A500.6.3.RB_WhiteTyronn

Tyronn White                                                                        MLSD 500

Qualitative Research

   Qualitative research uses a naturalistic approach that seeks understanding through a context of specific settings.  This approach seems the most comfortable to my way of doing research.   I am able to look at the information and dissect it to determine the data I need for my research.  Once I am able to determine the data collected, I will be able to relate the information and apply it such a way that can benefit me for the rest of my life.

Features of qualitative research:

     The feature of qualitative research gives the researcher a guide to covering all basis of their research.  Qualitative research uses the natural setting as the source of data.  The researcher acts as the human instrument of data collection, determining what is and is not important to their research.  Qualitative researchers use data analysis to break down and make sense of the data collected.

      Qualitative research reports are descriptive, incorporating expressive language bringing a human presence to the reporting.  The qualitative researcher has an interpretive character which discovers and illustrates the events and meanings. 

     Qualitative researchers pay attention to idiosyncratic as well as the pervasive, seeking uniqueness of each case.  Qualitative research has an emergent design and focus on this emerging process as well as the outcomes or product of the research.  Qualitative research is judged using criteria for trustworthiness.

     Qualitative research means any kind of research that produces findings not arrived at by means of statistical procedure or other means of quantification.

     Quantitative research means to seek casual determination, prediction and generalization of findings; qualitative researchers seek instead illumination, understanding and extrapolation to similar situations.

     I lean towards the side of adapting qualitative research to be used to better understand a phenomenon about which I know little information about and also learn new things about content I am already familiar with.