Complete thesis - Murdoch University

typically associated with the process of enumerative induction (eg to infer a characteristicor relationship between variables of a parent population), in qualitative research the conceptsand categories, rather than incidence and frequency are primary: it does not survey theterrain, but rather mines it (McCracken, 1988).Qualitative research exhibits the following characteristics:• it allows continuous reflection on the research in progress, with room for ongoing alteration• the relationship between researcher and participant is important - rather than strivingfor objectivity and lack of bias, the researcher deliberately interacts in a personalway with individuals in the study, requiring data collection procedures to be open tomodification depending on the actions of the individual• researcher intuition and judgement are valid inputs• differences in frames of reference between researcher and participants are acknowledgedas value-laden and leveraged to provide insight• the researcher acknowledges that generalisations are tentative and context-dependent,liable to lose validity in different settings or from one time period to another.The focus on context in qualitative research is reflected in the encompassing of the completephenomenon, and development of broad themes and patterns as a basis for (more-or-lesssubjective)analysis. Data collection is based on the researcher’s ability to observe andinteract with participants in the environment, while analysis typically yields verbal descriptionsderived from that interaction with the effects of the researcher’s participation consideredpart of the data. In contrast, quantitative research is generally limited to providing numericaldescription and less elaborate accounts of human perception or motivation.As noted previously, the issue of generalisability does not arise in the same way as in quantitativeresearch. The concern is about the link of the findings to other similar cases or setsof conditions: establishing a theoretical link within each case in order to determine how farthe findings can be extrapolated to the theory with which the research has engaged.Qualitative research is characterised by vast amounts of data, which need to be interpretedand summarised in relation to the research questions. This may be achieved through narrativeaccounts (case study or life stories), codification, classification and thematisation that arethen grouped and compared. Although subject to potential bias that begs a disciplinedapproach to overcome, Action Researches endorse such methods as ‘appropriate’.201