Monday, April 11, 2011

can you separate qualitative reseaarch design from qualitative research approach?

QN . Can you separate Qualitative research design from qualitative research approach? Answers Qualitative research design is an ongoing process that involves “tacking” back and forth between the different components of the design, assessing the implications of goals, theories, research questions, methods, and validity threats for one another. It does not begin from a predetermined starting point or proceed through a fixed sequence of steps, but involves interconnection and interaction among the different design components. In addition, as Frank Lloyd Wright emphasized, the design of something must fit not only with its use, but also with its environment. You will need to continually assess how this design is actually working during the research, how it influences and is influenced by its environment, and to make adjustments and changes so that your study can accomplish what you want. A qualitative "approach" is a general way of thinking about conducting qualitative research. It describes, either explicitly or implicitly, the purpose of the qualitative research, the role of the researcher(s), the stages of research, and the method of data analysis. There are five major qualitative approaches which are, Ethnography, Phenomenology, Field Research, Grounded Theory and narrative research approach Qualitative research design cannot be separated from the qualitative research approach because qualitative research approach is the general way of thinking about conducting a qualitative research, in this case qualitative research design is within the qualitative research approach. One cannot think about conducting a qualitative research without having a qualitative research design which will be a frame work of qualitative research. Qualitative research design is very important in qualitative research approach because it contains Goals of the qualitative research approach. Why is your study worth doing? What issues do you want it to clarify, and what practices and policies do you want it to influence? Why do you want to conduct this study, and why should we care about the results? It provide Conceptual framework. What do you think is going on with the issues, settings, or people you plan to study? What theories, beliefs, and prior research findings will guide or inform your research and what literature, preliminary studies, and personal experiences will you draw on for understanding the people or issues you are studying? It contains research Questions. What, specifically, do you want to understand by doing this study? What do you not know about the phenomena you are studying that you want to learn? What questions will your research attempt to answer, and how are these questions related to one another? It suggest methods. What will you actually do in conducting this study? What approaches and techniques will you use to collect and analyze your data? Validity. How might your results and conclusions be wrong? What are the plausible alternative interpretations and validity threats to these, and how will you deal with these? How can the data that you have, or that you could potentially collect, support or challenge your ideas about what's going on? Why should we believe the results? Due to this fact you cannot separate qualitative research design from qualitative research approach. References 1. Bamberger, M. ed. 2000. Integrating quantitative and qualitative research in development projects. World Bank, Washington, DC, USA. 2. Bryman, A. 1998. Quantity and quality in social research. Unwin Hyman, London, UK. 3. Greene, J.C.; Caracelli, V.J.; Graham, W.F. 1989. Towards a conceptual framework for mixed-method evaluation designs. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 4. Creswell, J. W. (1994). Research design: Qualitative and Quantitative approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 5. Maxwell, JA.(2005) Qualitative research design: an interactive approach (2nd Edition) 6. Sorrell JM, Redmond GM (1995) Interviews in qualitative nursing research: differing approaches for ethnographic and phenomenological studies.

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