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Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.zatherefore, is that the qualitative study of people in situ is a process ofdiscovery: the researcher must find out what is happening, in those people’sterms. In short, the qualitative method advocates an approach to examining theempirical world which requires the researcher to interpret the real world fromthe perspective of the subjects of his investigation. This calls for an emphasison natural observation and field work in the collection of data in the naturalsetting of the subjects.The qualitative method is implemented as follows: To understand the complexprocesses that precipitate human interaction, it is necessary to obtaininformation that is relevant to various attitudinal, situational and environmentalfactors in the world of those being investigated. For an accurate interpretation,the researcher needs intersubjective, personal knowledge. This knowledge isembedded in the complex network of social interaction. The task of thequalitative methodologist is to provide a framework within which subjects canrespond in terms of their own meanings. Methods such as participantobservation and in-depth interviewing allow him to “get close to the data”(Lofland 1971.) and to obtain first-hand knowledge.Lofland (1971: 3-4, 7) outlines four elements which are necessary inundertaking a qualitative study: (i) intensive immersion in a sector of social lifeto gain “intimate familiarity” with what is going on; (ii) focusing on anddepicting the situation that the scrutinised actors are dealing with; (iii) focusingon interactional strategies and tactics of participants to cope or deal with thesituation, and (iv) assembling and analysing an abundance of qualitative dataof situations, events, strategies, action, people and activities to convey thereality of the place represented in its mundane aspects.The commitment to get close, and to be factual, descriptive and quotive, is thusa commitment of the qualitative researcher to represent participants in theirown terms and to give a living sense of day-to-day talk, activities, concerns andproblems in such a way that the audience is at least partially able to projectitself into the point of view of the people depicted. For this reason qualitativeresearchers prefer to record data in the language of the subjects.3.2 Research designTo understand the stresses impinging on elderly persons in a typical socialsituation in which they interact, it is necessary to see the “world” through theireyes. An assessment of how stressful circumstances at an outpatient centremight be for elderly patients required that the perceptions that they had ofthemselves in relation to the world around be reconstructed as faithfully aspossible. The actual data in the study were at an experiential level, revolvingaround the self-awareness, self-perceptions and self-conceptions of thesubjects, their experience of the social environment at the centre and theirrelevant social perceptions in general.205