Advantages and Disadvantages of Qualitative Analysis - Essay Example

?Qualitative Analysis Introduction When carrying out an analysis, it is vital that a person opts for a methodology depending on the of study.In essence, there are two methods of collecting data: qualitative methods and quantitative methods. These two data collection methods vary by their application of measurements and statistics in deductive reasoning (Dey, 67, 2003). A quantitative methodology employs measurements, numbers, statistics or quantities during data collection and in subsequent analytic processes. On the other hand, a qualitative methodology is a non-numeric method of analysis and often uses quality, opinion, or feelings during the data collection and analytic processes (Strauss, 43, 2009; Denzin & Lincoln, 12, 2005). Each of these data collection methods has its own advantages and disadvantages. The paper will delve into the main advantages and disadvantages of different qualitative data collection methods with particular reference to some existing surveys such as the SSP2001 Student Sport Survey 2013. a. Observation Observation is a technique that involves methodically selecting, watching and recording behavior and characteristics of living beings, objects or phenomena. Observation of human behavior is a much-used data collection technique. It can be undertaken in different ways: Participant observation: The observer takes part in the situation he or she observes. (For example, a doctor hospitalised with a broken hip, who now observes hospital procedures 'from within'.) Non-participant observation: The observer watches the situation, openly or concealed, but does not participate. Observations can be open (e.g. walking around a school with permission and making observations) or concealed (e.g., mystery customers trying to obtain prohibited prescription). They may serve different purposes. Observations can give additional, more accurate information on behavior of people than interviews or questionnaires. They can also check on the information collected through interviews especially on sensitive topics such as alcohol or drug use, or stigmatizing diseases. For example, whether community members share drinks or food with patients suffering from feared diseases (leprosy, TB, AIDS) are essential observations in a study on stigma. Advantages Observation provides direct access to the phenomena under study. Rather than depend on secondary information, such as asking people the cleanliness of a local hospital, the researcher actually observe and record the required in that situation (Moser & Kalton, 33, 1979). This is first-hand information and its reliability is confirmed. Observation gives a lot of flexibility to the researcher- structured and unstructured methods can be employed. Disadvantages Observer bias- Observer bias can easily occur when conducting observations or utilizing loosely structured group- or individual interviews. There is a risk that the data collector will only see or hear things in which (s)he is interested or will miss information that is critical to the research. Secondly, observation as a form of data collection may intrude the privacy of the person being observed, particularly when consent is not obtained. Time consuming- observations require a lot of time resource as the researcher must be physically present to make the required observations; Observer Effect- this refers to the way in which the presence of an observer can potentially alter the behavior of those being observed. To avoid or minimize this, unobtrusive methods should be employed (Abramson, 54, 1990); b. Interviewing An interview is a data-collection technique that involves oral questioning of respondents, either individually or as a group. Interviews can take the following three forms: face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews, and computer aided/virtual interview. Face -to -face interviews have a distinct advantage of enabling the researcher to establish rapport with potential participants and therefor gain their support. An advantage of this form of data collection yields the highest response rates in social surveys. In addition, they allow the researcher to seek clarifications to unclear answers and when appropriate, seek follow-up information. This consequently results into more reliable answers as compared to other data collection methods. Face-to-face also allow an interviewer to explain or help clarify questions, increasing the likelihood of reliable responses. The interviewer is also able to be flexible in administering questions to specific persons or environments. Disadvantages include the fact that this method becomes unusable when large samples are involved. Besides, it in can be very expensive especially when a large area is to be covered by the researchers in terms of staff and logistics. This might also require a longer period of data collection (Babbie, 72, 2010). The interviewee may distort information through recall error, bias, or desire to please interviewer. A high level of flexibility in this form of data collection may result in inconsistencies across interviews and hence make analysis of responses more difficult. Telephone interviews are less time consuming and less expensive and the researcher has easy access to anyone with a telephone. The researcher has better control and supervision of interviewers as compared to personal interviews. Consequently, time management becomes easier using this method. Disadvantages are that the response rate is not as high as the face-to- face interview but is significantly higher as compared to mailed questionnaires. The sample may be biased to the extent that people without phones are part of the population about whom the researcher wants to draw inferences (Abramson, 99, 1990). There can also be constraints particularly where there is exchange of graphic information between the respondent and researcher. Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) or Web surveys: is another type of persona interviewing in which the respondent uses a laptop or hand-held computer device to enter the information directly into a database. An example of this method is the SSP2001 Student Sport Survey 2013 in which students are asked to give their opinions on various sporting activities and how they spend their time. This method saves time involved in processing the data, as well as saving the interviewer from carrying around hundreds of questionnaires. Secondly, lower costs are incurred since papers, postage, mailing, data entry costs or phone calls are not required. Analysis of responses obtained is also easy as compared to open-ended interviews since the questions are normally uniform among all respondents of a given category. This makes comparisons across groups or trends easier to analyze. Disadvantages include the fact only a small percentage of people own a home computer, hence some potential respondents may be biased. Consequently, this method may not yield a representative sample. This data collection method can be expensive to set up and requires that respondents have computer and/or typing skills. The method also limits the researcher’s ability to verify or probe the respondent to ascertain the validity of the responses given. For example, in the SSP2001 Student Sport Survey 2013, the researcher may not be able to accurately verify whether the information obtained through the survey. Use of Questionnaires A questionnaire is a set of carefully designed questions given in exactly the same form to a group of people in order to collect data about some topic(s) in which the researcher is interested (Babbie, 22, 2010). Questionnaires are a method used to collect identical information from a selected sample -i.e. the same information is collected in the same way. A written questionnaire can be administered in different ways, including: Sending questionnaires by mail with precise instructions on how to answer the questions and when to return the form; Gathering all or part of the respondents in one place at one time, giving oral or written instructions, and letting the respondents fill out the questionnaires; or Hand-delivering questionnaires to respondents and collecting them later. The questions can be either open-ended or closed. The former contains guides but the interviewer is free to ask other related question based on the responses received while the latter contains pre-categorized answers and offers less flexibility to the interviewer (Babbie, 121, 2010). An example of a questionnaire would be predesigned questions to approximate the the amount of times one accesses Facebook. Questionnaires are the most widely used form of qualitative data collection and this is due to the following advantages: The advantages of questionnaires 1. In comparison to telephone or face-to-face interviews, questionnaires can be used to collect large amounts of information from a large number of people in a short period of time and hence is a relatively less costly or economical method; 2. In cases where the research covers a wide geographical area or remote locations, then questionnaires become the tool of choice over most of the qualitative data collection methods in use today (Pretty et al, 117, 1995); 3. Since questionnaires contain similar questions (for structured questionnaires), it becomes easier to make comparisons between groups or between time periods. In comparison to interviews, this method is seen to have an advantage. For the Facebook study described above, a questionnaire would make it possible to compare Facebbok access between genders with respect to the different frequencies of access. 4. The results of the questionnaires can usually be quickly and easily quantified by either a researcher or through the use of a software package and consequently analyzed to answer the research questions; 5. Questionnaires allow for the collection of a wide array of data that may be used even in future research activities. The added incentive of reduced costs makes this mode of data collection a perfect method to collect additional information; 6. Compared to telephone interviews, written questionnaires are seen to possess an advantage as it allows the researcher to incorporate visual aids or graphics and hence increase the validity of responses; 7. Questionnaires are less intrusive than telephone or face-to-face surveys. When a respondent receives a questionnaire, he is free to complete the questionnaire on his own time-table. Unlike other research methods, the respondent is not interrupted by the researcher (Pretty et al, 89, 1995); 8. Questionnaires reduce bias. The questions are presented in a uniform format with no one in between. The researcher's own opinions will not influence the respondent to answer questions in a certain manner unlike in direct interviews; Disadvantages 1. Response rates can be quite low and refusal rates high especially if the questionnaire is long or requests for sensitive information. This might result into biased results since persons who do not respond may share certain characteristics of interest to the researcher. This is known as non-response bias. As an example, a survey was carried out by Nancy Gatrell to determine the pervasiveness of the problem of psychiatrists sexually abusing their patients (Gatrell et al., 1126, 1986). So she sent out 5,574 questionnaires, and 1,423 responses were received and accepted. So the response rate was just 26%. Amongst the responders, 7.1% of the males admitted to having had sexual relations with their patients, and 3.1% of the females admitted to having had sexual relations with their patients. It is not reasonable to think that these 7.1% and 3.1% rates are representative of the whole population of psychiatrists. A possibility is that the 74% of people who did not respond admitted to having sexual relations with their patients, or at least most them made the admission. Non-response bias can significantly reduce the level of confidence in the research findings. 2. Responses obtained through questionnaires lack validity. Since many questionnaires are normally sent out, the researcher rarely has a means to personally verify the information provided as compared to personal interviews (Pretty et al, 102, 1995). It has been claimed that responses in questionnaires depend on a large extent to the emotional state of the respondent. Unfortunately, the researcher may not know the state in which respondent is in and this results into low validity of data collected; 3. When using a written questionnaire, the researcher may be forced to omit people with reading difficulties, visual impairments and those who do not read/understand the language in which the questionnaire is written in from his sampling frame. This could result into a type of error known as selection bias (error due to the fact that we are biased in who we chose to be in the sample). As an example, The Literary Digest, a very reputable publication, predicted the outcome of the presidential election of 1936, and they had Landon, who got 1.3 million votes in their survey, to beat Roosevelt, who got only 972,000 votes in their survey. Roosevelt won the election and As a result of their wrong prediction, the Literary Digest actually went out of business. The problem arose out of the fact that the company used a poor selection criterion that was complemented with subsequent response bias. 4. People may read differently into each question and therefore reply based on their own interpretation of the question - i.e. what is 'good' to someone may be 'poor' to someone else, therefore there is a level of bias that may not be observable to the researcher; 5. There is a level of researcher imposition, implying that when developing the questionnaire, the researcher is making their own decisions and assumptions as to what is and is not important. Therefore they may be miss out on important aspects; d. Focus Group Discussions (FGD) Focus groups combine elements of both interviewing and participant observation. This method allows a group of 6 - 12 informants to freely discuss a certain subject with the guidance of a researcher (Debus & Porter, 12, 1986). Advantages This method can be used to complement data collected using other methods. It is also a cheaper form of data collection as compared to other methods such as questionnaires. Disadvantages FGDs require a lot of time in group discussions and deliberations and hence it may not be feasible in a large-scale study. FGDs may also be ineffective when sensitive information is required (Helitzer-Alland et al, 8, 1994). References Abramson, JH. (1990). Survey Methods in Community Medicine. London: Churchill-Livingstone. Babbie, E. R. (2010). The Practice of Social Research. Wasworth: Cengage. Debus M, Porter, N. (1986). Handbook for Excellence in Focus Group Researc. Washington: Academy for Educational Development, Healthcom. Denzin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Dey, I. (2003). Qualitative Data Analysis: A User Friendly Guide for Social Scientists. London: Routledge Gatrell, N. et al. (1986). Psychiatrist-patient sexual contact: results of a national survey, I: Prevalence. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 143(9):1986. 1126-31 Helitzer-Alland, J., Makhambera M., and Wangel AM. (1994). Obtaining sensitive information: The need for more than Focus Groups. Reproductive Health Matters 3:75-82 Moser, CA, and Kalton, G. (1979). Survey Methods in Social Investigation. Hants, UK: Gower Publishing Company. Pretty, JN., Guyt, I., Thompson, J., and Scones, I. (1995). Participatory Learning & Action. A Trainer’s Guide. London: International Institute for environment and Development. Strauss, A. L. (2009). Qualitative analysis for social scientists. NY: University of Cambridge. 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