What type of research often involves researchers exploring a new topic or describing a situation?

In experimental designs, there are often treatment groups and control groups. This study design looks for cause and effect (if A, then B), so it requires having control over at least one of the independent, or treatment variables. Experimental design administers the treatment to some of the subjects (called the ‘experimental group’) and not to others (called the ‘control group’). Subjects are randomly assigned—meaning that they would have an equal chance of being assigned to the control group or the experimental group. This is the strongest design for testing cause and effect relationships because randomization reduces bias. In fact, most researchers believe that a randomized controlled trail is the only kind of research study where we can infer cause (if A, then B). The difficulty with a randomized controlled trial is that the results may not be generalizable in all circumstances with all patient populations, so as with any research study, you need to consider the application of the findings to your patients in your setting.

Table of Contents Show

Approaches to qualitative research
Qualitative research methods
Qualitative data analysis
Advantages of qualitative research
Disadvantages of qualitative research
Frequently asked questions about qualitative research

Quasi-experimental

Quasi-Experimental studies also seek to identify a cause and effect (causal) relationship, although they are less powerful than experimental designs. This is because they lack one or more characteristics of a true experiment. For instance, they may not include random assignment or they may not have a control group. As is often the case in the ‘real world’, clinical care variables often cannot be controlled due to ethical, practical, or fiscal concerns. So, the quasi experimental approach is utilized when a randomized controlled trial is not possible. For example, if it was found that the new treatment stopped disease progression, it would no longer be ethical to withhold it from others by establishing a control group.

Descriptive

Descriptive studies give us an accurate account of the characteristics of a particular situation or group. They are often used to determine how often something occurs, the likelihood of something occurring, or to provide a way to categorize information. For example, let’s say we wanted to look at the visiting policy in the ICU and describe how implementing an open-visiting policy affected nurse satisfaction. We could use a research tool, such as a Likert scale (5 = very satisfied and 1 = very dissatisfied), to help us gain an understanding of how satisfied nurses are as a group with this policy.

Correlational

Correlational research involves the study of the relationship between two or more variables. The primary purpose is to explain the nature of the relationship, not to determine the cause and effect. For example, if you wanted to examine whether first-time moms who have an elective induction are more likely to have a cesarean birth than first-time moms who go into labor naturally, the independent variables would be ‘elective induction’ and ‘go into labor naturally’ (because they are the variables that ‘vary’) and the outcome variable is ‘cesarean section.’ Even if you find a strong relationship between elective inductions and an increased likelihood of cesarean birth, you cannot state that elective inductions ‘cause’ cesarean births because we have no control over the variables. We can only report an increased likelihood.

Qualitative research involves collecting and analyzing non-numerical data (e.g., text, video, or audio) to understand concepts, opinions, or experiences. It can be used to gather in-depth insights into a problem or generate new ideas for research.

Qualitative research is the opposite of quantitative research, which involves collecting and analyzing numerical data for statistical analysis.

Qualitative research is commonly used in the humanities and social sciences, in subjects such as anthropology, sociology, education, health sciences, history, etc.

Qualitative research question examples

How does social media shape body image in teenagers?
How do children and adults interpret healthy eating in the UK?
What factors influence employee retention in a large organization?
How is anxiety experienced around the world?
How can teachers integrate social issues into science curriculums?

Approaches to qualitative research

Qualitative research is used to understand how people experience the world. While there are many approaches to qualitative research, they tend to be flexible and focus on retaining rich meaning when interpreting data.

Common approaches include grounded theory, ethnography, action research, phenomenological research, and narrative research. They share some similarities, but emphasize different aims and perspectives.

Qualitative research approaches

Approach	What does it involve?
Grounded theory	Researchers collect rich data on a topic of interest and develop theories inductively.
Ethnography	Researchers immerse themselves in groups or organizations to understand their cultures.
Action research	Researchers and participants collaboratively link theory to practice to drive social change.
Phenomenological research	Researchers investigate a phenomenon or event by describing and interpreting participants’ lived experiences.
Narrative research	Researchers examine how stories are told to understand how participants perceive and make sense of their experiences.

Qualitative research methods

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.

Research exampleTo research the culture of a large tech company, you decide to take an ethnographic approach. You work at the company for several months and use various methods to gather data:

You take field notes with observations and reflect on your own experiences of the company culture.
You distribute open-ended surveys to employees across all the company’s offices by email to find out if the culture varies across locations.
You conduct in-depth interviews with employees in your office to learn about their experiences and perspectives in greater detail.

Qualitative researchers often consider themselves “instruments” in research because all observations, interpretations and analyses are filtered through their own personal lens.

For this reason, when writing up your methodology for qualitative research, it’s important to reflect on your approach and to thoroughly explain the choices you made in collecting and analyzing the data.

Scribbr editors not only correct grammar and spelling mistakes, but also strengthen your writing by making sure your paper is free of vague language, redundant words and awkward phrasing.

See editing example

Qualitative data analysis

Qualitative data can take the form of texts, photos, videos and audio. For example, you might be working with interview transcripts, survey responses, fieldnotes, or recordings from natural settings.

Most types of qualitative data analysis share the same five steps:

Prepare and organize your data. This may mean transcribing interviews or typing up fieldnotes.
Review and explore your data. Examine the data for patterns or repeated ideas that emerge.
Develop a data coding system. Based on your initial ideas, establish a set of codes that you can apply to categorize your data.
Assign codes to the data. For example, in qualitative survey analysis, this may mean going through each participant’s responses and tagging them with codes in a spreadsheet. As you go through your data, you can create new codes to add to your system if necessary.
Identify recurring themes. Link codes together into cohesive, overarching themes.

There are several specific approaches to analyzing qualitative data. Although these methods share similar processes, they emphasize different concepts.

Qualitative data analysis

Approach	When to use	Example
Content analysis	To describe and categorize common words, phrases, and ideas in qualitative data.	A market researcher could perform content analysis to find out what kind of language is used in descriptions of therapeutic apps.
Thematic analysis	To identify and interpret patterns and themes in qualitative data.	A psychologist could apply thematic analysis to travel blogs to explore how tourism shapes self-identity.
Textual analysis	To examine the content, structure, and design of texts.	A media researcher could use textual analysis to understand how news coverage of celebrities has changed in the past decade.
Discourse analysis	To study communication and how language is used to achieve effects in specific contexts.	A political scientist could use discourse analysis to study how politicians generate trust in election campaigns.

Advantages of qualitative research

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:

The data collection and analysis process can be adapted as new ideas or patterns emerge. They are not rigidly decided beforehand.

Data collection occurs in real-world contexts or in naturalistic ways.

Detailed descriptions of people’s experiences, feelings and perceptions can be used in designing, testing or improving systems or products.

Open-ended responses mean that researchers can uncover novel problems or opportunities that they wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

Disadvantages of qualitative research

Researchers must consider practical and theoretical limitations in analyzing and interpreting their data. Qualitative research suffers from:

The real-world setting often makes qualitative research unreliable because of uncontrolled factors that affect the data.

Due to the researcher’s primary role in analyzing and interpreting data, qualitative research cannot be replicated. The researcher decides what is important and what is irrelevant in data analysis, so interpretations of the same data can vary greatly.

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

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

Frequently asked questions about qualitative research

What are the main qualitative research approaches?

There are five common approaches to qualitative research:

Grounded theory involves collecting data in order to develop new theories.
Ethnography involves immersing yourself in a group or organization to understand its culture.
Narrative research involves interpreting stories to understand how people make sense of their experiences and perceptions.
Phenomenological research involves investigating phenomena through people’s lived experiences.
Action research links theory and practice in several cycles to drive innovative changes.

What is data collection?

Data collection is the systematic process by which observations or measurements are gathered in research. It is used in many different contexts by academics, governments, businesses, and other organizations.