample. For example, a sample of seven participants engaging in a single sixty- to ninety-minute interview may not provide enough data on which to base a credible analysis. In a similar vein, articles based on a single or even a few focus groups may not provide enough depth to be informative. Some depth is possible if, in a single-interview study of less than fifteen or twenty interviewees, researchers meet with informants a second time to go over what researchers understand about informants’ accounts. This sometimes is called member-checking , and it provides additional data on which to base the analysis. In summary, the more depth and breadth to a study, the smaller the sample size can be—even as small as one or two—depending on the questions and the complexity of the cases.

Quality of the Analysis

A quality analysis begins with initial planning of the research and continues until the article is accepted for publication. An excellent research report has transparency , meaning the write-up is clear in what researchers did, how they did it, and why. I often tell students they can do almost anything reasonable and ethical, as long as they make a clear account in the write-up.

During planning, some researchers identify those concepts that they can use as sensitizing concepts once in the field. Transparency about the sources of sensitizing concepts characterizes well-done reports. The sources are literature reviews and reflexivity statements. Most researchers, however, have only a limited awareness of the importance of being clear about the sources of sensitizing concepts and other notions that become part of research coding schemes. Sensitizing concepts are notions that researchers identify before beginning their research and that help researchers notice and name social processes that they might not have noticed otherwise ( Blumer, 1986 ). Other researchers wait until data analysis to begin to identify concepts that they may use as codes and that may also become core concepts that organize findings. Either approach is acceptable and depends on purpose and methodologies.

During data collection, researchers reflect on what they are learning, typically talk to other researchers about their emerging understandings, and read relevant research and theory to enlarge and deepen their understandings. Researchers also keep fieldnotes that are a form of reflection. Based on their various reflections, researchers can reformulate interview and research questions and formulate new ones, do within—and across—case comparisons while in the field, and develop new insights into the meanings of the material.

Also, while in the field, researchers identify promising patterns of meanings and identify tentative core concepts, sometimes called categories , which are ideas that organize the copious material that they amass. Once researchers identify tentative core concepts, they seek to test whether they hold up, and, when they do, they further develop the patterns and concepts. Sometimes researchers think they have “struck gold” when they identify a possible core concept or pattern, only to find that the data—or metaphorical vein of gold—peter out (Phyllis Stern, personal communication, November 2002). They then go on to identify and follow-up on other concepts and patterns that show promise of becoming viable.

Core concepts become viable when researchers are able to dimensionalize them ( Schatzman, 1991 ) through selective coding ( Corbin & Strauss, 2008 ). This means that researchers have found data that show the multiple facets of concepts, such as patterns and exceptions to any general patterns. Authors may use other terms to describe what they did, such as thematic analysis. What is important is to describe the processes and produces; and what researchers call them is of less importance.

Core concepts may begin as sensitizing concepts. Researchers sometimes identify, name, and code core concepts through notions that are part of their general stores of knowledge but were not part of the literature review or reflexivity statement. Glaser (1978) called the practice “theoretical sensitivity.” The names researchers choose may be words or phrases informants have used. However derived, core concepts are central to the organization of findings ( Gilgun, 2012 a ).

At some point, data collection stops, but analysis does not. Researchers carry analysis that occurred in the field into the next phases of the research. Immersion at this point means that researchers read and code transcripts of interviews, observations, and any documentary material they find useful. They carry forward the core concepts they identified in the field. An example of a core concept is “resilience,” which in my own research organized a great deal of interview material. The concept of resilience has been an organizing idea in several of the articles I have written and plan to write ( Gilgun, 1996 a ; 1996 b ; 2002 a ; 2002 b ; 2004 a ; 2004 b ; 2005 a ; 2006 , 2008 ; 2010 ; Gilgun & Abrams, 2005 ; Gilgun, Keskinen, Marti, & Rice, 1999 ; Gilgun, Klein, & Pranis, 2000 ).

Corbin and Strauss (2008) stated that selective coding helps researchers to decide if a concept can become a core concept, meaning it organizes a great deal of data that have multiple dimensions. An example of dimensionalization is a study of social workers in Australia whose clients were Aboriginal people. The researchers identified several core concepts, among them critical self-awareness ( Bennet, Zubrzycki, & Bacon, 2011 ). The dimensions of critical self-awareness included understanding motivations to work with Aboriginal people, fears of working with Aboriginal people, and personalization and internalization of the anger that some Aboriginal people express.

Like many other researchers, Bennet et al. (2011) were not working within an explicit Chicago School tradition. They therefore do not use terms such as core concepts, dimensionalization, and selective coding. Instead, they described their procedures as thematic analysis, conceptual mapping, and a search for meaning. However, they did use the term “saturation,” which is part of the Chicago School tradition.

A single core concept or multiple related core concepts compose research reports. The Bennet et al. (2011) article, for example, linked multiple core concepts. The authors showed how critical self-awareness leads to meaningful relationships that in turn connect to “acquiring Aboriginal knowledge” (p. 30).

With viable core concepts and rich data, researchers are positioned to present their findings in ways that are memorable and interesting; that is, with “grab” ( Glaser, 1978 ). “Grab” requires compelling descriptive material: excerpts from interviews, field notes, and various types of documents, as well as researchers’ paraphrases of these materials. An example of a research report with grab is Irvine’s (2013) account of her study of the meanings of pets to homeless people. She provided vivid descriptions of her interactions with the participants and compelling quotes that show what pets mean. Here, an example from Denise’s account of her relationship with her cat Ivy:

I have a history with depression up to suicide ideation, and Ivy, I refer to her as my suicide barrier. And I don’t say that in any light way. I would say, most days, she’s the reason why I keep going.... She is the only source of daily, steady affection and companionship that I have. (p. 19)

These and other quotes, as well as Irvine’s well-written, detailed descriptive material, show what grab means.

Grab equates with excellence in writing. Irvine’s (2013) article is an example. In terms of the grab of her article, her work is in the Chicago School tradition. She wrote in the first person. She told complete stories in which she quoted extensively from the interviews, described the persons she interviewed and the settings in which she interviewed them, and provided biographical sketches. Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, both of whom trained generations of graduate students in qualitative research at the University of Chicago in the first quarter of the twentieth century, held seminars on the use of literary techniques, such as those used in novels and autobiographies, in writing up research ( Bulmer, 1984 ; Gilgun, 1999 d ; 2012 a ). These educators wanted researchers to report on their “first-hand observation.” Park told a class of graduate students to

[g]o and sit in the lounges of the luxury hotels and on the doorsteps of the flophouses; sit on the Gold Coast settees and on the slum shakedowns; sit in the Orchestra Hall and in the Star and Garter Burlesk. In short, gentlemen [sic], go get the seat of your pants dirty. ( McKinney, 1966 , p. 71)

Park suggested to Pauline Young (1928 ; 1932) to “think and feel” like the residents of Russian Town, the subject of her dissertation, published in 1932 ( Faris, 1967 ). Irvine’s work shows these qualities. She immersed herself in the settings, she conducted in-depth interviews, and she conveyed her first-hand experiences in vivid terms.

The Chicago School also encouraged students to write in the first person. A good example is a report by Dollard (1937) , who was concerned about the racial practices of the Southern town where he was doing fieldwork. He said he was afraid that other white people watched as he talked to “Negroes” on his front porch, when he knew that custom regarding the “proper” place of “Negroes” was at the back door. He wrote

My Negro friend brought still another Negro up on the porch to meet me. Should we shake hands? Would he be insulted if I did not, or would he accept the situation? I kept my hands in pockets and did not do it, a device that was often useful in resolving such a situation. (p. 7)

This description is a portrait of a pivotal moment in Dollard’s fieldwork, and it is full of connotations about the racist practices of the time ( Gilgun, 1999 d ; 2012 a ).

Irvine (2013) also wrote in the first person. Here’s an example:

I met Trish on a cold December day in Boulder. She stood on the median at the exit of a busy shopping center with her Jack Russell Terrier bundled up in a dog bed beside her. She was “flying a sign,” or panhandling, with a piece of cardboard neatly lettered in black marker to read, “Sober. Doing the best I can. Please help.” (p. 14)

These two excerpts illustrate a methodological point Small (1916) made in his chapter on the first fifty years of sociological research in the United States: namely, the importance of going beyond “technical treatises” and providing first-person “frank judgments” that can help future generations interpret sociology. Without such contexts, “the historical significance of treatises will be misunderstood” (p. 722). Throughout his chapter, Small wrote in the first-person and provided his views—or frank judgments—on the events he narrated. From then until now, research reports in the Chicago tradition are vivid and contextual, conveying to the extent possible what it was like to be persons in situations.

There are many other examples of well-done research reports. Eck’s (2013) article on never-married men includes the basic elements that are present in almost all reports based on qualitative methods. It is transparent in its procedures, situated within scholarly traditions, well-organized, vivid, and instructive both for those new to qualitative research and for long-term researchers like me. The other articles I cite in this chapter also show many desirable qualities in research reports.

Research Report Sections

The main sections of standard reports based on qualitative methods are the same as for articles based on other types of methods: Introduction, Methods, Findings, and Discussion. The American Psychological Association (APA) manual (2009) provides information on what goes into each of these sections. Research reports in sociology journals follow a similar format, although the citation style is slightly different. The American Sociological Association uses first and last names in the reference section, a practice I support. In articles based on qualitative approaches, researchers sometimes change the names of sections, add or omit some, or reorder them. When changes are made, the general guideline is whether the changes make sense and are consistent with the purpose of the research. As Saldaña (2003) pointed out, researchers choose how to present their findings on the basis of credibility, vividness, and persuasive qualities and not for the sake of novelty. Because some articles report findings as fictionalized accounts, poetry, plays, songs, and performances (including plays), it makes sense that the sections on these findings vary from the standard format that I discuss here.

Although there are no rigid rules about how to write journal articles based on qualitative research, much depends on the methodological perspectives, purposes of the research, and the editorial guidelines of particular journals. For example, if researchers want to develop a theory, it is important to be clear from the beginning of the article to state this as the purpose of the research. The entire article should then focus on how the authors developed the theory. Research and theory cited in the literature review should have direct relevance to the substantive area on which the authors theorized. The methods section should explain what the researchers did to develop the theory. The findings section should begin with a statement of the theory that the researchers developed. The rest of the findings section should usually be composed of three parts. The first is composed of excerpts from those data that support the concepts of the theory. This is the grounding of the theory in something clear and concrete. The second is the authors’ thinking or interpretation of the meanings of each of the concepts. The third is an analysis of how the theory contributes to what is already known, such as how the findings elaborate on and call into question what is known. Thus, a research report on the development of a theory should contain a lot of scholarship that others have developed.

A report based on narrative principles or one based on an ethnography should contain copious excerpts from interviews, citing less scholarship than an article whose purpose is to develop theory. However, it is good practice to bring in related research and theory in the results section when this literature helps in interpretation, when findings have connections to other bodies of thought, and when findings are facets of a larger issue. In my now older publication on incest perpetrators ( Gilgun, 1995 ), the editors suggested that I show that when therapists engage in sexual relationships with clients, they are engaging in abuses of power similar to those of incest perpetrators. I was at first indignant that the editors wanted me to do even more work on the article, but I soon was glad they did. It is important to show that incest or any human phenomenon is not isolated from other phenomenon but is part of a larger picture. Doing so fit my purposes, which was to show how to do theory-testing/theory-guided qualitative research. Showing how findings fit into related research and theory is part of this type of research.

Whenever researchers are ready to submit an article for publication, it is wise to read recent issues of journals in which they would like to publish. If they can identify an article whose structure, methodologies, and general purpose are similar to theirs, they could study how those authors presented their material. If, for example, in a report on narrative research, the introductory material is relatively brief, and the findings and discussion sections compose most of the pages, researchers would do well to format their articles in similar ways. I study journals in which I have interest and model much of my own articles after those published in these journals. I make sure, however, that I cover topics that in my judgment are important to cover.

Prior Research and Theory

In my experience, something as simple as the place of prior research and theory can get complicated in the writing of reports based on qualitative research, even when the purpose of the article is primarily descriptive and is not to construct an explicit theory. In general, related research and theory literature can be presented at the beginning of a report as part of a review of pertinent research and theory, in the findings section when prior work helps in the interpretation and analysis of findings, or in the discussion section, where authors may reflect on how their findings add to, undermine, or correct what is known and even add something new.

Readers expect and journal editors typically want articles to begin with literature review, with some exceptions. A perusal of journals that publish qualitative studies shows this. Yet there are exceptions. Valásquez (2011) began her report on her encounter with scientology with an extended and rather meandering first-person narrative. Her literature review began toward the end of the article. She tailored the review to the report that preceded it. In this article and others, the literature review helped in the interpretation of findings and helped to situate the report in its scholarly contexts. In other articles, the literature review appears in the introductory section. This sets the scholarly context of the research, highlights the significance of topics, and identifies gaps in knowledge. Neither authors nor reviewers should have rigid expectations about where the scholarship of others belongs. It belongs where it makes the most sense and has the most impact.

For many, the placement of literature reviews seems self-evident. Yet, some well-known approaches, such as grounded theory, can set authors up for confusion about where the literature review belongs. This can result in delays in writing up their results. The procedures of grounded theory are open-ended and designed to find new aspects of phenomena—often underresearched—and then develop theories from the findings. At the outset of their work, researchers cannot anticipate what they will find. Therefore, teachers such as Strauss and Glaser advised students not to do literature reviews until they had identified basic social processes that become the focus of the research ( Covan, 2007 ; Glaser & Strauss, 1967 ).

How, then, do researchers write up research reports when they are doing an open-ended study that, by definition, will culminate in unanticipated findings? Do they write their reports as records on how they proceeded chronologically, or do they follow APA style and the dominant tradition that says the literature review comes first? For the most part, I follow the tradition, as, apparently, do most researchers. However, to structure reports in this way sometimes feels strained and artificial. I would prefer to write a more chronological account, in which I can share with readers the lines of inquiry and procedures I followed. The literature review at the beginning of the report, therefore, would be brief. The methods section is quite detailed in how I went about developing the theory. The findings section would have the three-part format I discussed earlier: statement of the theory, presentations of excerpts that support assertions that certain concepts compose the theory, my interpretation of the meanings of the concepts and the excerpts that support them, and then the use of related research and theory to further develop the theory and to situate it in its scholarly traditions.

In all but one of the research reports that I have published, I did the literature after I had identified findings. The one exception was research I did based on the method of analytic induction, in which researchers can use literature reviews to focus their research from the outset ( Gilgun, 1995 , 2007 ). In this research, I used concepts from theories on justice and care to analyze transcripts of interviews I had previously conducted on how perpetrators view child sexual abuse. Even though I was familiar with the transcripts, I found that the concepts of justice and care and their definitions sensitized me to see things in the material that I had not noticed as I did data collection and during previous analyses of the data.

Furthermore, in writing up the results, I brought in research that was not part of the literature review to help me to interpret findings and to show how findings fit with and added to what was already known. I did not place this material in the introductory literature review. Placing related research and theory as parts of the results and discussion sections is common and may be necessary in articles that are reporting on a theory that the authors developed. For descriptive studies whose purpose is not theory-building, such as ethnographies, some findings sections include the addition of research and theory not present in the introductory section. Often, however, authors do not follow this pattern. An example is found in Ahmed (2013) , who described how migrants experience settling into a new country. She presents excerpts from interviews and her interpretation of them, including organizing them into a typology, but she does not bring additional research and theory into her interpretations.

Tensions can arise between how much space to give to literature reviews and how much to allot to presentation of informants’ accounts/findings ( Gilgun, 2005 c ). This happened in the most recent article I co-wrote, which is on mothers’ perspectives on the signs of child sexual abuse ( Gilgun & Anderson, 2013 ). We believed the literature review was important because it not only set up our research but summarized a great deal of information that was important to our intended audience of social service professionals. We also wanted to anticipate the expectations of reviewers and the journal editor. Yet, we put much effort into making the literature review as concise as possible in order to have reasonable space for findings. We wrote the literature review before we did data analysis. When we wrote up the results, the first draft was probably three times longer than any journal article could be.

We had written case studies first to be sure that we understood each case in detail. We had wanted to share what the women said in the kind of detail that had helped us deepen our own understandings, so we cut back on the case material. The article was still too long. We decided to exclude the few instances we had in which women knew of the abuse but tried to handle it themselves or did not believe the children when told. We did more summarizing of the literature review. We eliminated many references.

After much effort, we finally had a manuscript that was the required length of twenty-two pages. It included a literature review that set up the research in good form, an adequate accounting of the method, and findings that conveyed with grab the complexities of the signs and lack of signs of child sexual abuse. We wove points made in the literature review into our interpretations, yet we had to leave out important patterns for the sake of space. The editor’s decision was a revise and resubmit, which we did. The main recommendation was to elaborate on applications. This was a great suggestion, and we dug deep to think about this. We are pleased with the results. We had to do further reading on topics we had not anticipated at the onset of our project, and we squeezed in a few new citations in the discussion section that related to implications of the research. This additional material greatly enhanced the meanings and usefulness of the research.

There is much more to say about qualitative research and literature reviews. Sometimes researchers get stuck, as I have more than once. I have research that I have not yet published because I have been unable to figure out how to do the multiple literature reviews I think I must show how my theory builds on, adds to, and challenges what is already known. I have written up this research as conference papers, where expectations about literature reviews are more relaxed ( Gilgun, 1996c , 1998 , 1999c , 2000 ). One of these. papers was on a comprehensive theory of interpersonal violence ( Gilgun, 2000 ). I wanted to write my theory first and then show how the findings contribute to what is already known. Doing so doesn’t seem so outlandish today, and I now can imagine writing it up exactly as I would want to. At the same time, I wonder if I would? I really don’t know if any journal that would publish a theory of violence would also accept an article that places a literature review after findings. Furthermore, my writing up of the theory would take so many pages that I would not have enough space to do a comprehensive literature review. As of today, the theory I am developing has links to sixteen or more bodies of literature. No way can I publish a journal-length article that will accommodate that much research and theory!

So, here I am, many years into the development of a comprehensive theory, still reflecting on how to create journal articles out of my analysis. I have published many articles in social media outlets exploring ideas that are the basis for the theory. I have put these articles into collections that are available on the internet ( Gilgun, 2012 b ; 2012 c ; 2013 a ). The theory is so complex that writing bits and pieces over the years and having a place to put them have been very helpful.

Finally, some articles may cite few if any related research and theory. This may fit articles whose purpose is to convey lived experience that stands on its own. These articles feature performances, plays, autoethnographies, fictionalized accounts, poetry, and song, among others. Egbe (2013) wrote two poems that she explained were accounts of her experiences of doing research in Nigeria with young smokers. She said she was “dazed by the vast opportunity this method gives a researcher to dig deep into a research problem and be submerged into the world of participants” (p. 353). Her two-page article is composed of two poems and her explanation. The article showed grab, evidence of immersion, experiences in contexts, and multiple perspectives. Her work, therefore, followed well-established guidelines for writing up qualitative research. Egbe not only omitted a literature review, but she did not write about how to use the results of her research, assuming that its uses are self-evident. Obviously, she thought a literature review unnecessary; the reviewers and journal editors agreed with her.

Reflexivity Statements

A growing number of journals encourage researchers to include reflexivity statements in research reports. Researchers may place these in the introductory material of an article, after the literature review and before the methods section; this probably is the most important place to put them because reflexivity statements often influence the focus and design of the research, including the choice of sensitizing concepts and codes. Reflexivity statements may also appear in the methods and findings and methods sections when important. Reflexivity statements are accounts of researchers’ experiences with the topic of research; accounts of their expectations regarding informant issues and their relationships to informants, especially in regard to power differentials and other ethical concerns; and accounts of their reflections on various issues related to possible experiences that informants may have had. They also may include the experience they had while participating in the research ( D’Cruz, Gillingham, & Melendez, 2007 ; Presser, 2005 ). My article on doing research on violence is an extended reflexivity statement ( Gilgun, 2008 ). There appears to be no standard content for reflexivity statements and no standard places for them to appear. Personal and professional experiences and reflections on power differentials may be the emergent standard. Whatever decisions researchers make about reflexivity statements, they alert audiences to researchers’ perspectives, which can be helpful to readers as they attempt to make sense of research reports.

An example of a reflexivity statement is found in Winter (2010) work. Winter is a practitioner turned researcher who had a previous relationship as a guardian ad litem with the children with whom she later conducted the research that she was reporting. Winter was reflexive about the implications of her prior relationship with these children. I imagine, based on my own experience, that she put only a fraction of her thinking into her article. Not only did she write in her reflexivity statement that she had a prior relationship with the children, but she also wrote about the ethical issues involved.

Ethical issues have a place in reflexivity statements. I have run into ethical questions over the course of my research career. One situation that stands out is the encounter I had with a mother and her eleven-year-old daughter who had participated in my dissertation research on child sexual abuse ( Gilgun, 1983 ). The mother cried and told her daughter how sorry she was that she had been unable to protect her from sexual abuse. The girl was touched but did not seem to know what to do. I suggested that she go stand by her mother. When she got close, the mother and daughter hugged each other and cried. This is a significant event with ethical implications that I included in the findings section of my dissertation and in a subsequent research report ( Gilgun, 1984 ). The ethical issue is, first, whether I should have stepped out of my role as detached researcher and guided the girl to go to her mother, and, second, whether I should have made my blurring of boundaries public by publishing them.

As far as the placement of reflexivity statements, the initial statement has a logical location after the literature review because the reflexivity statement contributes to the development of the research questions, the identification of sensitizing concepts, the interview schedule, and the overall design of research procedures. Accounts of ongoing reflexivity could be part the findings section and of the discussion section. Reflexivity statements are not a standard part of research reports, but they can contribute to readers’ understandings of the research.

Along with the literature review, reflexivity statements contribute to practical and applied significance statements and may also help to identify gaps in knowledge. Literature reviews and reflexivity statements contain key concepts. The concepts that researchers define at the end of introductory sections typically become codes during analysis, although researchers may not label the concepts as codes either in the introductory section or in the methods section. I am unsure why such labeling has not become routine. When concepts carry the label code , this clarifies where codes come from. Without naming codes and stating where they come from, much of analysis is mystified. Many reports read as if the codes appear out of nowhere during analysis. Even Glaser’s (1978) notion of theoretical sensitivity mystifies the origins of codes. How, for example, do researchers become theoretically sensitive? What if researchers are beginning their scholarly careers? How theoretically sensitive are they ( Covan, 2007 )? What are the implications for the quality of the analysis?

Research Questions, Hypotheses, and Definitions

The final part of the introductory section of a research report is devoted to research questions, hypotheses to be tested (if any), and definitions of core concepts. In general, in qualitative research, hypotheses are statements of relationships between concepts. Theories usually are composed of two or more hypotheses, although, at times, some researchers may use the term theory to designate a single hypothesis ( Gilgun, 2005 b ). Concepts are extractions from concrete data. Sometimes concepts are called second-order concepts and data first-order concepts .

Research questions may be absent. In their place are purpose statements that make the focus of the report clear. Hypotheses are rarely present in qualitative research. When they are, the purpose of the research is to test them and typically to develop them more fully. This type of research has in the past been called analytic induction ( Gilgun, 1995 e), whereas a more up-to-date version of qualitative hypothesis testing and theory-guided research is called deductive qualitative analysis ( Gilgun, 2005 d ; 2013 ). Analytic induction and deductive qualitative analysis are part of the Chicago School tradition.

Methods Section

Most methods sections for reports based on qualitative approaches have the same elements as any other research report. Descriptions of the sample, recruitment, interview schedule, and plans for data analysis are standard. The APA manual provides guidelines ( American Psychological Association, 2009 ) that fit many types of qualitative research reports. However, reports based on autoethnographies, poetry, and performances may have brief or no methods sections. As is clear by now, the report’s contents depend on the purposes and methodologies of the research and on the editorial requirements of journals.

Accounts of Methodologies

In writing up qualitative research, methods sections usually contain a brief overview of the research methodology, which is the set of principles that guided the research. The following is an account of the methodology used in a research report on cancer treatment in India:

For this project we drew upon interpretive traditions within qualitative research. This involved us taking an in-depth exploratory approach to data collection, aimed at documenting the subjective and complex experiences of the respondents. Our aim was to achieve a detailed understanding of the varying positions adhered to, and to locate those within a broader spectrum underlying beliefs and/or agendas. ( Broom & Doron, 2013 , p. 57)

Sometimes, statements of methodology are much more elaborate, but in research reports, such a statement is sufficient, again depending on the editorial policies of particular journals. A few citations, which this article had, round out an adequate statement of methodology.

However, many reports are written in a clear and straightforward way with scant or no account of methodologies. Examples are the work of Eck (2013) and Spermon, Darlington, and Gibney (2013) . These kinds of well-done write-ups might eventually be considered generic. Spermon et al. said their study was phenomenological, which sets up assumptions that the report will be primarily descriptive. In actuality, the intent was to develop theory. Such mixing of methodologies may be the wave of the future; in many ways, distinctions between phenomenological studies whose purposes are descriptive and those whose purposes are to build theory are blurred. Such blurring may have been the case for decades because it is possible and often desirable to build theories based on phenomenological perspectives; that is, in-depth descriptions of lived experience. However, authors are wise to state in one place what their methodologies are and how they put them to use, such as for descriptive purposes or for theory-building.

Description of Sample

Placing descriptions of sample size and the demographics of the sample in the methods sections is typical. As mentioned earlier, evaluation of sample size depends on the depth and breadth of the study. The more depth a study has, the smaller the number of cases can be. The more breadth and the sharper the focus, the larger sample sizes typically are. Samples on which a study is based must provide enough material on which to base a credible article. A sample size of one may be adequate if researchers show their work demonstrates the basic principles of almost all forms of qualitative research: perspectives of persons who participate in the research, researcher immersion into the settings or the life stories of persons interviewed, multiple perspectives, contextual information of various types, and applications. Autoethnographies often have an n of one, but joint autoethnographies are possible. Ethnographies may not give a sample size, as was the case in the performance ethnography of Valásquez (2011) who wrote in the first person about her experience with scientology. In her first-person ethnography, Irvine (2013) also did not mention sample size. She said that the narratives she used for the article were from a larger study on the meanings of animals to people who have no homes. She did not describe the usual demographics of age, gender, social class, and ethnicity.

Most articles describe the demographics of the sample. In a recently accepted article ( Gilgun & Anderson, 2013 ), I saw no relevance in mentioning the size of the larger sample from which we drew in order to tell the stories of how mothers responded to their learning that their husbands or life partners had sexually abused their children. We included an exact count of the larger sample because we assumed that it would be the journal’s expectations. We also gave particulars of the demographics. Except for social class and ethnicity, we saw little relevance for the other descriptors. These status variables were relevant to us because most of the sample was white and middle or upper class. This is important because much research on child sexual abuse is done with poor people, and there are stereotypes that poor families and families of color are more likely to experience incest than are white middle and upper class families. Overall, as with some other issues related to writing, the adequacy of the sample description depends on the methodological principles of the research and the journal’s editorial policies.

Recruitment

Accounts of recruitment procedures are important because researchers want to show that their work is ethical. Respect for the autonomy or freedom of choice of participants needs to be demonstrated. In addition, often the persons in whose lives we are interested have vulnerabilities. To show that the research procedures have not exploited these vulnerabilities is part of ethical considerations. Most articles have these accounts. Furthermore, when there are accounts of recruitment procedures, it becomes obvious why the sample is not randomly selected. Irvine’s (2013) account of recruitment is exemplary. She recruited through veterinary clinics that took care of the pets of homeless persons. She did not approach potential participants herself. Doing so risked making refusals difficult. The staff informed persons of the research and its purposes. If individuals said they were interested, they gave permission for the staff to give their names to researchers. The research interviews took place in the clinics.

The ethics of recruitment revolve around values, such as respect for autonomy, dignity, and worth. Other ethical issues that are important to mention in reports include the use of incentives for participation. Although many human subjects committees now require monetary incentives for participation, this has ethical implications. Irvine (2013) solved this by giving gift cards after the interviews were completed. Reports on ethical issues have a place in methods sections.

Data Collection and Analysis

Accounts of data collection and analysis are part of the methods section. Data collection procedures should be detailed for many reasons. Primary among them is the need for transparency in terms of the ethical standards the researchers followed, as well as the need to allow for replication of the study. Such details also provide guidelines for others who might be interested in using the methods. In addition, there are many different schools of thought and procedures for each of the methods used with the three general types of data collection: interviews, observations, and documents. It is helpful to state which particular data collection procedures the researchers used. Researchers often provide examples of the kinds of questions asked and procedures used for recording observations and excerpts from documents. Some researchers may omit such an accounting, as with some autoethnographies and articles that turn research material into performances.

How researchers analyzed data is part of the methods sections. As with data collection, there are so many types of analysis that researchers need to describe the particular forms that they used. For figuring out how to report on data analysis, researchers would do well to study articles in journals in which they want to publish. Irvine (2013) used a method of analysis I have never heard of called “personal narrative analysis” (p. 8). She gave enough detail to provide the general idea of what she did and a sufficient number of citations for additional information.

The level of detail can vary. In some sociology journals, for example, researchers may say little about analysis and sometimes little about data collection. This is because the journal editors, reviewers, and those who publish in and read the articles have assumptions that they for the most part take for granted. Even in these journals, however, researchers may want to account for their analytic procedures, especially if they are writing on topics outside of what is usual in such journals.

Other journals require a great deal of detail. In those instances, researchers first decide what they think is essential and then shape their accounts to fit what appears to be usual practice in the journal. The following paragraphs describe data analysis in a recently accepted article on signs of child sexual abuse in families ( Gilgun & Anderson, 2013 ).

Data Analysis

In the analysis of data, the first author read the transcripts multiple times and coded them for instances related to disclosures of child sexual abuse and associated signs of the abuse, such as how and when the women first learned of the abuse or suspected it was occurring in their families, their responses, and their reflections on the signs of abuse they might have missed, as well as child and perpetrator behaviors that they did not realize were related to child sexual abuse. Their initial and longer term responses and reflections were also coded. The second author independently read and coded about one-third of the transcripts using this coding scheme to arrive at a 100 percent agreement.

Sources of the codes were our professional experiences in the area of child sexual abuse, the review of research, and the first author’s familiarity with the content of the interviews because she had been the interviewer. These codes served as sensitizing concepts, which, as Blumer (1986) explained, are ideas that guide researchers to see aspects of phenomena that they might otherwise not notice. Although altering researchers’ ideas to what might be significant serves an obvious useful purpose, sensitizing concepts might also may blind researchers to other aspects of phenomena that might be important. Therefore, we also used negative case analysis, which is a procedure that guides researchers to look for aspects of phenomena that contradict or do not fit with emerging understandings. In this way, researchers are positioned to see patterns, variations within patterns, exceptions, and contradictions in findings ( Becker et al., 1961 ; Bogdan & Biklen, 2007 ; Cressey, 1953 ; Lindesmith, 1947 ).

As we wrote this section, we were aware of the limited space that we had to fill. Yet we were committed to accounting for where our codes came from for reviewers and editors who may be unfamiliar with pre-established codes. As discussed earlier, many reports are written as if codes appear by magic. We decided that, in this report, we would be as clear as possible about where our codes came from. We also reasoned that we would have to call on the authority of well-respected methodologists if reviewers and editors had questions about what we had done. Furthermore, we were aware of the dated nature of the references; we could do nothing about that because there has not been much written recently about pre-established codes. I have written about this quite a bit, but as one of the authors, I not only had to be anonymous during the review process, but I could not be the sole authority.

Generalizability

Many reviewers and editors have questions about the generalizability of the results of qualitative research. Authors themselves sometimes question the generalizability of their own findings. That’s why it remains important to provide clear guidelines in research reports about how the authors view the usefulness of their findings. The following ideas may be helpful to authors as they write their reports and to reviewers who are positioned as gatekeepers. The results of qualitative research are not meant to be generalized in a probabilistic sense. But because dropouts and refusals limit the randomness of samples, most forms of research can’t be generalized in a probabilistic sense.

Conversely, as Cronbach (1975) wrote almost forty years ago, the results of any form of research are working hypotheses that must be tested in local settings. Thus, the applicability of qualitative or any other kind of research can be demonstrated only through attempts at application. Do the findings illuminate other situations? Do the results provide researchers, policy makers, and direct practitioners with ideas on how to proceed? Those who apply the research expect to have to adjust findings to fit particular new situations. Many researchers and some journal editors and reviewers know through common sense and everyday experience how to use the results of qualitative research. Our personal lives are extended case studies. What we learn in one situation, we carry over into another. We know we have to test what we have learned in past situations for fit with new situations. If we do not, we impose our ideas on situations that may demand new perspectives. This common practice of applying results to all situations is disrespectful of local conditions and autonomy of persons. We want to avoid such disrespect in how we suggest readers use the results of our research.

Trustworthiness and Authenticity

Pointing out the trustworthiness of procedures and the findings that result from them sometimes are parts of methods sections. Related to trustworthiness are issues of authenticity ( Guba & Lincoln, 2005 ). Both trustworthiness and authenticity arise from immersion, seeking to understand the perspectives of others in context, reflexivity, and seeking multiple points of view. Researchers who have applied these principles will produce reports that are trustworthy and authentic. In addition, the reports will have grab. Extended discussions related to these issues are beyond the scope of this chapter and the scope of research reports as well.

I get more requests for revisions of methods sections, especially for accounts of data collection and analysis, than for any other parts of a manuscript. This is not surprising, given the multiple possible variations. I never know who the reviewers will be and what their expectations are. I rely first on my beliefs about what I want in the procedures section and then I study articles the journal has already publishes. I include what journal editors appear to expect, but I also add information that I think is important, even when it is not part of what I see in methods sections.

Findings Sections

Findings sections in research reports include both descriptive and conceptual material. Descriptive material is composed of researchers’ paraphrasing and summarizing of what they found and excerpts from interviews, fieldnotes, and documents. The descriptive material, at its best, is detailed and lively; it not only is informative, it has grab. This material contributes to understandings of human experiences in context. In addition, descriptive material is the basis of researchers’ theorizing and it also provides documentation and illustrations of assertions that researchers make.

Conceptual material comprises the analysis and is made up of inferences such as the general statements, concepts, and hypotheses that researchers develop from the material (data). One way to think about the relationship between descriptive and conceptual material is to think of descriptive material as composed of first-order concepts and conceptual material as composed of second-order concepts. Each type depends on the other. Credible conceptual material is based on descriptive material, some of which is contained in the article. Qualitative research yields mountains of data, a fraction of which can be placed into a published article.

As with other sections of research reports, findings sections have many possible variations that depend on the purpose of the research and the methodologies on which the research is based. Thus, the findings can range from heavily descriptive to heavily conceptual. Heavily conceptual research reports arise from research whose purpose is theoretical, in which researchers set out to test, refine, reformulate, or develop theory. Theoretical reports require some descriptive material to show the basis of theoretical statements, but they are often relatively short on descriptive material.

Reports that are primarily descriptive are composed of excerpts from data. Theoretical material appears in often subtle ways, such as in the form of concepts that organize findings. Irvine’s (2013) study of homeless people and their pets is largely descriptive, composed of excerpts from the interviews and Irvine’s paraphrases and narration of what she did, how, and when. The findings were narrative case studies based on interviews and observations. The details of the narratives were vivid and had the kind of grab that Glaser (1978) recommended. They showed multiples perspectives and variations on what it meant to homeless informants to have pets in their lives. The first three pages were a review of relevant literature and a presentation of method. The last five pages were a discussion of the findings.

As lengthy as the descriptive material is, conceptual material frames the entire report. In the literature review, Irvine introduced notions of positive identity, generativity, and redemption. She used them to analyze her data and organize findings, which were the narrative case studies. She used the concept of redemption as the core or organizing concept, going into some detail about how the research material supports the significance of this idea of pets as redemptive for homeless people.

This analysis is based squarely on the descriptive material. For instance, Irvine wrote that in the stories she presented in her article, “animals provide the vehicle for redemption.” She illustrated this point with a quote from one of the narratives and then reminded readers that the narratives “contain variations on the theme” of “ life is better because this animal is in it ” (p. 20; emphasis in original). Readers do not take this on faith because the basis of this general statement in presented multiple times in the case studies. Irvine has much more material on which she based these ideas, but there is not enough room in a journal-length article to show all of her evidence.

An example of an article that is theoretical in purpose and short on descriptive material is found in the work of Cordeau (2012) . She developed a grounded theory of the “transition from student to professional nurse” when student nurses work with “mannequins as simulated patients” (p. 90). Based on interviews, observations, and reports that the students wrote on their clinical experiences, the study was composed of about 10 percent descriptive material. This material included excerpts interviews and student reports. In the results section, she used this descriptive material to illustrate and possibly document the grounded theory she constructed. The theory’s “core category” was “linking,” which had four components, called properties. She documented the properties, primarily with her own thinking about her research material and also with excerpts from interviews, observations, and student reports.

Like Irvine’s (2013) study, the purpose of Cordeau’s (2012) work was applied where she wanted to build theory that would contribute to the development of clinical expertise in nursing students. She also devoted about one page of her study to applications.

Core Concepts

I’ve previously provided an extended discussion of core concepts. This section highlights some key points and illustrates them. Core concepts, often called core categories , organize findings. I prefer the term concept because concept is the term used in discussing theory, such as “concepts are the building blocks of theory,” and theory is one of several possible products of qualitative research. Researchers decide on which concepts are core in the course of analysis. Researchers are ready to write up their reports when they have settled on, named, and dimensionalized one or more core concepts. The terms “core concepts” and “core categories” are associated with grounded theory ( Charmaz, 2006 ; Corbin & Strauss, 2008 ), but they are useful in other types of qualitative research, such as interpretive phenomenology and narrative analysis. Core concepts both organize findings and, typically, bring together a great deal of information. The term “dimension” means that researchers account for as many aspects of the core concepts as they can in order to show the multiple perspectives and patterns that typically compose concepts.

In reporting on core concepts, I recommend that researchers name them, introduce them, describe them using excerpts from the research material, comment on them, and then situate each of the concepts and their commentaries within their scholarly contexts. As discussed earlier, this shows how the findings fit with what is already known, or add to, force modification of, or refute what is known. Although many researchers, do not situate findings in their scholarly contexts, they usually cover the other topics.

No matter how authors report findings, they should do so with grab. An example of a report exemplary for its grab is the work of Scott (2003) on what it means to be a professional with a physical disability. Scott began her article not with a literature review but with three reviewer comments on other articles she had written. She then stated that the present article was a response to these comments. She followed up with a description of three male students who waited to speak to her after class about her disability and the notion of embodiment that she discussed in class. She brought in related literature throughout the article. Through her own reflections, reports on how others have responded to her, reports on the accounts that three other women with disabilities gave to her as a person with cerebral palsy, and her literature review, Scott not only showed the meanings of disabilities to persons who have them, but also what others say about their own disabilities, what some people who are able-bodied say about women with disabilities, and how all of this connects to what is known about disabilities and to wide-spread beliefs about disabilities. Her article is full of grab, such as the header that read, “The Day I Became Human.” With the authors’ own experience as the centerpiece, this article exemplifies write-ups that demonstrate the meanings of lived experience in various contexts, immersion, grab, and implications for social action. The analysis she presented as part of her findings is exemplary.

In the production of quality research, no matter the type of write-up, there are no short cuts. Research reports based on poetry, for example, are held to the same standards as any other article: grab, immersion, lived experience in context, and implications for action. In addition, such research reports typically locate themselves within social and human sciences traditions. Furman’s (2007) reflections and analysis of poetry that he wrote over the course of many years provide an example of how poetry can be used in qualitative analysis. This kind of research is a type of document analysis. In performance studies, researchers create a theater production of informant’s accounts of their experiences whose purpose is to transform audiences and move them to action ( Saldaña, 2003 ). The performances are the equivalent of research reports and when they are effective, they have the four characteristics of qualitative research under discussion.

Discussion Sections

In traditional research reports, the discussion section follows the results section. In discussion sections, authors reflect on findings, including what the findings are, how findings contribute to understandings of phenomena of interest, the lines of inquiry the results open up, and implications for policy and practice. Other generic topics to consider are those related to the focus of the journal. For example, if the journal’s focus is related to health, then authors show how findings are related to health.

Discussion sections present the author with opportunities to advocate for how his or her research can be used. The applied purposes of Irvine’s (2013) research come through when she devoted an entire page to make observations about implications. She pointed out how her research contributes to a transformation of images of homeless persons as isolated to images of them as engaged in relationships not only with their pets but with other persons, too. She noted that rehousing homeless persons requires a change in policy that would allow them to have pets. Furthermore, she said that caring for a pet “can turn things around” (p. 24).

In the discussion section I wrote with Anderson ( Gilgun & Anderson, 2013 ), we addressed methodological issues, such as the probable existence of other patterns in addition to those we identified and the nonrandom nature of our sample. We also acknowledged the difficulties in working with families in which child sexual abuse has occurred. Since qualitative researchers want to understand lived experiences, we had to prepare ourselves to deal effectively in research areas that are difficult emotionally for us as researchers. Although we may acknowledge the emotional challenges of some topics in reflexivity statements, discussion sections are opportunities for authors to acknowledge the difficulties of using the results we produce. In the article I wrote with Anderson, we made such an acknowledgment, one that we hoped would facilitate more effective practice. We wrote

Practitioners themselves may experience shock, rage, and disgust. The practice of neutrality, in its therapeutic sense, is important in these cases ( Gil & Johnson, 1993 ; Rober, 2011 ). Neutrality means that practitioners maintain their analytic stances while at the same time they remain attuned not only to service users but also to themselves. When practicing neutrality, service providers regulate their own emotional responses in order to remain emotionally available to service users. Neutrality also means that service providers remain open-minded so that they can hear stories that they may not expect to hear; in other words, to make room for the unexpected ( Rober, 2011 ). Attunement to inner processes is a form of reflection that can facilitate the development of trust between service users and providers. When providers are reflective, they are less likely to tune out, close down, and otherwise stop listening to what services users express. When they listen and hear what service users say, they are more likely to facilitate the best possible outcomes in difficult situations ( Weingarten, 2012 ).

Doing research on lived experience can be difficult for informants and for researchers. Acknowledgment of the implications of these difficulties for users of the research has a place in discussion sections.

In summary, most articles are fairly straightforward in their write-ups: focused literature reviews, reflexivity statements in many cases, clear statements of purpose, clarity about sources of research questions and/or hypotheses, identification and definition of key concepts, identification of codes the researcher develops from literature reviews and reflexivity statements, succinct accounting of methods, and findings organized logically by core concepts around which the researcher organizes the multiple dimensions of those concepts. Excellent writing makes articles interesting and accessible. Some kinds of write-ups deviate from these components, but they are held to the same standards of immersion, experiences in context, multiple perspectives, and implications for action and other applications. When authors have the good fortune to have a recommendation to revise and resubmit, suggestions for revisions often improve the quality of the article.

The seemingly endless variations that are possible in the write-up of qualitative research makes writing and reviewing manuscripts challenging, especially when compared to traditions in which rigid rules prevail. However, it is important that approaches to qualitative research continue to evolve to meet with our ever-changing understandings of human phenomena. The clarity and transparency of reports are the fundamental guidelines for making judgments about quality. I often tell my students that the guidelines for doing qualitative research are flexible, and what is important is to be clear about what you did, why you did it, and what you came up with.

The notion of grab is central to write-up. Since qualitative research seeks to understand lived experiences, it is logical that findings report on the lived experiences in vivid terms, replete with quotes from data. This is not to undermine the importance of analysis, but grab is possible even in write-ups that require a great deal of analysis. Grab becomes possible because researchers must provide the evidence for the theories and concepts they develop.

When there are questions about priorities related to informants’ voices, researchers’ interpretations, and prior research, I hope that authors, reviewers, and editors remember that as important as analysis and previous work may be, the voices of informants bring these other important parts of manuscripts to life. Researchers make decisions about whose voices take priority.

There is no one way to respond to these dilemmas. Authors must make their own decisions about what is important to them and then search for journals that will welcome what they want to convey. It’s important to consider pushing the boundaries and writing an article in a way that the researcher thinks will best convey his or her findings.

The importance of quality data, quality analysis, and “grab” are foundational. I began this chapter with a discussion of the balance between description and analysis. I then considered core concepts as organizers of findings, the place of literature reviews, styles of presenting methods and methodologies, and the balance between the voices of informants and researchers. I concluded with the many variations in types of reports that result from the various purposes that qualitative research projects can have. There are many different types of qualitative research and many styles of write-ups. This chapter may sensitize readers to enduring issues in the writing of research reports. Like qualitative research itself, there are multiple points of view on how to write up qualitative research.

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Home » Qualitative Research – Methods, Analysis Types and Guide

Qualitative Research – Methods, Analysis Types and Guide

Table of Contents

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is a type of research methodology that focuses on exploring and understanding people’s beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and experiences through the collection and analysis of non-numerical data. It seeks to answer research questions through the examination of subjective data, such as interviews, focus groups, observations, and textual analysis.

Qualitative research aims to uncover the meaning and significance of social phenomena, and it typically involves a more flexible and iterative approach to data collection and analysis compared to quantitative research. Qualitative research is often used in fields such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, and education.

Qualitative Research Methods

Qualitative Research Methods are as follows:

One-to-One Interview

This method involves conducting an interview with a single participant to gain a detailed understanding of their experiences, attitudes, and beliefs. One-to-one interviews can be conducted in-person, over the phone, or through video conferencing. The interviewer typically uses open-ended questions to encourage the participant to share their thoughts and feelings. One-to-one interviews are useful for gaining detailed insights into individual experiences.

Focus Groups

This method involves bringing together a group of people to discuss a specific topic in a structured setting. The focus group is led by a moderator who guides the discussion and encourages participants to share their thoughts and opinions. Focus groups are useful for generating ideas and insights, exploring social norms and attitudes, and understanding group dynamics.

Ethnographic Studies

This method involves immersing oneself in a culture or community to gain a deep understanding of its norms, beliefs, and practices. Ethnographic studies typically involve long-term fieldwork and observation, as well as interviews and document analysis. Ethnographic studies are useful for understanding the cultural context of social phenomena and for gaining a holistic understanding of complex social processes.

Text Analysis

This method involves analyzing written or spoken language to identify patterns and themes. Text analysis can be quantitative or qualitative. Qualitative text analysis involves close reading and interpretation of texts to identify recurring themes, concepts, and patterns. Text analysis is useful for understanding media messages, public discourse, and cultural trends.

This method involves an in-depth examination of a single person, group, or event to gain an understanding of complex phenomena. Case studies typically involve a combination of data collection methods, such as interviews, observations, and document analysis, to provide a comprehensive understanding of the case. Case studies are useful for exploring unique or rare cases, and for generating hypotheses for further research.

Process of Observation

This method involves systematically observing and recording behaviors and interactions in natural settings. The observer may take notes, use audio or video recordings, or use other methods to document what they see. Process of observation is useful for understanding social interactions, cultural practices, and the context in which behaviors occur.

Record Keeping

This method involves keeping detailed records of observations, interviews, and other data collected during the research process. Record keeping is essential for ensuring the accuracy and reliability of the data, and for providing a basis for analysis and interpretation.

This method involves collecting data from a large sample of participants through a structured questionnaire. Surveys can be conducted in person, over the phone, through mail, or online. Surveys are useful for collecting data on attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, and for identifying patterns and trends in a population.

Qualitative data analysis is a process of turning unstructured data into meaningful insights. It involves extracting and organizing information from sources like interviews, focus groups, and surveys. The goal is to understand people’s attitudes, behaviors, and motivations

Qualitative Research Analysis Methods

Qualitative Research analysis methods involve a systematic approach to interpreting and making sense of the data collected in qualitative research. Here are some common qualitative data analysis methods:

Thematic Analysis

This method involves identifying patterns or themes in the data that are relevant to the research question. The researcher reviews the data, identifies keywords or phrases, and groups them into categories or themes. Thematic analysis is useful for identifying patterns across multiple data sources and for generating new insights into the research topic.

Content Analysis

This method involves analyzing the content of written or spoken language to identify key themes or concepts. Content analysis can be quantitative or qualitative. Qualitative content analysis involves close reading and interpretation of texts to identify recurring themes, concepts, and patterns. Content analysis is useful for identifying patterns in media messages, public discourse, and cultural trends.

Discourse Analysis

This method involves analyzing language to understand how it constructs meaning and shapes social interactions. Discourse analysis can involve a variety of methods, such as conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, and narrative analysis. Discourse analysis is useful for understanding how language shapes social interactions, cultural norms, and power relationships.

Grounded Theory Analysis

This method involves developing a theory or explanation based on the data collected. Grounded theory analysis starts with the data and uses an iterative process of coding and analysis to identify patterns and themes in the data. The theory or explanation that emerges is grounded in the data, rather than preconceived hypotheses. Grounded theory analysis is useful for understanding complex social phenomena and for generating new theoretical insights.

Narrative Analysis

This method involves analyzing the stories or narratives that participants share to gain insights into their experiences, attitudes, and beliefs. Narrative analysis can involve a variety of methods, such as structural analysis, thematic analysis, and discourse analysis. Narrative analysis is useful for understanding how individuals construct their identities, make sense of their experiences, and communicate their values and beliefs.

Phenomenological Analysis

This method involves analyzing how individuals make sense of their experiences and the meanings they attach to them. Phenomenological analysis typically involves in-depth interviews with participants to explore their experiences in detail. Phenomenological analysis is useful for understanding subjective experiences and for developing a rich understanding of human consciousness.

Comparative Analysis

This method involves comparing and contrasting data across different cases or groups to identify similarities and differences. Comparative analysis can be used to identify patterns or themes that are common across multiple cases, as well as to identify unique or distinctive features of individual cases. Comparative analysis is useful for understanding how social phenomena vary across different contexts and groups.

Applications of Qualitative Research

Qualitative research has many applications across different fields and industries. Here are some examples of how qualitative research is used:

• Market Research: Qualitative research is often used in market research to understand consumer attitudes, behaviors, and preferences. Researchers conduct focus groups and one-on-one interviews with consumers to gather insights into their experiences and perceptions of products and services.
• Health Care: Qualitative research is used in health care to explore patient experiences and perspectives on health and illness. Researchers conduct in-depth interviews with patients and their families to gather information on their experiences with different health care providers and treatments.
• Education: Qualitative research is used in education to understand student experiences and to develop effective teaching strategies. Researchers conduct classroom observations and interviews with students and teachers to gather insights into classroom dynamics and instructional practices.
• Social Work : Qualitative research is used in social work to explore social problems and to develop interventions to address them. Researchers conduct in-depth interviews with individuals and families to understand their experiences with poverty, discrimination, and other social problems.
• Anthropology : Qualitative research is used in anthropology to understand different cultures and societies. Researchers conduct ethnographic studies and observe and interview members of different cultural groups to gain insights into their beliefs, practices, and social structures.
• Psychology : Qualitative research is used in psychology to understand human behavior and mental processes. Researchers conduct in-depth interviews with individuals to explore their thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
• Public Policy : Qualitative research is used in public policy to explore public attitudes and to inform policy decisions. Researchers conduct focus groups and one-on-one interviews with members of the public to gather insights into their perspectives on different policy issues.

How to Conduct Qualitative Research

Here are some general steps for conducting qualitative research:

• Identify your research question: Qualitative research starts with a research question or set of questions that you want to explore. This question should be focused and specific, but also broad enough to allow for exploration and discovery.
• Select your research design: There are different types of qualitative research designs, including ethnography, case study, grounded theory, and phenomenology. You should select a design that aligns with your research question and that will allow you to gather the data you need to answer your research question.
• Recruit participants: Once you have your research question and design, you need to recruit participants. The number of participants you need will depend on your research design and the scope of your research. You can recruit participants through advertisements, social media, or through personal networks.
• Collect data: There are different methods for collecting qualitative data, including interviews, focus groups, observation, and document analysis. You should select the method or methods that align with your research design and that will allow you to gather the data you need to answer your research question.
• Analyze data: Once you have collected your data, you need to analyze it. This involves reviewing your data, identifying patterns and themes, and developing codes to organize your data. You can use different software programs to help you analyze your data, or you can do it manually.
• Interpret data: Once you have analyzed your data, you need to interpret it. This involves making sense of the patterns and themes you have identified, and developing insights and conclusions that answer your research question. You should be guided by your research question and use your data to support your conclusions.
• Communicate results: Once you have interpreted your data, you need to communicate your results. This can be done through academic papers, presentations, or reports. You should be clear and concise in your communication, and use examples and quotes from your data to support your findings.

Examples of Qualitative Research

Here are some real-time examples of qualitative research:

• Customer Feedback: A company may conduct qualitative research to understand the feedback and experiences of its customers. This may involve conducting focus groups or one-on-one interviews with customers to gather insights into their attitudes, behaviors, and preferences.
• Healthcare : A healthcare provider may conduct qualitative research to explore patient experiences and perspectives on health and illness. This may involve conducting in-depth interviews with patients and their families to gather information on their experiences with different health care providers and treatments.
• Education : An educational institution may conduct qualitative research to understand student experiences and to develop effective teaching strategies. This may involve conducting classroom observations and interviews with students and teachers to gather insights into classroom dynamics and instructional practices.
• Social Work: A social worker may conduct qualitative research to explore social problems and to develop interventions to address them. This may involve conducting in-depth interviews with individuals and families to understand their experiences with poverty, discrimination, and other social problems.
• Anthropology : An anthropologist may conduct qualitative research to understand different cultures and societies. This may involve conducting ethnographic studies and observing and interviewing members of different cultural groups to gain insights into their beliefs, practices, and social structures.
• Psychology : A psychologist may conduct qualitative research to understand human behavior and mental processes. This may involve conducting in-depth interviews with individuals to explore their thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
• Public Policy: A government agency or non-profit organization may conduct qualitative research to explore public attitudes and to inform policy decisions. This may involve conducting focus groups and one-on-one interviews with members of the public to gather insights into their perspectives on different policy issues.

Purpose of Qualitative Research

The purpose of qualitative research is to explore and understand the subjective experiences, behaviors, and perspectives of individuals or groups in a particular context. Unlike quantitative research, which focuses on numerical data and statistical analysis, qualitative research aims to provide in-depth, descriptive information that can help researchers develop insights and theories about complex social phenomena.

Qualitative research can serve multiple purposes, including:

• Exploring new or emerging phenomena : Qualitative research can be useful for exploring new or emerging phenomena, such as new technologies or social trends. This type of research can help researchers develop a deeper understanding of these phenomena and identify potential areas for further study.
• Understanding complex social phenomena : Qualitative research can be useful for exploring complex social phenomena, such as cultural beliefs, social norms, or political processes. This type of research can help researchers develop a more nuanced understanding of these phenomena and identify factors that may influence them.
• Generating new theories or hypotheses: Qualitative research can be useful for generating new theories or hypotheses about social phenomena. By gathering rich, detailed data about individuals’ experiences and perspectives, researchers can develop insights that may challenge existing theories or lead to new lines of inquiry.
• Providing context for quantitative data: Qualitative research can be useful for providing context for quantitative data. By gathering qualitative data alongside quantitative data, researchers can develop a more complete understanding of complex social phenomena and identify potential explanations for quantitative findings.

When to use Qualitative Research

Here are some situations where qualitative research may be appropriate:

• Exploring a new area: If little is known about a particular topic, qualitative research can help to identify key issues, generate hypotheses, and develop new theories.
• Understanding complex phenomena: Qualitative research can be used to investigate complex social, cultural, or organizational phenomena that are difficult to measure quantitatively.
• Investigating subjective experiences: Qualitative research is particularly useful for investigating the subjective experiences of individuals or groups, such as their attitudes, beliefs, values, or emotions.
• Conducting formative research: Qualitative research can be used in the early stages of a research project to develop research questions, identify potential research participants, and refine research methods.
• Evaluating interventions or programs: Qualitative research can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions or programs by collecting data on participants’ experiences, attitudes, and behaviors.

Characteristics of Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is characterized by several key features, including:

• Focus on subjective experience: Qualitative research is concerned with understanding the subjective experiences, beliefs, and perspectives of individuals or groups in a particular context. Researchers aim to explore the meanings that people attach to their experiences and to understand the social and cultural factors that shape these meanings.
• Use of open-ended questions: Qualitative research relies on open-ended questions that allow participants to provide detailed, in-depth responses. Researchers seek to elicit rich, descriptive data that can provide insights into participants’ experiences and perspectives.
• Sampling-based on purpose and diversity: Qualitative research often involves purposive sampling, in which participants are selected based on specific criteria related to the research question. Researchers may also seek to include participants with diverse experiences and perspectives to capture a range of viewpoints.
• Data collection through multiple methods: Qualitative research typically involves the use of multiple data collection methods, such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, and observation. This allows researchers to gather rich, detailed data from multiple sources, which can provide a more complete picture of participants’ experiences and perspectives.
• Inductive data analysis: Qualitative research relies on inductive data analysis, in which researchers develop theories and insights based on the data rather than testing pre-existing hypotheses. Researchers use coding and thematic analysis to identify patterns and themes in the data and to develop theories and explanations based on these patterns.
• Emphasis on researcher reflexivity: Qualitative research recognizes the importance of the researcher’s role in shaping the research process and outcomes. Researchers are encouraged to reflect on their own biases and assumptions and to be transparent about their role in the research process.

Advantages of Qualitative Research

Qualitative research offers several advantages over other research methods, including:

• Depth and detail: Qualitative research allows researchers to gather rich, detailed data that provides a deeper understanding of complex social phenomena. Through in-depth interviews, focus groups, and observation, researchers can gather detailed information about participants’ experiences and perspectives that may be missed by other research methods.
• Flexibility : Qualitative research is a flexible approach that allows researchers to adapt their methods to the research question and context. Researchers can adjust their research methods in real-time to gather more information or explore unexpected findings.
• Contextual understanding: Qualitative research is well-suited to exploring the social and cultural context in which individuals or groups are situated. Researchers can gather information about cultural norms, social structures, and historical events that may influence participants’ experiences and perspectives.
• Participant perspective : Qualitative research prioritizes the perspective of participants, allowing researchers to explore subjective experiences and understand the meanings that participants attach to their experiences.
• Theory development: Qualitative research can contribute to the development of new theories and insights about complex social phenomena. By gathering rich, detailed data and using inductive data analysis, researchers can develop new theories and explanations that may challenge existing understandings.
• Validity : Qualitative research can offer high validity by using multiple data collection methods, purposive and diverse sampling, and researcher reflexivity. This can help ensure that findings are credible and trustworthy.

Limitations of Qualitative Research

Qualitative research also has some limitations, including:

• Subjectivity : Qualitative research relies on the subjective interpretation of researchers, which can introduce bias into the research process. The researcher’s perspective, beliefs, and experiences can influence the way data is collected, analyzed, and interpreted.
• Limited generalizability: Qualitative research typically involves small, purposive samples that may not be representative of larger populations. This limits the generalizability of findings to other contexts or populations.
• Time-consuming: Qualitative research can be a time-consuming process, requiring significant resources for data collection, analysis, and interpretation.
• Resource-intensive: Qualitative research may require more resources than other research methods, including specialized training for researchers, specialized software for data analysis, and transcription services.
• Limited reliability: Qualitative research may be less reliable than quantitative research, as it relies on the subjective interpretation of researchers. This can make it difficult to replicate findings or compare results across different studies.
• Ethics and confidentiality: Qualitative research involves collecting sensitive information from participants, which raises ethical concerns about confidentiality and informed consent. Researchers must take care to protect the privacy and confidentiality of participants and obtain informed consent.

Also see Research Methods

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What is qualitative research.

Qualitative research methodologies seek to capture information that often can't be expressed numerically. These methodologies often include some level of interpretation from researchers as they collect information via observation, coded survey or interview responses, and so on. Researchers may use multiple qualitative methods in one study, as well as a theoretical or critical framework to help them interpret their data.

Qualitative research methods can be used to study:

• How are political and social attitudes formed? 
• How do people make decisions?
• What teaching or training methods are most effective?  

Qualitative Research Approaches

Action research.

In this type of study, researchers will actively pursue some kind of intervention, resolve a problem, or affect some kind of change. They will not only analyze the results but will also examine the challenges encountered through the process. 

Ethnography

Ethnographies are an in-depth, holistic type of research used to capture cultural practices, beliefs, traditions, and so on. Here, the researcher observes and interviews members of a culture — an ethnic group, a clique, members of a religion, etc. — and then analyzes their findings. 

Grounded Theory

Researchers will create and test a hypothesis using qualitative data. Often, researchers use grounded theory to understand decision-making, problem-solving, and other types of behavior.

Narrative Research

Researchers use this type of framework to understand different aspects of the human experience and how their subjects assign meaning to their experiences. Researchers use interviews to collect data from a small group of subjects, then discuss those results in the form of a narrative or story.

Phenomenology

This type of research attempts to understand the lived experiences of a group and/or how members of that group find meaning in their experiences. Researchers use interviews, observation, and other qualitative methods to collect data. 

Often used to share novel or unique information, case studies consist of a detailed, in-depth description of a single subject, pilot project, specific events, and so on. 

• Hossain, M.S., Runa, F., & Al Mosabbir, A. (2021). Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on rare diseases: A case study on thalassaemia patients in Bangladesh. Public Health in Practice, 2(100150), 1-3.
• Nožina, M. (2021). The Czech Rhino connection: A case study of Vietnamese wildlife trafficking networks’ operations across central Europe. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 27(2), 265-283.

Focus Groups

Researchers will recruit people to answer questions in small group settings. Focus group members may share similar demographics or be diverse, depending on the researchers' needs. Group members will then be asked a series of questions and have their responses recorded. While these responses may be coded and discussed numerically (e.g., 50% of group members responded negatively to a question), researchers will also use responses to provide context, nuance, and other details. 

• Dichabeng, P., Merat, N., & Markkula, G. (2021). Factors that influence the acceptance of future shared automated vehicles – A focus group study with United Kingdom drivers. Transportation Research: Part F, 82, 121–140.
• Maynard, E., Barton, S., Rivett, K., Maynard, O., & Davies, W. (2021). Because ‘grown-ups don’t always get it right’: Allyship with children in research—From research question to authorship. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 18(4), 518–536.

Observational Study

Researchers will arrange to observe (usually in an unobtrusive way) a set of subjects in specific conditions. For example, researchers might visit a school cafeteria to learn about the food choices students make or set up trail cameras to collect information about animal behavior in the area. 

• He, J. Y., Chan, P. W., Li, Q. S., Li, L., Zhang, L., & Yang, H. L. (2022). Observations of wind and turbulence structures of Super Typhoons Hato and Mangkhut over land from a 356 m high meteorological tower. Atmospheric Research, 265(105910), 1-18.
• Zerovnik Spela, Kos Mitja, & Locatelli Igor. (2022). Initiation of insulin therapy in patients with type 2 diabetes: An observational study. Acta Pharmaceutica, 72(1), 147–157.

Open-Ended Surveys

Unlike quantitative surveys, open-ended surveys require respondents to answer the questions in their own words. 

• Mujcic, A., Blankers, M., Yildirim, D., Boon, B., & Engels, R. (2021). Cancer survivors’ views on digital support for smoking cessation and alcohol moderation: a survey and qualitative study. BMC Public Health, 21(1), 1-13.
• Smith, S. D., Hall, J. P., & Kurth, N. K. (2021). Perspectives on health policy from people with disabilities. Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 32(3), 224–232.

Structured or Semi-Structured Interviews

Researchers will recruit a small number of people who fit pre-determined criteria (e.g., people in a certain profession) and ask each the same set of questions, one-on-one. Semi-structured interviews will include opportunities for the interviewee to provide additional information they weren't asked about by the researcher.

• Gibbs, D., Haven-Tang, C., & Ritchie, C. (2021). Harmless flirtations or co-creation? Exploring flirtatious encounters in hospitable experiences. Tourism & Hospitality Research, 21(4), 473–486.
• Hongying Dai, Ramos, A., Tamrakar, N., Cheney, M., Samson, K., & Grimm, B. (2021). School personnel’s responses to school-based vaping prevention program: A qualitative study. Health Behavior & Policy Review, 8(2), 130–147.
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Qualitative Research: Characteristics, Design, Methods & Examples

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“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted“ (Albert Einstein)

Qualitative research is a process used for the systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of non-numerical data (Punch, 2013). 

Qualitative research can be used to: (i) gain deep contextual understandings of the subjective social reality of individuals and (ii) to answer questions about experience and meaning from the participant’s perspective (Hammarberg et al., 2016).

Unlike quantitative research, which focuses on gathering and analyzing numerical data for statistical analysis, qualitative research focuses on thematic and contextual information.

Characteristics of Qualitative Research 

Reality is socially constructed.

Qualitative research aims to understand how participants make meaning of their experiences – individually or in social contexts. It assumes there is no objective reality and that the social world is interpreted (Yilmaz, 2013). 

The primacy of subject matter 

The primary aim of qualitative research is to understand the perspectives, experiences, and beliefs of individuals who have experienced the phenomenon selected for research rather than the average experiences of groups of people (Minichiello, 1990).

Variables are complex, interwoven, and difficult to measure

Factors such as experiences, behaviors, and attitudes are complex and interwoven, so they cannot be reduced to isolated variables , making them difficult to measure quantitatively.

However, a qualitative approach enables participants to describe what, why, or how they were thinking/ feeling during a phenomenon being studied (Yilmaz, 2013). 

Emic (insider’s point of view)

The phenomenon being studied is centered on the participants’ point of view (Minichiello, 1990).

Emic is used to describe how participants interact, communicate, and behave in the context of the research setting (Scarduzio, 2017).

Why Conduct Qualitative Research? 

In order to gain a deeper understanding of how people experience the world, individuals are studied in their natural setting. This enables the researcher to understand a phenomenon close to how participants experience it. 

Qualitative research allows researchers to gain an in-depth understanding, which is difficult to attain using quantitative methods. 

An in-depth understanding is attained since qualitative techniques allow participants to freely disclose their experiences, thoughts, and feelings without constraint (Tenny et al., 2022). 

This helps to further investigate and understand quantitative data by discovering reasons for the outcome of a study – answering the why question behind statistics. 

The exploratory nature of qualitative research helps to generate hypotheses that can then be tested quantitatively (Busetto et al., 2020).

To design hypotheses, theory must be researched using qualitative methods to find out what is important in order to begin research. 

For example, by conducting interviews or focus groups with key stakeholders to discover what is important to them. 

Examples of qualitative research questions include: 

• How does stress influence young adults’ behavior?
• What factors influence students’ school attendance rates in developed countries?
• How do adults interpret binge drinking in the UK?
• What are the psychological impacts of cervical cancer screening in women?
• How can mental health lessons be integrated into the school curriculum? 

Collecting Qualitative Data

There are four main research design methods used to collect qualitative data: observations, interviews,  focus groups, and ethnography.

Observations

This method involves watching and recording phenomena as they occur in nature. Observation can be divided into two types: participant and non-participant observation.

In participant observation, the researcher actively participates in the situation/events being observed.

In non-participant observation, the researcher is not an active part of the observation and tries not to influence the behaviors they are observing (Busetto et al., 2020). 

Observations can be covert (participants are unaware that a researcher is observing them) or overt (participants are aware of the researcher’s presence and know they are being observed).

However, awareness of an observer’s presence may influence participants’ behavior. 

Interviews give researchers a window into the world of a participant by seeking their account of an event, situation, or phenomenon. They are usually conducted on a one-to-one basis and can be distinguished according to the level at which they are structured (Punch, 2013). 

Structured interviews involve predetermined questions and sequences to ensure replicability and comparability. However, they are unable to explore emerging issues.

Informal interviews consist of spontaneous, casual conversations which are closer to the truth of a phenomenon. However, information is gathered using quick notes made by the researcher and is therefore subject to recall bias. 

Semi-structured interviews have a flexible structure, phrasing, and placement so emerging issues can be explored (Denny & Weckesser, 2022).

The use of probing questions and clarification can lead to a detailed understanding, but semi-structured interviews can be time-consuming and subject to interviewer bias. 

Focus groups 

Similar to interviews, focus groups elicit a rich and detailed account of an experience. However, focus groups are more dynamic since participants with shared characteristics construct this account together (Denny & Weckesser, 2022).

A shared narrative is built between participants to capture a group experience shaped by a shared context. 

The researcher takes on the role of a moderator, who will establish ground rules and guide the discussion by following a topic guide to focus the group discussions.

Typically, focus groups have 4-10 participants as a discussion can be difficult to facilitate with more than this, and this number allows everyone the time to speak.

Ethnography

Ethnography is a methodology used to study a group of people’s behaviors and social interactions in their environment (Reeves et al., 2008).

Data are collected using methods such as observations, field notes, or structured/ unstructured interviews.

The aim of ethnography is to provide detailed, holistic insights into people’s behavior and perspectives within their natural setting. In order to achieve this, researchers immerse themselves in a community or organization. 

Due to the flexibility and real-world focus of ethnography, researchers are able to gather an in-depth, nuanced understanding of people’s experiences, knowledge and perspectives that are influenced by culture and society.

In order to develop a representative picture of a particular culture/ context, researchers must conduct extensive field work. 

This can be time-consuming as researchers may need to immerse themselves into a community/ culture for a few days, or possibly a few years.

Qualitative Data Analysis Methods

Different methods can be used for analyzing qualitative data. The researcher chooses based on the objectives of their study. 

The researcher plays a key role in the interpretation of data, making decisions about the coding, theming, decontextualizing, and recontextualizing of data (Starks & Trinidad, 2007). 

Grounded theory

Grounded theory is a qualitative method specifically designed to inductively generate theory from data. It was developed by Glaser and Strauss in 1967 (Glaser & Strauss, 2017).

 This methodology aims to develop theories (rather than test hypotheses) that explain a social process, action, or interaction (Petty et al., 2012). To inform the developing theory, data collection and analysis run simultaneously. 

There are three key types of coding used in grounded theory: initial (open), intermediate (axial), and advanced (selective) coding. 

Throughout the analysis, memos should be created to document methodological and theoretical ideas about the data. Data should be collected and analyzed until data saturation is reached and a theory is developed. 

Content analysis

Content analysis was first used in the early twentieth century to analyze textual materials such as newspapers and political speeches.

Content analysis is a research method used to identify and analyze the presence and patterns of themes, concepts, or words in data (Vaismoradi et al., 2013). 

This research method can be used to analyze data in different formats, which can be written, oral, or visual. 

The goal of content analysis is to develop themes that capture the underlying meanings of data (Schreier, 2012). 

Qualitative content analysis can be used to validate existing theories, support the development of new models and theories, and provide in-depth descriptions of particular settings or experiences.

The following six steps provide a guideline for how to conduct qualitative content analysis.

• Define a Research Question : To start content analysis, a clear research question should be developed.
• Identify and Collect Data : Establish the inclusion criteria for your data. Find the relevant sources to analyze.
• Define the Unit or Theme of Analysis : Categorize the content into themes. Themes can be a word, phrase, or sentence.
• Develop Rules for Coding your Data : Define a set of coding rules to ensure that all data are coded consistently.
• Code the Data : Follow the coding rules to categorize data into themes.
• Analyze the Results and Draw Conclusions : Examine the data to identify patterns and draw conclusions in relation to your research question.

Discourse analysis

Discourse analysis is a research method used to study written/ spoken language in relation to its social context (Wood & Kroger, 2000).

In discourse analysis, the researcher interprets details of language materials and the context in which it is situated.

Discourse analysis aims to understand the functions of language (how language is used in real life) and how meaning is conveyed by language in different contexts. Researchers use discourse analysis to investigate social groups and how language is used to achieve specific communication goals.

Different methods of discourse analysis can be used depending on the aims and objectives of a study. However, the following steps provide a guideline on how to conduct discourse analysis.

• Define the Research Question : Develop a relevant research question to frame the analysis.
• Gather Data and Establish the Context : Collect research materials (e.g., interview transcripts, documents). Gather factual details and review the literature to construct a theory about the social and historical context of your study.
• Analyze the Content : Closely examine various components of the text, such as the vocabulary, sentences, paragraphs, and structure of the text. Identify patterns relevant to the research question to create codes, then group these into themes.
• Review the Results : Reflect on the findings to examine the function of the language, and the meaning and context of the discourse. 

Thematic analysis

Thematic analysis is a method used to identify, interpret, and report patterns in data, such as commonalities or contrasts. 

Although the origin of thematic analysis can be traced back to the early twentieth century, understanding and clarity of thematic analysis is attributed to Braun and Clarke (2006).

Thematic analysis aims to develop themes (patterns of meaning) across a dataset to address a research question. 

In thematic analysis, qualitative data is gathered using techniques such as interviews, focus groups, and questionnaires. Audio recordings are transcribed. The dataset is then explored and interpreted by a researcher to identify patterns. 

This occurs through the rigorous process of data familiarisation, coding, theme development, and revision. These identified patterns provide a summary of the dataset and can be used to address a research question.

Themes are developed by exploring the implicit and explicit meanings within the data. Two different approaches are used to generate themes: inductive and deductive. 

An inductive approach allows themes to emerge from the data. In contrast, a deductive approach uses existing theories or knowledge to apply preconceived ideas to the data.

Phases of Thematic Analysis

Braun and Clarke (2006) provide a guide of the six phases of thematic analysis. These phases can be applied flexibly to fit research questions and data. 

Template analysis

Template analysis refers to a specific method of thematic analysis which uses hierarchical coding (Brooks et al., 2014).

Template analysis is used to analyze textual data, for example, interview transcripts or open-ended responses on a written questionnaire.

To conduct template analysis, a coding template must be developed (usually from a subset of the data) and subsequently revised and refined. This template represents the themes identified by researchers as important in the dataset. 

Codes are ordered hierarchically within the template, with the highest-level codes demonstrating overarching themes in the data and lower-level codes representing constituent themes with a narrower focus.

A guideline for the main procedural steps for conducting template analysis is outlined below.

• Familiarization with the Data : Read (and reread) the dataset in full. Engage, reflect, and take notes on data that may be relevant to the research question.
• Preliminary Coding : Identify initial codes using guidance from the a priori codes, identified before the analysis as likely to be beneficial and relevant to the analysis.
• Organize Themes : Organize themes into meaningful clusters. Consider the relationships between the themes both within and between clusters.
• Produce an Initial Template : Develop an initial template. This may be based on a subset of the data.
• Apply and Develop the Template : Apply the initial template to further data and make any necessary modifications. Refinements of the template may include adding themes, removing themes, or changing the scope/title of themes. 
• Finalize Template : Finalize the template, then apply it to the entire dataset. 

Frame analysis

Frame analysis is a comparative form of thematic analysis which systematically analyzes data using a matrix output.

Ritchie and Spencer (1994) developed this set of techniques to analyze qualitative data in applied policy research. Frame analysis aims to generate theory from data.

Frame analysis encourages researchers to organize and manage their data using summarization.

This results in a flexible and unique matrix output, in which individual participants (or cases) are represented by rows and themes are represented by columns. 

Each intersecting cell is used to summarize findings relating to the corresponding participant and theme.

Frame analysis has five distinct phases which are interrelated, forming a methodical and rigorous framework.

• Familiarization with the Data : Familiarize yourself with all the transcripts. Immerse yourself in the details of each transcript and start to note recurring themes.
• Develop a Theoretical Framework : Identify recurrent/ important themes and add them to a chart. Provide a framework/ structure for the analysis.
• Indexing : Apply the framework systematically to the entire study data.
• Summarize Data in Analytical Framework : Reduce the data into brief summaries of participants’ accounts.
• Mapping and Interpretation : Compare themes and subthemes and check against the original transcripts. Group the data into categories and provide an explanation for them.

Preventing Bias in Qualitative Research

To evaluate qualitative studies, the CASP (Critical Appraisal Skills Programme) checklist for qualitative studies can be used to ensure all aspects of a study have been considered (CASP, 2018).

The quality of research can be enhanced and assessed using criteria such as checklists, reflexivity, co-coding, and member-checking. 

Co-coding 

Relying on only one researcher to interpret rich and complex data may risk key insights and alternative viewpoints being missed. Therefore, coding is often performed by multiple researchers.

A common strategy must be defined at the beginning of the coding process  (Busetto et al., 2020). This includes establishing a useful coding list and finding a common definition of individual codes.

Transcripts are initially coded independently by researchers and then compared and consolidated to minimize error or bias and to bring confirmation of findings. 

Member checking

Member checking (or respondent validation) involves checking back with participants to see if the research resonates with their experiences (Russell & Gregory, 2003).

Data can be returned to participants after data collection or when results are first available. For example, participants may be provided with their interview transcript and asked to verify whether this is a complete and accurate representation of their views.

Participants may then clarify or elaborate on their responses to ensure they align with their views (Shenton, 2004).

This feedback becomes part of data collection and ensures accurate descriptions/ interpretations of phenomena (Mays & Pope, 2000). 

Reflexivity in qualitative research

Reflexivity typically involves examining your own judgments, practices, and belief systems during data collection and analysis. It aims to identify any personal beliefs which may affect the research. 

Reflexivity is essential in qualitative research to ensure methodological transparency and complete reporting. This enables readers to understand how the interaction between the researcher and participant shapes the data.

Depending on the research question and population being researched, factors that need to be considered include the experience of the researcher, how the contact was established and maintained, age, gender, and ethnicity.

These details are important because, in qualitative research, the researcher is a dynamic part of the research process and actively influences the outcome of the research (Boeije, 2014). 

Reflexivity Example

Who you are and your characteristics influence how you collect and analyze data. Here is an example of a reflexivity statement for research on smoking. I am a 30-year-old white female from a middle-class background. I live in the southwest of England and have been educated to master’s level. I have been involved in two research projects on oral health. I have never smoked, but I have witnessed how smoking can cause ill health from my volunteering in a smoking cessation clinic. My research aspirations are to help to develop interventions to help smokers quit.

Establishing Trustworthiness in Qualitative Research

Trustworthiness is a concept used to assess the quality and rigor of qualitative research. Four criteria are used to assess a study’s trustworthiness: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability.

Credibility in Qualitative Research

Credibility refers to how accurately the results represent the reality and viewpoints of the participants.

To establish credibility in research, participants’ views and the researcher’s representation of their views need to align (Tobin & Begley, 2004).

To increase the credibility of findings, researchers may use data source triangulation, investigator triangulation, peer debriefing, or member checking (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). 

Transferability in Qualitative Research

Transferability refers to how generalizable the findings are: whether the findings may be applied to another context, setting, or group (Tobin & Begley, 2004).

Transferability can be enhanced by giving thorough and in-depth descriptions of the research setting, sample, and methods (Nowell et al., 2017). 

Dependability in Qualitative Research

Dependability is the extent to which the study could be replicated under similar conditions and the findings would be consistent.

Researchers can establish dependability using methods such as audit trails so readers can see the research process is logical and traceable (Koch, 1994).

Confirmability in Qualitative Research

Confirmability is concerned with establishing that there is a clear link between the researcher’s interpretations/ findings and the data.

Researchers can achieve confirmability by demonstrating how conclusions and interpretations were arrived at (Nowell et al., 2017).

This enables readers to understand the reasoning behind the decisions made. 

Audit Trails in Qualitative Research

An audit trail provides evidence of the decisions made by the researcher regarding theory, research design, and data collection, as well as the steps they have chosen to manage, analyze, and report data. 

The researcher must provide a clear rationale to demonstrate how conclusions were reached in their study.

A clear description of the research path must be provided to enable readers to trace through the researcher’s logic (Halpren, 1983).

Researchers should maintain records of the raw data, field notes, transcripts, and a reflective journal in order to provide a clear audit trail. 

Discovery of unexpected data

Open-ended questions in qualitative research mean the researcher can probe an interview topic and enable the participant to elaborate on responses in an unrestricted manner.

This allows unexpected data to emerge, which can lead to further research into that topic. 

Flexibility

Data collection and analysis can be modified and adapted to take the research in a different direction if new ideas or patterns emerge in the data.

This enables researchers to investigate new opportunities while firmly maintaining their research goals. 

Naturalistic settings

The behaviors of participants are recorded in real-world settings. Studies that use real-world settings have high ecological validity since participants behave more authentically. 

Limitations

Time-consuming .

Qualitative research results in large amounts of data which often need to be transcribed and analyzed manually.

Even when software is used, transcription can be inaccurate, and using software for analysis can result in many codes which need to be condensed into themes. 

Subjectivity 

The researcher has an integral role in collecting and interpreting qualitative data. Therefore, the conclusions reached are from their perspective and experience.

Consequently, interpretations of data from another researcher may vary greatly. 

Limited generalizability

The aim of qualitative research is to provide a detailed, contextualized understanding of an aspect of the human experience from a relatively small sample size.

Despite rigorous analysis procedures, conclusions drawn cannot be generalized to the wider population since data may be biased or unrepresentative.

Therefore, results are only applicable to a small group of the population. 

Extraneous variables

Qualitative research is often conducted in real-world settings. This may cause results to be unreliable since extraneous variables may affect the data, for example:

• Situational variables : different environmental conditions may influence participants’ behavior in a study. The random variation in factors (such as noise or lighting) may be difficult to control in real-world settings.
• Participant characteristics : this includes any characteristics that may influence how a participant answers/ behaves in a study. This may include a participant’s mood, gender, age, ethnicity, sexual identity, IQ, etc.
• Experimenter effect : experimenter effect refers to how a researcher’s unintentional influence can change the outcome of a study. This occurs when (i) their interactions with participants unintentionally change participants’ behaviors or (ii) due to errors in observation, interpretation, or analysis. 

What sample size should qualitative research be?

The sample size for qualitative studies has been recommended to include a minimum of 12 participants to reach data saturation (Braun, 2013).

Are surveys qualitative or quantitative?

Surveys can be used to gather information from a sample qualitatively or quantitatively. Qualitative surveys use open-ended questions to gather detailed information from a large sample using free text responses.

The use of open-ended questions allows for unrestricted responses where participants use their own words, enabling the collection of more in-depth information than closed-ended questions.

In contrast, quantitative surveys consist of closed-ended questions with multiple-choice answer options. Quantitative surveys are ideal to gather a statistical representation of a population.

What are the ethical considerations of qualitative research?

Before conducting a study, you must think about any risks that could occur and take steps to prevent them. Participant Protection : Researchers must protect participants from physical and mental harm. This means you must not embarrass, frighten, offend, or harm participants. Transparency : Researchers are obligated to clearly communicate how they will collect, store, analyze, use, and share the data. Confidentiality : You need to consider how to maintain the confidentiality and anonymity of participants’ data.

What is triangulation in qualitative research?

Triangulation refers to the use of several approaches in a study to comprehensively understand phenomena. This method helps to increase the validity and credibility of research findings. 

Types of triangulation include method triangulation (using multiple methods to gather data); investigator triangulation (multiple researchers for collecting/ analyzing data), theory triangulation (comparing several theoretical perspectives to explain a phenomenon), and data source triangulation (using data from various times, locations, and people; Carter et al., 2014).

Why is qualitative research important?

Qualitative research allows researchers to describe and explain the social world. The exploratory nature of qualitative research helps to generate hypotheses that can then be tested quantitatively.

In qualitative research, participants are able to express their thoughts, experiences, and feelings without constraint.

Additionally, researchers are able to follow up on participants’ answers in real-time, generating valuable discussion around a topic. This enables researchers to gain a nuanced understanding of phenomena which is difficult to attain using quantitative methods.

What is coding data in qualitative research?

Coding data is a qualitative data analysis strategy in which a section of text is assigned with a label that describes its content.

These labels may be words or phrases which represent important (and recurring) patterns in the data.

This process enables researchers to identify related content across the dataset. Codes can then be used to group similar types of data to generate themes.

What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?

Qualitative research involves the collection and analysis of non-numerical data in order to understand experiences and meanings from the participant’s perspective.

This can provide rich, in-depth insights on complicated phenomena. Qualitative data may be collected using interviews, focus groups, or observations.

In contrast, quantitative research involves the collection and analysis of numerical data to measure the frequency, magnitude, or relationships of variables. This can provide objective and reliable evidence that can be generalized to the wider population.

Quantitative data may be collected using closed-ended questionnaires or experiments.

What is trustworthiness in qualitative research?

Trustworthiness is a concept used to assess the quality and rigor of qualitative research. Four criteria are used to assess a study’s trustworthiness: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. 

Credibility refers to how accurately the results represent the reality and viewpoints of the participants. Transferability refers to whether the findings may be applied to another context, setting, or group.

Dependability is the extent to which the findings are consistent and reliable. Confirmability refers to the objectivity of findings (not influenced by the bias or assumptions of researchers).

What is data saturation in qualitative research?

Data saturation is a methodological principle used to guide the sample size of a qualitative research study.

Data saturation is proposed as a necessary methodological component in qualitative research (Saunders et al., 2018) as it is a vital criterion for discontinuing data collection and/or analysis. 

The intention of data saturation is to find “no new data, no new themes, no new coding, and ability to replicate the study” (Guest et al., 2006). Therefore, enough data has been gathered to make conclusions.

Why is sampling in qualitative research important?

In quantitative research, large sample sizes are used to provide statistically significant quantitative estimates.

This is because quantitative research aims to provide generalizable conclusions that represent populations.

However, the aim of sampling in qualitative research is to gather data that will help the researcher understand the depth, complexity, variation, or context of a phenomenon. The small sample sizes in qualitative studies support the depth of case-oriented analysis.

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Busetto, L., Wick, W., & Gumbinger, C. (2020). How to use and assess qualitative research methods. Neurological research and practice , 2 (1), 14-14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s42466-020-00059-z 

Carter, N., Bryant-Lukosius, D., DiCenso, A., Blythe, J., & Neville, A. J. (2014). The use of triangulation in qualitative research. Oncology nursing forum , 41 (5), 545–547. https://doi.org/10.1188/14.ONF.545-547

Critical Appraisal Skills Programme. (2018). CASP Checklist: 10 questions to help you make sense of a Qualitative research. https://casp-uk.net/images/checklist/documents/CASP-Qualitative-Studies-Checklist/CASP-Qualitative-Checklist-2018_fillable_form.pdf Accessed: March 15 2023

Clarke, V., & Braun, V. (2013). Successful qualitative research: A practical guide for beginners. Successful Qualitative Research , 1-400.

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A Guide to Using Qualitative Research Methodology

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Executive Summary

This guide to using qualitative research methodology is designed to help you think about all the steps you need to take to ensure that you produce a good quality piece of work.

The guide starts by telling you what qualitative methodology is and when to use it in the field (understand people’s belief system, perspectives, experiences). It also flags the most important ethical issues that you will encounter (consent and confidentiality).

The second part of the guide tackles how you can concretely develop qualitative research designs; starting from clearly defining your research question (one of the most important steps in your research!), to how to develop a research protocol; and finally giving you tips on the sampling methods which are available and how to use them.

The third part details how you can actually obtain the data - what methods can you use to get the information you want? The three main methods (individual interviews, group interviews and observational methods) are explained, and the steps to build these different methods are outlined (How to do a topic guide? How to ask questions? How to develop interview skills and manage expectations? How to run group discussions? etc)

Finally, the fourth chapter looks into how, once you have collected all the data, you can manage it and analyse it. For the management of data, a few practical issues are addressed, such as confidentiality and security, translation and recording. The analysis section will give you clues as to how to use thematic or narrative analysis, what validation strategies you need to think of, what good practice guidelines you should follow, and whether or not to use a computer software.

Case studies will be developed throughout the year and put on the open repository.

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• Open access
• Published: 04 May 2024

Delivering clinical tutorials to medical students using the Microsoft HoloLens 2: A mixed-methods evaluation

• Murray Connolly 1 ,
• Gabriella Iohom 1 ,
• Niall O’Brien 2 ,
• James Volz 2 ,
• Aogán O’Muircheartaigh 3 ,
• Paschalitsa Serchan 3 ,
• Agatha Biculescu 3 ,
• Kedar Govind Gadre 3 ,
• Corina Soare 1 ,
• Laura Griseto 3 &
• George Shorten 1  

BMC Medical Education volume  24 , Article number:  498 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Metrics details

Mixed reality offers potential educational advantages in the delivery of clinical teaching. Holographic artefacts can be rendered within a shared learning environment using devices such as the Microsoft HoloLens 2. In addition to facilitating remote access to clinical events, mixed reality may provide a means of sharing mental models, including the vertical and horizontal integration of curricular elements at the bedside. This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility of delivering clinical tutorials using the Microsoft HoloLens 2 and the learning efficacy achieved.

Following receipt of institutional ethical approval, tutorials on preoperative anaesthetic history taking and upper airway examination were facilitated by a tutor who wore the HoloLens device. The tutor interacted face to face with a patient and two-way audio-visual interaction was facilitated using the HoloLens 2 and Microsoft Teams with groups of students who were located in a separate tutorial room. Holographic functions were employed by the tutor. The tutor completed the System Usability Scale, the tutor, technical facilitator, patients, and students provided quantitative and qualitative feedback, and three students participated in semi-structured feedback interviews. Students completed pre- and post-tutorial, and end-of-year examinations on the tutorial topics.

Twelve patients and 78 students participated across 12 separate tutorials. Five students did not complete the examinations and were excluded from efficacy calculations. Student feedback contained 90 positive comments, including the technology’s ability to broadcast the tutor’s point-of-vision, and 62 negative comments, where students noted issues with the audio-visual quality, and concerns that the tutorial was not as beneficial as traditional in-person clinical tutorials. The technology and tutorial structure were viewed favourably by the tutor, facilitator and patients. Significant improvement was observed between students’ pre- and post-tutorial MCQ scores (mean 59.2% Vs 84.7%, p  < 0.001).

Conclusions

This study demonstrates the feasibility of using the HoloLens 2 to facilitate remote bedside tutorials which incorporate holographic learning artefacts. Students’ examination performance supports substantial learning of the tutorial topics. The tutorial structure was agreeable to students, patients and tutor. Our results support the feasibility of offering effective clinical teaching and learning opportunities using the HoloLens 2. However, the technical limitations and costs of the device are significant, and further research is required to assess the effectiveness of this tutorial format against in-person tutorials before wider roll out of this technology can be recommended as a result of this study

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Clinical tutorials which include encounters with real patients are recognised as integral elements in medical education [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. Sir William Osler famously stated that “medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the classroom.” [ 4 ] However, many medical schools are facing challenges in delivering clinical education to students in an environment where there are increasing numbers of students, a limited number of patients and tutors, and increased scrutiny regarding the costs and environmental impacts of travel [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]. The COVID-19 pandemic also had a significant impact on in-person medical education in many countries, where students’ access to patients was severely curtailed [ 9 , 10 ]..

The argument that medical education requires interactive tutorials on actual patients is supported by various educational theories. Bandura’s Social Learning Theory and Social Cognitive Theory propose that students learn via attention, retention, reproduction and motivation [ 11 , 12 ]. This supports the need for direct observation and modelling of relevant clinical role-models participating in doctor-patient interactions [ 13 , 14 ]..

The Constructivist theory is based on the premise that the act of learning is based on a process which connects new knowledge to pre-existing knowledge [ 15 , 16 ]. Vertical Integration in medical education involves the integration of aspects of the curriculum across time, namely the integration of basic sciences and clinical sciences [ 17 , 18 , 19 ]..

Providing medical education within these frameworks, prioritising student exposure to direct interactions with clinicians and patients, and vertical integration of curriculum material, in situations where physical access to patients may be limited by numbers, logistics or infection control concerns poses a significant challenge to medical schools around the world. Utilising technology to facilitate the delivery of clinical education remotely may present a solution to these issues.

The broadcast of bedside tutorials to a remote location can be delivered using a “third-person” perspective, via a fixed or mobile broadcasting device, or using a first-person perspective, via a device mounted on the tutor. Devices which provide a first-person perspective are typically head-mounted-display devices (HMDs). The capabilities of these devices range widely, from basic two-way communication with a remote location, to devices with Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) functions which allow the integration of holographic artefacts into tutorials.

Augmented reality (AR) is a virtual environment that allows the user to view both their physical environment and virtual elements in real-time. Mixed Reality (MR) is an extension of AR which allows the real and holographic elements to interact [ 20 , 21 ]..

The use of AR and MR are expanding in many industries including healthcare, education, engineering, and manufacturing [ 22 , 23 , 24 ]. MR investigated in a variety of settings pertaining to medical education. Many early studies focused on teaching relevant anatomy, and more recently studies have evaluated the use of MR in procedural training, and its use in streaming of clinical ward-rounds to medical students [ 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 ]..

Head-mounted-display devices which offer MR experiences are growing in number and capability [ 34 ].The Microsoft HoloLens2 is one such device which enables the creation of an immersive Mixed Reality environment and can superimpose holographic images onto the user’s surroundings.

The HoloLens 2 has a number of specific capabilities which can be utilised in the virtual delivery of in-person clinical tutorials.The device can facilitate educationally effective, three-way communication between students, tutors and patients, as well as facilitating the incorporation of mixed reality elements into tutorials. The MR capabilities may provide a means of sharing holographic artefacts such as images and diagrams, which can allow the vertical and horizontal integration of curricular elements at the bedside.Utilisation of the MR capabilities of the device may improve student experiences and learning, in particular through instructional scaffolding (e.g rendering cell, organ or system pathways proximate to a patient) [ 35 ] Given the device’s connectivity capabilities, students can be in a separate geographical location to the patient and tutor. This has the potential to decrease student travel requirements and enables the delivery of tutorials to students in multiple different locations simultaneously [ 36 ]. The tutorial can also be delivered to a greater number of students than would be practical in a traditional bedside clinical tutorial environment. This can decrease the burden on both tutors and patients in comparison to multiple smaller group sessions. Finally, infection control risks are reduced as only the tutor enters patients’ environments.

Study goals

There is little published research to date which robustly evaluates the use of the HoloLens in replicating bedside tutorials while also incorporating mixed reality elements into the tutorials. The aims of this study are to evaluate the use of the Microsoft HoloLens 2 device to deliver a tutorial on preoperative anaesthetic history and upper airway examination to medical students in a remote location, while incorporating MR holograms in the tutorial delivery. Specific objectives include evaluating the feasibility of delivering tutorials with the HoloLens device, assessing the learning efficacy of these tutorials, and assessing student, tutor, facilitator, and patient perspectives of the tutorials.

This study was approved by the Clinical Research Ethic Committee of the Cork Teaching Hospitals, and the University College Cork Research and Postgraduate Affairs Committee. All participants including students, patients, tutor and technical facilitator provided written informed consent prior to inclusion in the study.

Study population

University College Cork medical students from two cohorts, third year Graduate-Entry and fourth year Direct-Entry medical students attending a tertiary referral teaching hospital for a clinical attachment with the Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine were invited to participate in the study. Both groups are in their second-last year of medical training, and thus have completed modules and examinations in basic medical sciences and clinical practice in the preceding years, with a maximum of 1 week experience in the field of anaesthesia [ 37 , 38 , 39 ]. Patients attending Cork University Hospital for scheduled surgery were selected and approached for consent by tutors according to clinical relevance. All participants were 18 years or over and were deemed capable of providing consent. Each student provided information on their age, gender and previous third-level qualifications.

Tutorial Sturcture

A one-hour tutorial focusing on completing a preoperative history and focused assessment of the upper airway was developed by MC (adjunct clinical lecturer), GI (Senior Clinical Lecturer) and GS (Professor) in line with the University curriculum’s learning objectives. (Fig. 1 ) Tutorials were delivered on a weekly basis to groups of third year Graduate Entry and fourth year Direct Entry medical students across the 2021–2022 academic year.

Preoperative Anaesthetic History and Focused Preoperative Assessment of the upper airway tutorial structure

All tutorials were delivered by one tutor (MC) and assisted by a technical facilitator (NOB), both males aged in their thirties, who enabled the connection between the site of the clinical encounter and nearby tutorial room. The tutor had no prior experience with the HoloLens 2 device or other AR HMDs prior to participation in this study; the facilitator had significant experience in its use. The tutor was given a period of familiarisation with the device which included using the Microsoft “HoloLens Tips” app, which provides a structured tutorial on the various hand gestures used to control the device, as well as a number of practice calls in order to test the network and audiovisual equipment in the tutorial room [ 40 ]. This familiarisation period totalled approximately 3 hours.

During the tutorial, the tutor (MC) interacted with a patient (face to face) in the pre-or postoperative units and remotely with a small group of [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ] students in a nearby tutorial room. The remote interaction occurred via Hololens 2 worn by the tutor, institutional Wi-Fi (Eduroam), and Microsoft Teams.He demonstrated and explained the techniques of preoperative history taking and preoperative upper airway assessment.

Throughout the patient assessment the tutor interacted both with the patient and with the students as if conducting an in-person tutorial, providing additional information, asking the students pertinent questions, and expanding on the findings of the patient’s history and physical examination. Students communicated with the patient by asking questions via the tutor.

Resources employed

Resources necessary to provide the tutorials via the HoloLens included capital costs of the HoloLens device (€3500) and microphone (€88) as well as annual licence costs of €275 per user ( n  = 4). Human resources employed in developing the tutorials and trialling equipment included approximately 20 hours of training, remote assistance (Microsoft) and collaboration between the tutor (MC), Professor (GS) and facilitator (NOB), as well as 5 hours input from the Senior Clinical Lecturer (GI).

Internet connectivity

An internet connection of at least 1.5mpbs of bandwidth is recommended by Microsoft for best audio, visual and content sharing experience [ 41 ]. Secure, password protected wireless internet access via the University institutional network (Eduroam) was utilised by both tutor and students.

In most tutorials, broadcasts were hosted by an MSI running the Windows 10 operating system, audio was amplified using a Bose SoundLink Mini portable speaker and video was screened via a HDMI cable to a 36″ monitor. In one tutorial students accessed the tutorial via their personal smartphones or laptops. In order to bypass the noise cancellation technology within the HoloLens an external microphone (Saramonic SmartMic+UC L/weight Smartphone Mic USB-C) and 3.5 mm earphone were used.

Dynamics 365 Remote Assist application was used, in-tandem with Microsoft Teams, to host each video call. This connection allowed the students to see the tutors field of vision and hear both the tutor and patient. Hand gestures including the “hand-ray”, “air-tap”, “air-tap and hold” and “start-gesture” were used to control the HMD and manipulate the holographic artefacts. Relevant holographic artefacts were superimposed during the tutorial. This included the insertion of diagramatic representaions of the Mallampati scoring system and Thyromental Distance during the airway assessment portion of the tutorial [Fig. 2 (a) and (b)]. The holographic pointer and “drawing” functions were used by the tutor to highlight relevant upper airway structures and emphasise information on the holographic diagrams [Fig. 2 (c) and (d)].

a Assessment of Mallampati Score. b Assessment of Thyromental Distance. c Identification of thyroid cartilage using holographic pointer. d Illustration of holographic “drawing” function

Assessment of tutor perceptions

Immediately after completion of the first tutorial, the tutor completed a System Usability Scale assessment and on completion of the last tutorial, the tutor and facilitator summarised their perceptions of using the HMD.

Assessment of student perceptions

Immediately after completion of the tutorial, students completed a modified Evaluation of Technology-Enhanced Learning Materials: Learner Perceptions (ETELM-LP) questionnaire in order to assess their perceptions of the tutorial, which incorporated a seven-point Likert Scale and open questions [ 42 ]. Cronbach’s Alpha was calculated after exclusion of question 1 and reverse scoring of questions 13 and 15.

Three students also took part in semi-stuctured interviews via Microsoft Teams. Researchers undertook this study from an interpretive approach [ 43 ]. The interviews were conducted by JV, and followed a template of questions and corresponding probes from which the interviewer expanded as appropriate [Additional file 1 ]. The template served as a foundation from which the interviewer expanded as appropriate. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. Analysis of the interview transcripts and questionnare responses was performed using Dedoose Qualitative Research Software Version 4.3.Qualitative data from interviews and feedback questionnaires were coded thematically in alignment with Clarke and Braun’s suggestions for qualitative analysis [ 44 ]. Following the initial thematic coding, researchers conducted a content analysis to strengthen the interpretation of results. Illustrative quotes were chosen based on the representativeness of the theme or subtheme and the clarity of their intrinsic interpretation. In alignment with current literature, the quotes selected were determined to be illustrative of the point, reflective of patterns observed, and relatively succinct [ 45 ]..

Assessment of patient perceptions

On completion of the tutorials, patients were also asked to complete a mixed quantitative and qualitative questionnaire in order to assess their perceptions of the tutorial.

Assessment of learning efficacy

We carried out a prospective non-comparative study of tutorial efficacy. Students completed a pre-tutorial Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) examination to assess baseline knowledge [Additional file 2 ], and a post-tutorial MCQ two to 3 days later [Additional file 3 ]. Students then completed an end-of-year assessment two to 5 months later consisting of a data interpretation exam and an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) which focused on preoperative history taking and preoperative assessment of the upper airway respectively [Additional files 4 and 5 ]. These examinations were written by an investigator and the University Senior Clinical Lecturer in line with University standards. Examination results were converted to percentages and the data interpretation and OSCE results were combined to give a total End-of-Year result.

The Chi-Squared test was used to compare direct-entry and graduate-entry student demographics. Welch’s two-sample t-Test assuming unequal variances was used to compare student group ages. The Shapiro Wilk and Kolmogorov-Smirnov Tests were used to assess to normality of distribution of student assessment scores for data sets less than 50 and greater than 50 respectively. The Mann-Whitney U Test was performed to compare group performance in assessments and overall student performance between the pre- and post-tutorial examinations, and between the post-tutorial and End-of-Year scores. Cohen’s d was calculated for the pre and post-tutorial MCQ scores to assess effect size.

Twelve tutorials were completed involving 12 separate patients and 78 students. Four students did not complete the post-tutorial MCQ and one did not complete the End-of-Year assessments due to illness related absences. These students were excluded from efficacy calculations. Baseline characteristics of the student participants are summarised in Table 1 . As expected the graduate-entry students was a significantly older cohort (graduate-entry median age 26 vs direct-entry mean of 22). Mean age of patient participants was 43.25, with an SD of 16.48, and a range of 18–64.

Feasibility

We found that it was feasible to use the HoloLens2 to facilitate weekly bedside tutorials on live patients in a busy, tertiary referral teaching hospital. No tutorials were cancelled or postponed due to technology-related issues. Of note, in order to improve the audio quality of the patient’s voice, it was neccessary to add the USB microphone, which is not routinely supplied with the HoloLens 2. The tutorials were also dependent on secure Wi-Fi access for both tutor and students, the presence of a tutorial facilitator to control the equipment at the student end, and access to a quiet space to examine the patient.

Tutor feedback

The sole tutor (MC) completed the System Usability Scale score, which was 72.5 (a score > 68 is deemed above average). The tutor (MC) stated that the HoloLens 2 was found to be comfortable to wear, the visor was unobtrusive and did not interfere with interaction with the patient or impede visualisation of clinical signs. The interaction with the device via hand gestures was relatively smooth and intuitive after the intial familiarisation period and the MR functions including the insertion of holographic diagrams, pointing, drawing and highlighting were useful. The holographic artefacts were visible throughout the tutorials at a “brightness” setting of seven out of 10.

Occasionally when talking to the students via the HMD, it was not clear to the patient if the tutor was talking to the patient or to the students. Utilising a structured pattern of speech such as “I am now talking to the students” was found to be useful to overcome this issue.

Facilitator feedback

The technical facilitator (NOB) found that the set-up of the live broadcast to the students was akin to that of a video presentation and that the learning curve for hosting the tutorials was short as the Dynamic 365 Remote Assist application was quite similar to general videoconferencing software. He noted that patient proximity to the tutor was essential to ensure adequate audio quality and referenced an example where a supine patient was farther from the device than normal and that patient responses had to be repeated by the tutor. Backgound noise was noted as a “minor issue and transient in nature”, and the technical facilitator accepted that a certain amount of background noise was unavoidable in an active hospital ward.

Student feedback

Quantitative student feedback via the modified ETELM-LP questionnaire is summarised in Fig. 3 . Results are presented as (mean, SD) and refer to a seven-point Likert scale. Students had little experience in MR prior to the tutorial (1.7, 1.29). They found the audio and visual quality was clear and that the MR elements of the tutorial were useful. Most agreed the tutorial approximated a live patient encounter (5.69, 1.26), was more beneficial than a PowerPoint-based tutorial, and were neutral when asked if it was as beneficial as a live clinical encounter (5, 1.69). They did not agree that the tutorial structure required inappropriately high technology skill levels on the part of the students, nor that the MR elements served as a distraction. Most agreed that they would like MR to be incorporated into further tutorials (6.05, 1). Cronbach’s Alpha, excluding question 1 was calculated as 0.86, displaying good internal consistency.

Student Modified ETELM-LP Scores. 7 point Likert scale with 7 as strongly agree and 1 as strongly disagree. Presented as Mean +/− 1 Standard Deviation

Student qualitative feedback results

Analysis of written and verbal feedback from 78 students identified 90 specific positive excerpts and 62 negatives (Table 2 ). Positive feedback included the technology’s ability to broadcast the tutor’s point-of-vision, the inclusion of holographic artefacts, and the remote nature of the tutorial. Negative feedback included issues with the audio-visual stream quality, the fact that students were not able to individually carry out the practical examination, and 11 students expressed concerns that the tutorial was not as useful as traditional in-person bedside clinical tutorials.

Three students participated in semi-structured interviews. The limited sense of “presence” and interaction with the patient were identified as limitations to the format by all three interviewees. With respect to the physical examination one student explained he would have preferred to “experience it yourself, and have a look and feel and touch”. Specific mention was made of the value of combining broadcast (patient) and rendered (schematics) images, “The adding of the images … right next to the patient was really, really helpful”. This may indicate the potential to employ this format to support vertical and horizontal integration of curricular elements. All three interviewed students reported either a six or seven (on a verbal scale of 1–7) when asked to recommend this technology for inclusion in the medical curriculum.

Patient feedback

Quantitative feedback data from patient questionnaires is summarised in Fig. 4 . Most patients had little experience with MR in the past (mean, SD: 1.75, 1.48) apart from one patient who scored 6. All agreed that the communication with the tutor was clear, that they felt safe, that the experience was enjoyable and that they would participate in a similar session in the future. Six of seven expressed that it was preferable to both small (5 or less) and large group in-person tutorials. Most patients did not agree that the HoloLens served as a distraction or made them uncomfortable.

Patient Feedback Questionnaire Results. 7 point Likert scale with 7 as strongly agree and 1 as strongly disagree. Presented as Mean +/− 1 Standard Deviation

Five patients gave qualitative feedback. Positive comments included that “it is good to see that you are moving on with new technology”, “it was well explained beforehand so I was very comfortable” and “it was fantastic to teach students when they can’t be at the bedside. Very unobtrusive”. One patient commented that “sometimes not sure if he [the tutor] was talking to me or the students” and another commented that “it would be lovely to see who I was talking to [the student group]”.

Learning efficacy

Student examination scores are sumarised in Table 3 and Fig. 5 . Student assessment scores were not normally distrubuted. A statistically significant improvement was observed between overall students’ pre and post tutorial MCQ scores (mean 59.2% Vs 84.7%, p  < 0.001). Cohen’s d was 0.612, indicating a medium effect size. There was a statistically significant difference in student performance between the post tutorial MCQ and the composite End-of-Year scores (84.7% Vs 82.2%, p  < 0.05). There were no statistically significant differences found between the graduate-entry and direct-entry students for any individual examination.

Boxplot of overall student assessment scores

Mixed Reality headsets offer several novel capabilities which can facilitate remote education and vertical and horizontal integration of curriculum elements, particularly when aligned with appropriate educational theories such as Constructivism and Social Cognitive Theory. A large number of studies have focused on applying the technology in surgical and anatomical subject fields [ 46 ]. However, there are significant gaps in the evidence base, particularly studies specific to anaesthesiology, clinical exam, and addressing the provision of interactive tutorials to remote locations. Our study has demonstrated that it is feasible and effective to use the Microsoft HoloLens 2, incorporating its Mixed Reality functions to provide a live bedside tutorial on anaesthetic preoperative assessment to students situated in a remote location. Feedback from students, patients and the tutor were generally positive. Quantitative feedback from students regarding the audio-visual quality was mainly positive, however technical issues were noted, and preference for in-person tutorials was expressed by a minority of students.

Mill et al. previously examined the feasibility of the HoloLens 2 in broadcasting medical ward rounds [ 26 ]. While papers such as that by Mill et al. demonstrated the feasibility of utilizing the HoloLens 2 HMD to stream educational ward-rounds, they did not utilize the MR functions of the HMD, nor assess the learning efficacy of the device [ 26 ]. This study incorporates both quantitative and qualitative feedback from multiple sources, namely students, patients, the tutor, and tutorial facilitator. We believe this demonstrates a robust examination of the perceptions of the relevant stakeholders involved in the provision of clinical tutorials to medical students. Our findings that the tutorials were feasible, agreeable to both patients and students, and that students had occasional audio-visual difficulties are consistent with those of Mill et al. Our study additionally demonstrates that incorporation of holographic artefacts is both feasible and regarded by the tutor and students as useful, and that the tutorials provide effective knowledge acquisition.

Our tutorial format aimed to reproduce some of the educationally relevant components of an in-person tutorial. Other suggested structures advocate streaming video of the physician as opposed to the physician’s point-of-view [ 47 ]. The HoloLens 2 device allows the students to view the tutor’s field of vision which we argue is superior, and student feedback reflected this. This viewpoint allows students to appreciate in real time the clinical signs demonstrated during the clinical examination and correlate these with the holographic diagrammatic examples used. The MR environment provides an ideal setting to facilitate vertical integration in real time by displaying holographic artefacts of anatomical, physiological and pathological information, as well as patient specific data such as radiological imaging or lab results while interacting with a patient. Furthermore, delivering tutorials remotely reduces infection-control concerns and allows delivery to greater numbers of students in multiple locations.

Preserving patient confidentiality is essential in medical practice and education. In our study, both the HMD and devices at the student end were connected to secure institutional Wi-Fi and accessed via University accounts. Also, access to the audio-visual stream was controlled by the technical facilitator, and the students were located in a supervised tutorial room. It would be essential to control both access to the tutorial and the environment to which it is broadcast to maintain confidentiality.

Limitations

Our study design has a number of limitations. It is non-comparative, and thus we are unable to draw conclusions regarding the relative learning experience or efficacy associated with tutorials delivered via the HoloLens device and the more traditional in-person bedside tutorials. Additionally, the different assessment methods between the MCQs and end of year examinations make direct measurement of knowledge retention difficult. The number of patients involved in the study was relatively small, and thus interpretation of both quantitative and qualitative data must be viewed in this context, and the generalisability of the data is low. The feedback from the tutor and tutorial facilitator must be viewed in the context that they were study investigators.

There are a number of limitations specific to research involving the HoloLens. Common limitations in studying the learning effects of the HoloLens in tested roles include the absence of validated measures and comprehensive evaluation instruments. Unlike other technologies, there are no benchmarks, datasets, or standard standardized protocols to specifically evaluate augmented reality systems, experiences, and methodologies [ 48 , 49 , 50 ]. Although the viewpoint offered to the students by the HoloLens allows the students to appreciate what the tutor is demonstrating, one drawback to this is that the focus of attention is primarily controlled by the tutor, and thus it is difficult for the tutorial to challenge the students to select the relevant areas to attend to. Depending on the tutorial topic and structure, an ideal virtual format may provide three perspectives: the tutors view, a third person view of the clinical encounter, and where applicable, an instrument’s view.

Regarding the generalisability of our study to other tutorial topics, the appreciation of clinical signs which would require palpation or auscultation would be beyond the current capabilities of the HoloLens 2 and therefore, careful tutorial design and topic selection is necessary.

Our results demonstrate the feasibility of facilitating remote bedside tutorials on preoperative anaesthetic assessment using the HoloLens 2. The tutorial structure was found to be agreeable to students, patients, and tutors. Provision of tutorials in the format described in this study may be an option for situations where students’ access to live bedside tutorials are limited. However, further research is required to characterise the role, potential and limitations of incorporating Mixed Reality into clinical medical education in a broader context. Poor audio-visual quality and lack of hands-on practice were found to be the most frequent issues identified in our study and may be significant limitations to the use of this technology in wider medical education. There are significant costs involved in developing the infrastructure and expertise necessary to provide tutorials in this format. Prior to this technology being adopted by educational institutions, we recommend the completion studies to compare the learning efficacy of MR facilitated remote tutorials and traditional in-person bedside tutorials.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

• Augmented Reality

Evaluation of Technology-Enhanced Learning Materials: Learner Perceptions

Head-Mounted Display

Interquartile Range

Multiple Choice Question

• Mixed Reality

Objective Structured Clinical Examination

Standard Deviation

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance from members of the UCC College of Medicine and Health, including Dr. Colm O’Tuathaigh, Dr. Gabriella Rizzo, Dr. Pat Henn and Professor Paula O’Leary, as well as Ms. Michelle Donovan in the UCC Centre for Digital Education.

This study received funding and research support through the UCC Learning Analytics LITE programme, which is funded through the Strategic Alignment of Teaching and Learning Enhancement fund. The UCC Learning Analytics LITE programme provided logistical and research support in study design and funds were used to hire assistance in data interpretation.

This study also received funding from the UCC College of Medicine and Health which was utilised to purchase the HoloLens 2 Device and associated licences.

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Contributions

MC lead the design of the study, carried out the tutorials, analysed both quantitative and qualitative data and was the primary author of the manuscript. GI contributed to the design of the study, the student examinations contributed to writing the manuscript. NOB contributed to the technical and logistical design of the study and acted as technical facilitator for the tutorials and contributed to manuscript composition. JV designed, completed and analysed the semi-structured student interviews and contributed to manuscript composition. AOM, PS, AB, LG and supervised and analysed student examination data. KGG analysed student demographic data and student examination data. CS contributed to initial evaluation of the HoloLens device and tutorial design. GS played a central role in study design and completion and was a major contributor in manuscript composition.

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This study was approved by the Clinical Research Ethic Committee of the Cork Teaching Hospitals, and the University College Cork Research and Postgraduate Affairs Committee. All methods were carried out in accordance with guidelines and regulations as set out by the ethics and research committees. All participants provided informed consent to participate in the study.

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All participants including students, patients, tutor and technical facilitator provided written informed consent prior to inclusion in the study. Participants who’s identifiable images are included provided informed consent for publication of identifiable information/ images in an open access journal.

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Connolly, M., Iohom, G., O’Brien, N. et al. Delivering clinical tutorials to medical students using the Microsoft HoloLens 2: A mixed-methods evaluation. BMC Med Educ 24 , 498 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-024-05475-2

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-024-05475-2

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