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The Nature of Qualit
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Paradigm | models or framework for observation and understanding which shape both what we see and how we understand it |
| Epistemology | theory of knowledge; views on how the social world should be studied |
| study population of qualitative data | small number of participants; selected purposively, referred to as participants or interviewees |
| study population of quantitative data | large sample size of representative cases, referred to as respondents or subjects |
| data collection methods of qualitative research | in-depth interviews, observations, or group discussions |
| data collection methods of quantitative research | population surveys, opinion polls, or exit interviews |
| analysis of qualitative research | is interpretive |
| analysis of quantitative research | is statistical |
| outcomes of qualitative research | to develop an in initial understanding or to identify and explain behaviors, beliefs, or actions |
| When to use qualitative research | - to understand complex issues -to explain people's beliefs and behaviors -to identify the social and cultural norms of a group or society |
| Ontology | what we think reality looks like and how we view the world |
| Methodology | how we gain knowledge about the world and how we collect research data |
| Positivism | the social world should be studied in the same way as the natural world, using the same methodology as the natural sciences |
| interpretivism | the social world should be studied in a fundamentally different way than the natural sciences |
| Objective of qualitative research | to gain a contextualized understanding of behaviors, beliefs, and motivation |
| objective of quantitative research | to quantify data and extrapolate results to a broader population |
| Purpose of qualitative research | to understand why? how? what is the process? what are the influences or context? |
| purpose of quantitative research | to measure, count, or quantify a problem; to answer how much? how often? what proportion? which variables are correlated? |
| data of qualitative research | data are words |
| data of quantitative research | data are numbers |
| outcomes of quantitative research | to identify prevalence, averages and patterns in data, or to generalize to a broader population |
| emic perspective | provides information on the insider's perceptions, beliefs and meaning system; reflects the cultural meaning that people attach to certain facts, events, or experiences |
| etic perspective | the outsider's point of view, their opinions and beliefs |