How Things Work - Doha Academy of Tertiary Studies

28 QUaLItatIVe ReSeaRCH
parisons. Yesterday’s stock market drop. Deaths in refugee camps in the
year 2007. Nations compare their educational systems on the basis of
standardized tests. It is simplistic, but they do. The United States ranked
28th on one of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)
tests, an embarrassing comparison (McGaw, 2007). Many more criteria,
many more factors, many more stories should be reported, many
should be demanded. That amount of U.S. embarrassment might be the
right amount, but we should know more than what one indicator tells.
Whether the statistic is valid or not, any interpretation based on a single
statistic invites invalid interpretations.
Those studies called comparative studies often take a macroperspective,
comparing nations or cultures or communities. It is difficult for
them to avoid reducing complex differences to stereotypes.
A stereotype is a simplistic representation, often a misrepresentation.
It often is remembered after the details are forgotten. When we
study the question, How does something work?, we see ways we can
simplify the understandings. But we run the danger of simplifying too
much. We also run the danger of dwelling on the nuances of complexity
too much, making things too difficult to understand. We need to use our
methods of qualitative research in ways that avoid both oversimplifying
and overcomplicating the understandings for our readers. Panels you
create to review your research can be of help.
Qualitative research contributes to stereotyping but also fights
against it. By emphasizing a particular experience, dialogue, context,
and multiple realities, a researcher can lessen the chance of simplistic
understanding. But this researcher also reduces the chance of improving
general understandings. Emphasis on comparison may give us what we
want most to know, caring little to know about the complexity. Is it possible
that by knowing the individual people better, we come to know less
about people in general? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. There is a great intuitive
power within each of us to generalize. And then we worry, as we do
in Chapters 7 and 11, about the quality of our generalizations.
1.8. WeaKNesses OF Qualitative ReseaRch
Qualitative study has its supporters and disdainers. I am a deeply
devoted supporter; yet I have long felt the disappointment of some sponsors
and colleagues. The weaknesses are pretty much what the disdain-