How Things Work - Doha Academy of Tertiary Studies

How things Work 19
given study, qualitative researchers usually choose to emphasize the
micro over the macro. Qualitative researchers usually prefer the close-up
view. We researchers take a single case to study, a case unique in some
respects, and emphasize the nature of that particular case. Or, following
Harvey Sacks (1984), we choose to generalize as to the nature of other
cases not studied. We do both, but usually not in the same study.
If researchers choose to gather experiential data more than measurements,
they call their research “qualitative”—but they still may emphasize
either the particular or the general. If findings are drawn primarily
from the aggregate of many individual observations, we call the study
“quantitative,” but the researcher still may emphasize either the particular
or the general. If researchers set formal standards for assessing the
findings, we operate closer to the mechanisms of social science, but we
still may emphasize either the particular or the general. Researchers use
mixed methods (Creswell and Plano Clark, 2006), but most of us are
consistent in leaning toward the experiential or the metric. Most of us
have our favorite methods, but to some extent, we seek to understand
both the individual and the collective.
1.4. the MethODs OF Qualitative ReseaRch
Our methods are many and widely shared across many research fields,
from anthropology to biography to ceramics to zoology. And yet there
is no single field in which we find all the methods of qualitative research
regularly used. Child study and critical study each have a good tool kit
of methods, but writing newspaper editorials and country music also
contributes to the grand collection of methods. Within qualitative methods
in all fields, you can find the characteristics identified in Box 1.2.
As indicated earlier, the distinction between quantitative and qualitative
methods is a matter of emphasis more than a discrete boundary.
In each ethnographic, naturalistic, phenomenological, hermeneutic, or
holistic study—that is, in each qualitative study—the quantitative ideas
of enumeration and recognition of differences in size have a place. And
in each statistical survey and controlled experiment—in each quantitative
study— natural- language description and researcher interpretation
are to be expected (Ercikan and Roth, 2008). Perhaps the most
important methodological differences between qualitative and quantitative
are twofold: the difference between (1) aiming for explanation and
(2) aiming for understanding, and the difference between (1) a personal