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Contemporary qualitative research has been influenced by a number of branches of philosophy, for example, positivism, postpositivism, critical theory, and constructivism. [7] The historical transitions or 'moments' in qualitative research, together with the notion of 'paradigms' (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005), have received widespread popularity over ...
Since a semi-structured interview is a combination of an unstructured interview and a structured interview, it has the advantages of both. The interviewees can express their opinions and ask questions to the interviewers during the interview, which encourages them to give more useful information, such as their opinions toward sensitive issues, to the qualitative research.
A research question is "a question that a research project sets out to answer". [1] Choosing a research question is an essential element of both quantitative and qualitative research . Investigation will require data collection and analysis, and the methodology for this will vary widely.
Qualitative research methodologies are oriented towards developing an understanding of the meaning and experience dimensions of human lives and their social worlds. Good qualitative research is characterized by congruence between the perspective that informs the research questions and the research methods used.
Open questions are those questions that invite the respondent to provide answers in their own words and provide qualitative data. Although these types of questions are more difficult to analyze, they can produce more in-depth responses and tell the researcher what the participant actually thinks, rather than being restricted by categories.
A fundamental difficulty with focus groups (and other forms of qualitative research) is the issue of observer dependency: the results obtained are influenced by the researcher or his or her reading of the group's discussion, thus raising questions of the validity of the research (see experimenter's bias).
For example, five-, seven- and nine-point scales with a uniform distribution of responses give PCIs of 0.60, 0.57 and 0.50 respectively. The first of these problems is relatively minor as most ordinal scales with an even number of response can be extended (or reduced) by a single value to give an odd number of possible responses.
Computer-assisted (or aided) qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) offers tools that assist with qualitative research such as transcription analysis, coding and text interpretation, recursive abstraction, content analysis, discourse analysis, [1] grounded theory methodology, etc.