Social Research Methods

by Bryman, Bell, Reck, and Fields

Chapter 5
How Can Researchers Understand Meanings, Process, and
Experience in the Social World?
 Chapter Objectives
• define qualitative research and describe the main
approaches and unique attributes of this form of research;
• explain how qualitative research emerged as a recognized
methodology;
• understand the main goals of qualitative researchers:
seeing through the eyes of research participants, providing
rich descriptions of the context, exploring social processes,
and employing an open-ended, flexible structure;
• outline the main steps in qualitative research;
• recognize the distinct perspective of qualitative research;
and
• identify the main differences between qualitative research
and quantitative research.

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 How Qualitative Research Favors Depth Over
Breadth?
• When they use qualitative
methods, researchers seek to
understand the world in a
manner that emphasizes social
processes, contexts, and
meanings.
• Qualitative researchers use
more of an open-ended,
interpretive approach and seek
to understand life from the
perspective of those who live it
and to learn about what social
experiences mean to them, in
their words and through their
interpretations.

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 Features of Qualitative Research
• It usually involves an inductive view of the
relationship between theory and research.
– Inductive research: An approach to inquiry that begins
with collection of data, which are then used to
develop theories, hypothesis, and concepts.
• Qualitative research is normally interpretivist, in
that it seeks to understand social life through the
interpretations of those living it.
– Interpretivism: A way of understanding social life that
emphasizes people's interpretations of the world.

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 Features of Qualitative Research (Cont.)
• Qualitative researchers are often constructionist,
in that they understand social life to be created by
interactions and negotiations among people,
rather than viewing social life as a fixed structure
to which individuals must conform and adapt.
• The approach is naturalistic, in that qualitative
researchers try to minimize the disturbance they
cause to the social worlds they study, yet they
also recognize that they are involved in the study
and consider their positionality.

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 Qualitative Research Methods

• Qualitative researchers
gather data in a variety
of ways:
– Ethnography
– Qualitative interviewing
– Focus Groups
– Content Analysis
– Using existing data
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC

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 Ethnography/Participant Observation

• Ethnography: • Participant observation:

Researchers immerse A data collection
themselves in a social technique often used
setting for an extended during ethnography, in
period, observing which researchers
behavior and interact with, observe,
interacting with study and listen to people in a
participants in order to research setting, taking
understand people's notes on what occurs.
cultures and
experiences.

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Qualitative Interviewing and Focus Groups
• Qualitative interviewing: • Focus groups: A
In-depth semi-structured semi-structured
or unstructured interview format in
interviewing that usually which several people are
aims to capture the interviewed together in
subjective experience of order to learn about
social processes and people's experiences
conditions. and perceptions, group
dynamics, and processes
through which social
groups make meaning.

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 Content Analysis and Existing Data

• Content analysis • Available (or existing)

involves the data is data collected by
examination of the a researcher or
content and meaning of institution and made
written and illustrated available to others to
texts and documents. analyze.

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 Multi-method Approach

• Qualitative studies use

a multi-method
approach.
• For example, in addition
to observing and
conducting qualitative
interviews, an
ethnographer may also
analyze texts and
documents.

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 Emergence of Qualitative Approaches
• Qualitative research developed
in the early 20th century.
• The University of Chicago (“the
Chicago School”) greatly
influenced the development of
this data gathering technique.
• The Chicago School focused on
urban inequality and
community development,
emphasizing fieldwork to fully
understand experiences of This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed
under CC BY-NC-ND
individuals and communities.

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 Racial Attitudes Using Qualitative Methods vs.
Survey Methods
• Survey data about racial
attitudes indicate that racist
attitudes have decreased over
time (Schuman et al 1997),
though continued to be
complicated.
• Bonilla-Silva (2018) argues that
the color-blind racism frame
makes expressing explicit racist
ideas less socially acceptable,
making survey research less
accurate. Instead, in-depth
interviews can provide more
insight on how racist beliefs
work.

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 Defining Qualitative Research

Aspers and Corte (2019) define qualitative research

using the following four attributes:
– Process
– Distinctions
– Closeness
– Improved Understanding

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The Main Goals of Qualitative Researchers

• The goal of qualitative

research is largely to
see the social world
through the eyes of the
people being studied.
• Researchers can best do
this by directly
interacting with
participants in order to
better understand
them.

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 The Main Goals of Qualitative Researchers
(Cont.)
• Trying to see the world
through the eyes of the
respondents can create
some dilemmas.
• How far should a researcher
go to develop empathy?
• How should researchers
deal with illegal or
dangerous activities?
• How might the
characteristics of This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC
researchers impact their
interactions and
interpretations?

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 Providing Rich Description
• Details in qualitative • “One way or another,
research are important everything in prison is about
because we can better money,” stated one soft
understand the behavior of spoken prisoner. “Soup is
social group members when money in here. It’s sad but
we have knowledge of the true,” said another. As one
specific environment in man asserted, “you can get
which they operate. a lot with soups.” Another
• Descriptive information went further to state that “a
helps flesh out the soup is everything” and
complexities of the social many will trade anything
context. they own to get one”
(Gibson-Light 2018, 211).

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 Exploring Social Processes
• Qualitative researchers
tend to view social life in
terms of processes.
• Ethnographers are
typically immersed in a
social setting for a long
time and can observe
how events develop over
time and how the This Photo by Unknown Author is
licensed under CC BY-SA-NC

different elements of a
social system
interconnect.

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 Exploring Social Processes (Cont.)
• In-depth interviewing can
also reveal social processes
since participants are asked
to reflect on the activities
leading up to, during, or
following an event.
• Weiss (2005) interviewed
workers in Boston about
their retirement
experiences and was able to
show how retirement was This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-ND
not a single event, but a
process.

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 Life History

• Life history method emphasizes people's

experiences and connections with larger
societal events across lifetime, usually through
analysis of interviews and personal
documents.

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 Employing an Open-Ended, Flexible Approach

• Most qualitative
researchers try not to
impose a predetermined set
of assumptions on the
social worlds they study.
• Structured data collection
methods limit the degree to
which the researcher can
genuinely adopt the
worldview of those being
studied, and this can lead to This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

serious misunderstandings.

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Employing an Open-Ended, Flexible Approach (Cont.)
• Qualitative researchers also
approach their area of
inquiry with open-ended
research questions.
• Jenkins’ (2019) ethnography
of a West African-owned
braiding salon started with
the intention to describe
the setting and interactions.
Nationality and citizenship
emerged as dynamics that
impacted interaction, which This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC

Jenkins had not anticipated.

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 Main Steps in Qualitative Research

Step 1: Asking general research question(s).

Step 2: Selecting relevant site(s) and participants.
Step 3: Collecting relevant data.
Step 4: Analyzing data.
Step 5: Conducting conceptual and theoretical work
Step 5a: Refining the research question(s).
Step 5b: Collecting further data.
Step 6: Writing up findings/conclusions.

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 Distinct Perspective of Qualitative
Research
• Qualitative and quantitative approaches offer
unique perspectives on a variety of
methodological issues—for example, the
importance of objectivity and how researchers’
subjectivities can and should shape research.
– Objectivity calls on researchers to draw conclusions
based on facts that are not influenced by values,
biases, or preconceptions
– Subjectivity considers how someone’s personal
feelings, opinions, or viewpoints can and should shape
research.

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 The Question of Objectivity
• While researchers embracing
positivism emphasize
objectivity as a key goal,
qualitative researchers think
about objectivity by
considering the relationships
between power, authority, and
knowledge production.
• Qualitative analysis frequently
highlights people’s engaging
and intimate stories about
their experiences.
• However, all researchers must
be aware of and think about
how power, perspectives, and
choice impact research. This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

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 The Demand for Generalizability
• The way qualitative
researchers approach
generalization about the
people or events they study
is by identifying elements
that are shared among
those people or common in
those situations (Williams
2000).
• The goal is seeking broader
conceptual understandings
of people and their This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC

experiences.

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 The Goal of Replicability
• Another way people evaluate a study
is to see if its results can be
replicated: if another researcher can
repeat a study and get the same
results.
– Restudy
• The open-ended nature of
observational research and other
qualitative methodologies means
that researchers may focus on
different behaviors and elements,
resulting in differing findings.
• Instead, qualitative researchers,
rather than trying to exactly replicate
another study, may choose to study
concepts further, in order to deepen
their understanding about the social
world.

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 Considering Qualitative Methods

• Qualitative researchers study a wide range of

subjects and approach their studies in a variety of
ways, yet they also share certain approaches
towards research.
• Common features of qualitative studies include
their open-ended nature, their goal of gathering
deep and detailed information to understand life
in context, an allegiance to flexibility, and the aim
of understanding life from their participants’
perspectives.

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 Key Points
• Qualitative researchers tend to produce inductive, constructionist, and interpretivist
studies, focusing on meanings rather than numbers.
• Qualitative research is naturalistic, in that in attempts to minimize the disturbances
caused to the social worlds being studied.
• Ethnography, participant observation, qualitative interviewing, and focus groups are
types of qualitative research. Content analysis and analysis of available data can be
approached with either quantitative or qualitative research, yet these methods are
conducted differently depending on the methodology.
• Four main attributes define qualitative research: process, distinctions, closeness, and
improved understanding.
• Main goals of qualitative research include seeing through the eyes of research
participants, providing rich description of the context, exploring social processes, and
employing an open-ended, flexible approach.
• Qualitative Research can be broken down into 6 steps.
• Qualitative researchers approach the question of objectivity by considering the
relationships between power, authority, and knowledge production. It is not intended
to produce generalizable knowledge or replicable studies.
• A qualitative approach to replicability would consist of restudying concepts examined in
previous work.

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