Title: What is Qualitative Research? | Methods & Examples
Headings: An introduction to qualitative research
An introduction to qualitative research
Table of contents
Approaches to qualitative research
Qualitative research approaches
Qualitative research methods
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Qualitative data analysis
Advantages of qualitative research
Disadvantages of qualitative research
Frequently asked questions about qualitative research
What’s the difference between quantitative and qualitative methods?
What are the main qualitative research approaches?
What is data collection?
How do you analyze qualitative data?
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Pritha Bhandari

Content: 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. Disadvantages of qualitative research
Researchers must consider practical and theoretical limitations in analyzing and interpreting their data. Qualitative research suffers from: Unreliability
The real-world setting often makes qualitative research unreliable because of uncontrolled factors that affect the data. Subjectivity
Due to the researcher’s primary role in analyzing and interpreting data, qualitative research cannot be replicated. The researcher decides what is important and what is irrelevant in data analysis, so interpretations of the same data can vary greatly. Limited generalizability
Small samples are often used to gather detailed data about specific contexts. Despite rigorous analysis procedures, it is difficult to draw generalizable conclusions because the data may be biased and unrepresentative of the wider population.