Criticisms of qualitative research
Discuss about the Ensuring Quality in Qualitative Research.
Qualitative research is a social science type of research that collects and works along with non-numerical data with aims of interpreting these data to determine the social life of a certain targeted population or place. This research allows the investigations of the meaning of the people’s attributes towards their behavior, interactions, and actions in relation to others (Upadhyay and Prakash, 2017, pp.54-61). Quality concerns in qualitative research play an integral role in all steps and processes of the research ranging from the interception of the research questions, data collection methods, through the analysis and interpretations of the findings.
For instance, the method and procedures of data collection may be evaluated according to the criteria quality, which may be different from that used to judge the data obtained from these methods and procedures. All these may also turn to be different from the quality criteria that may be applied to the analysis of these data (Walby and Kevin, 2017, pp.537-553). In the essay, we will explore a number of quality criteria used in qualitative methods and how some of them can be maintained by the CERF.
To archive this, we will examine these criteria to determine which one can be used by CERF more effectively while leaving others to the discretion of other researchers. In the effort of maintaining the quality of the qualitative research, researchers have encountered criticism at their final stages of research which include the analysis and presentation of the findings. There are strong critics about the reliability of the collected data in the research. Reliability in research, as defined by scholars, is termed as the level of consistency with which activities get assigned to the observers (Wilczak et al., 2017, pp.69-79). The issue of consistency has, in most cases, risen particularly because of the shortage of the spaces that researchers provide to the readers with little data extracts which could have been very useful in the formulation of their own hunches about the persuasive subject that had been studied, in essence, the people or place.
Additionally, even though when the participant’s activities may be videotaped or transcribed, the researches reliability of the transcripts interpretations maybe majorly affected by the failure of the trivial or crucial pauses, body movements, and the overlaps among others. Qualitative researchers argue that there is an insignificant difference between social and natural platforms, with reliable social life being only needed by the group of positivists. They claim that, once the social reality is treated in a flux, therefore, there should be no concerns about the accuracy of the measuring instruments (Green and Judith, 2018). Such stands would sideline systematic research as it would imply that, there can never be assumptions of properties and attributes of research in qualitative findings.
Key principles in ensuring quality in qualitative research
Another criticism of qualitative analysis is how comprehensive the explanation it offers are. This is at times termed as a problem which is based on the personal observation, or random investigations rather than a well-defined systematic scientific evaluation of events and activities. There is a rampant tendency of anecdotal approach to the use of data in relations to drawn conclusions or explanations in this research. This questions the validity of the explanations of qualitative research with no attempts by the researcher to handle those cases that are in contradiction to their study. In some cases, it has been reported, the extended immersion in the field of researcher leads to certain biases about the validity of the researcher’s own interpretation of their organization or tribe of interest (Toews et al., 2017).
Good practice in qualitative research leads to more accurate findings that would contribute to the achievement of the organization’s research objectives. I would to give an overview of such practices considering that they would be helpful to the CERF in contribution to the state-of-art quality in qualitative research (Mason, 2017). Some of the principles are outlined below;
The principle of openness, the research should be designed in a way to allow the participants maintain the traits of their daily life and their personal views should be subjected to total openness. This applies to the designing and formulating of the research questionnaires, sampling procedures, and the actual data analysis. The questionnaires should not be based on a pre-defined hypothesis that would influence the answers of the participants in any way or seem to have any sort of implications to the participants.
The principle of foreignness, this principle upholds the researcher from pre-mature interpretations of the respondents or participant’s behavior or any utterances during the research. The point of view of the participant is to be considered foreign to the relative researcher to avoid pre-defined judgments from the researcher’s perception of the findings (Levitt et al., 2017, p.2).
The principle of communication, this is to acknowledge that all the pieces of data collected and assessment totally involves a communicative interactive process between the participant and the researcher thus contributing to the understanding and analysis of the situation. However, this implies that the researcher should inevitably be part of the core construction of the data intended to be collected (Lindlof and Thomas, 2017). The researcher, therefore, should reflect critically their responsibilities and roles in the process of research and interpret the utterances and behavior of the participant as co-constructed.
The roles of the researcher and the concept of flexibility and emphatic neutrality
In quantitative research, the researcher is the core tool in ensuring the accomplishment of the research objectives is effectively fulfilled. Among many roles, the researcher is mandated to monitor and reduce bias which is mostly a source of errors during research. They should ensure that their prior knowledge about the topic of research does not affect the outcome of the participant’s response or distract the entire process thus monitoring and reducing bias is a core responsibility of the researcher (Ormston et al., 2014, pp.1-26). They are also obligated with the task of developing competence in the research methods which entails explaining the study to the participants without bias, interpreting and analyzing data according to the design, selecting the artifacts, journal portions among others appropriately, conducting field interviews according to the design, and making field observations appropriately.
Another role of the research is collecting and analyzing data appropriately with the application of required and safe precautions entailing collection of data in different environments. In addition, the researcher is also obligated to presenting the findings to the relevant parties after the entire research period or during the partial completion of the research. Presentations could be done either in writing, in posters, or oral presentations depending on the choice and prevalence of the researcher and the audience to be presented to (Padgett, 2016).
In the process of administering these roles during the research period, the research is also expected to keep a strong sense of emphatic neutrality in all the steps, processes, and procedures at all stages of the research. Reflexivity is an important attribute the researcher is expected to observe is it is an attitude of systematically attending to the context of knowledge construction, more so, to the effect of the researcher at every stage of the research process (Schwandt, 2015). These are meant to ensure the researcher sticks to the research objectives during the entire research with a clearly defined structure under which the research is designed to take place.
The major issue surrounding the nature of qualitative analysis over the notion of validity of the research is very controversial to the actual scenario. Validity is should not be regarded as a single or universal concept but should rather be regarded as a contingent construct which is inescapably grounded in the intentions and processes of a particular methodology of research and projects especially the qualitative research. Organizations, for instance, CERF, experience setbacks in conducting qualitative research due to such notion that brings about the anxiety of failure of performing a quality research even before the research is done (Thorne, 2016). This is usually based on past experience that may not have resulted in the intended results.
The notions greatly affect the confidence in the methods of data collection, analysis, and type of data collected. The researchers have had to experience pre-experimental failures from the criticisms even before the actual results have been presented. This calls for a strong perception and understanding of the researcher to convince their audience of the validity of the findings of the qualitative research undertaken. Also, there is the notion on biases of the qualitative research whereby it is assumed that any form of the non-numerical data presented is basically centered on a certain attribute that manipulated the final outcome of the data collected.
Moreover, qualitative researchers have to fight through these notions to ensure that the work presented is of the high degree of quality.
References
Green, N. and Judith, T., 2018. Qualitative methods for health research. s.l.:Sage.
Levitt, J., Heidi, M., Sue, W., Fredrick,M., and Susan, P., 2017. Recommendations for designing and reviewing qualitative research in psychology: Promoting methodological integrity. Qualitative psychology, 4(1), p. 2.
Lindlof, B. and Thomas, T., 2017. Qualitative communication research methods. s.l.:Sage publications.
Mason, J., 2017. Qualitative researching. s.l.:Sage.
Ormston, D., Rachel, S., Liz, B., and Matt, S., 2014. he foundations of qualitative research. Qualitative research practice: A guide for social science students and researchers, pp. 1-26.
Padgett, D., 2016. Qualitative methods in social work research. s.l.:Sage Publications.
Schwandt, T., 2015. The Sage dictionary of qualitative inquiry. s.l.:Sage Publications.
Thorne, S., 2016. Interpretive description: Qualitative research for applied practice. s.l.:Routledge.
Toews, J., Booth, I., Berg, A., Lewin, R., Glenton, S., Munthe-Kaas, C. and Noyes, H., 2017. Dissemination Bias in Qualitative Research: conceptual considerations. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology.
Upadhyay, K. and Prakash, K., 2017. Qualitative Researches In Social Sciences. Janapriya Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Volume 3, pp. 54-61.
Walby, A. and Kevin, L., 2017. Criteria for quality in qualitative research and use of freedom of information requests in the social sciences. Qualitative Research, 17(5), pp. 537-553.
Wilczak, Y., Cynthia, M., Valentina, P., Doris,V., and Sebastien, H., 2017. Training and interobserver reliability in qualitative scoring of skeletal samples. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Volume 11, pp. 69-79.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
