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Qualitative Methods

Introduction

Qualitative assessment represents a particular methodological paradigm. A paradigm can be viewed as a system of inquiry marked by distinctive epistemological foundations, corresponding conceptual assumptions, and characteristic methods and modes of procedural practice. This entry discusses those ideological foundations, considers their assumptions, and traces their translation into the procedures and practices that jointly constitute qualitative assessment.

Qualitative methods (summarized in Table 1) are frequently described in contrast with quantitative methods. This distinction simultaneously sharpens and blurs distinctive features of each. By drawing attention to the preference of the former to attend to qualities of experience that extend beyond, or transcend, the numerical indexing that predominates in the latter, this distinction highlights their differences at the level of operations or outcomes. But this distinction has limitations, and the line is not always clearly drawn between them. For example, Jessor has observed that ‘qualitative data lend themselves to be quantified and quantitative data can be interpreted’ (1996: 6). Given this qualification, however, a number of distinctive features have been associated with qualitative forms of assessment, and these features follow from its distinctive epistemological commitments (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000).

Foundations and Features

Key differences between quantitative and qualitative approaches follow from fundamental epistemological differences that, in turn, translate into different approaches to the development, utilization, and interpretation of data derived from these methods.

Foundations

The social sciences are broadly regarded as multi-paradigmatic. This amounts to acknowledging that there is no single agreed-upon set of theories or methods that define them. Psychology, in particular, enjoys a range of approaches derived from the natural, social, and human sciences. In drawing a distinction between quantitative and qualitative methods, researchers and practitioners highlight a dimension that distinguishes methods on the basis of their epistemological assumptions. Quantitative approaches subscribe to the epistemological assumptions of the natural sciences. This view, that the objective study of observable variables is adequate to produce knowledge about the structure of reality, remains the predominant one in the behavioural sciences today. In contrast, qualitative methods assume that knowledge is an interactive and emergent phenomena, necessarily grounded in the context, and bounded by the perspectives that gives rise to it. This latter perspective has developed in relation to conceptual shifts within the philosophy of science over the course of the last century.

Table 1. Examples of qualitative assessment techniques, instruments or methods
Technique, instrument or method (creator, when known)DescriptionMain purpose(s)ApplicationsAdvantagesDisadvantages or limitationsReferences
ObservationA systematic description of events, behaviours, speech and artefacts in the naturally occurring setting.Depends on the setting: it is the most popular technique in everyday life and the first step in inductive methods.Some forms or elements of observation are always present in any research method.• Applicable in ecological settings (naturalistic observation)• Its use may bring ethical issuesBannister, P. et al. (1994), Chapter 2; Angrosino, M.V. & Mays de Pérez, A. (2000)
• Flexible and adaptable to different situations• Differently from most of the other qualitative approaches, ‘findings’ can be divorced from the experiential knowledge of those being observed
• Open-ended and propositional• In naturalistic settings the observer affects the observed, changing behaviours in subjects of study (see ‘Participant observation’)
• Can be used with other techniques, taking into account several variables• Sometimes difficult to interpret
• Can accommodate possible technological devices• Time-consuming
• Access to information that is usually hidden, as non-verbal cues
Participant observation (Malinowski, 1922)Observation in which the researcher also occupies a role or part in the setting, in addition to observing. It combines: document analysis, interviewing of respondent and informants, direct participation and observation, and introspection. Three phases: 1 Descriptive observation 2 Focused observation 3 Selective observationUnderstanding natural interactions and interpretations.The same domain of application in observation (above). Mainly used in ethnography, education and research on social issues.• Focus on meanings, interactions and understanding• Limitation in the observer's observational perspectiveFlick, U. (1998);
• Here and now of the everyday life situations• Ethical issuesJorgensen, D.L. (1989)
• Open-ended, flexible, opportunistic• Need to ‘go native’: researcher's personal insights on the subject of study
• Adaptable to ongoing, ever changing processes• Need for familiarity, psychological contact to and understanding of the subject
EthnographyA multi-method form of research that involves participant observation, interviewing, narrative analysis, among others. Based on the sympathetic understanding and interpretation of a particular social phenomenon (‘to go native’). It works primarily with unstructured data.Social scientific description of people and the cultural bases of their personhood.Anthropology, sociology, social psychology, education.• Multi-method approachInvestigation is limited to a reduced number of cases, usually one or two. Limited possibility of planning the research. Dependent upon the researcher's skills in each situation.Bannister, P. et al. (1994, Chapter 3); Jessor, R. et al. (1996); Tedlock, B. (2000)
Study of natural settings (‘field research’), cultures, meanings and values.• Attempt to understand the effects of the active participation of the researcher in the study
• In-depth study of meanings in order to sympathize with the subject of study
• Adaptable to different circumstances (open and flexible)
Focusing (Gendlin, 1978)Technique for directing person's attention towards bodily targets, in order to increase feelings of personal wholeness, linking bodily sensations to personal experiences.Overcome the split between body and mind.Humanistic, experiential psychology and psychotherapy.Helping clients access their experience by having them attend to and symbolize their bodily felt sense.• Enhances emotional awarenessGendlin (1978)
• May amplify distress or dissociation
• Requires minimal levels of cognitive and emotional processing
Repertory Grid (Kelly, 1955)Elicitation and analysis of personal constructs (rows) applied to elements (columns).Better knowledge of system organization through construct placement and relationships in the psychological space.Clinical, counselling and personality psychology. Wherever it is important to identify and clarify the idiosyncratic dynamics of values and meanings.Constructs can be either personally elicited or provided, permitting the comparision of different repgrids. Repertory grids can be analysed using software program.The elicitation procedure can seem complicated. There is the risk for constructs and their relationships to be reified by the analyser, therefore forgetting the original constructivist conception of constructs as idiosyncratic, contextualized, inter-related, and dynamic descriptions of the person's ‘invented’ reality.Fransella, F. & Bannister, D. (1977)
Self-characterization (Kelly, 1955)Self-description of the individual as the protagonist of a play. The draft is written in the third person by the individual as if s/he were being described by a hypothetical other who knows him/her very well.To obtain the narrative description of the way the person is presenting her/himself.Counselling and personality psychology, adult development and education, vocational psychology.Easy to obtain. It allows clients to go beyond their initial concerns, describing themselves in a broader way.• Generates a ‘perspective shift’ on part of the userFransella, F. & Dalton, P. (1990)
• Engaging and informative
• Can invite self-reflection and (re)construction
Vocational Card Sort (VCS) (Tyler, 1961; Dewey, 1974)Semi-projective method: individuals project onto a set of cards with occupational titles their idiosyncratic classifications of occupationsExploring idiosyncratic work interests, values, needs and goals for groups and/or individuals.Vocational counselling, education.• Can be used both for individuals and groups• Requires individuals who are able to abstract and generalizeGoldman, L. (1983, 1992)
• Simple to administer• Is most useful in groups with very different work goals and different interests and needs
• Categories produced are idiosyncratic and therefore individuals are not forced into a present limited framework
• Flexibility
• Multicultural applicability and adaptation
• Individuals are full participants in the assessment process
Friendship InventoryOn a sheet, the individual writes the name of each friend and for each, the person's age, ethnic identity, skin colour, marital status, religion, occupation, how long known, and other categories that the assessor wants to add.To highlight major narratives in one's life, regarding social aspects and personal identities.Counselling, education.• Flexible and adaptable to the particular individual or groupIt is most useful with heterogeneous groupsGoldman, L. (1996)
• Usable with people from different ethnicities and/or cultures
• Highlights cultural and social diversity
• Great stimulus for group discussions
• Easy to translate in other languages
Certificate of AccomplishmentParticipants are asked to place themselves at some point in the future and to assume that they have been selected as a recipient of a very special and important achievement. Individuals are asked to write the statement in the certificate.Stimulate people to fantasize and project their important values and goals.Individual and group counselling, education.• It offers a special opportunity to reveal personal cultural differences about ambitions, expectations, perceived barriers, biases or racism• Some cultures (i.e. Asian or Native American) may consider it is inappropriate to focus on one's personal accomplishments or ambitionGoldman, L. (1996)
The Life LineThe individual displays graphically on a sheet of paper the major events in her or his own life, with an indication of their effects on the person's current and future condition, feelings or status.To help people to review their life histories and personal narratives. Increase awareness of their values, needs and factors that have contributed to their development and current status.Individual and group counselling.• Provides a development framework of the person• It risks giving events a linear causality, but helps to identify trends, themes or overall developmental trajectory for the personGoldman, L. (1992, 1996)
• Enhances self-awareness and growth
• Adaptable to almost every cultural or ethnic group
• People provide their own structure, selections and categorization of events
The indescribable moment (Neimeyer, G.J., 2000)A constructivist assessment technique involving interaction among two or more individuals that is designed to access a client's distinctive emotional and linguistic representational abilities.• Identifying emotional and linguistic representational abilitiesMainly used in group therapy, clinical training, and adult education and development contexts.• Applicable in individual, couple, family, or group therapy contexts• Relies on a capacity and context that assures trustNeimeyer, G.J. (2000)
• Encouraging reflection and reconsideration of powerful emotional experiences• Flexible and adaptable; invitation to ‘consider any important experience that you have had that is hard to put into words for you’, has broad range of applicability• Requires willingness to suspend ‘interpretation’ in the interest of promoting ‘discovery’
• Highlighting the dialogical nature of the construction of meaning. Allows for the identification of primary modes of representation (linguistic, metaphorical, etc.) and invites experiential deepening beyond currently available cognitive constructions.• Enhances cohesion, emotional deepening, and effective working alliance in individual, family or group contexts• Careful description of experience can re-invoke that experience; for traumatic experiences this ‘revivification’ can be powerful and potentially threatening, even as it yields new possibilities for the deconstruction or reconstruction of the experience
• Accesses aspects of emotional experience not otherwise available in ‘cognitive’ accounts, and reveals idiosyncratic forms of representing them
InterviewCharacteristics that are common to different kinds of interview:Through a certain level of personal involvement and through interactions with interviewee(s), interviewers identify idiosyncratic meanings or world views that describe the individual or the group experiences.Some forms or elements of interview are present in any research method• Flexible• Dependent upon the interviewer's skill and expertiseKuale (1996)
• Emphasis on subjective meanings of the participants according to the topic of the interview• Attention to personal and specific issues raised by the interviewee• Risk for the interviewer to play a powerful role in the research relationship. As a consequence, there is a clear need for reflexivity: researchers have to reflect on the purposes of the interview and on a set of power relations such as class, race, ethnicity, gender, age, etc.
• Investigating complex meanings and their relationships• Do not tend implicitly to reduce or simplify meanings
• Focus on specific areas of concern• Permits the understanding of views that may be inconsistent, incoherent or illogical to the interviewer
• It may not be suited to interviewees who belong to or identify with cultures that do not consider verbal language as a primary tool of communication
1 Structured interview: the interviewer asks all respondents the same series of pre-established questions, often with specific rules about the order and the selection of the questions, which depends on the person's response to previous questions.Broad type of contentsMarketing research, telephone interviews, interviews associated with survey research.• It is not necessary to establish a relationship or to be involved with the interviewee (s). Being the most quantitative kind of interview, researchers may be attracted by specific features, as the possibility of studying single variables, the causal and logical model, the goal of controlling, predicting and confirming hypothesis, the deduction by statistical methods.• Limited room for variation. Little flexibility and improvisationFontana, A. & Frey, J.H. (2000)
• Responses are coded according to already established criteria
• Attempt to limit personal variation and interpretation related to the research relationship
• Risk of response effects or non-sampling errors
• Usually does not assess the emotional and more idiosyncratic dimensions
2 Focused interview (Merton, R.K. & Kendall, P.L., 1946): interview about the impact of a specific topic that works as stimulus.Analysis of subjective meanings.Media research, counselling.Its initial non-directivity enables personal expressions, and it reduces the imposition of the interviewer's frame of reference.It is assumed that the features of the stimulus are objectively known.Flick, U. (1998)
3 Semi-structured interview: the interviewer is guided by a schedule of questions or topics, which gives some order and direction to the interviewee's answers. The interviewer is partially free to modify the questions and follow up the person's responses.Reconstructing and taking into awareness subjective assumptions, knowledge, and interpretation about a specific topic or area.Counselling, psychotherapy.Interviewers can tailor their questions to the interviewees' position, issues and comments.• Deeply based for its implementation and interpretation on the relationship between the interviewee and the interviewerBannister, P. et al. (1994)
• Difficult mediation between the course of the interview and the interviewer's interests
4 Unstructured (open) interview: very close to participant observation. In a specific setting, the interviewer interacts with the interviewee with as little direction as possible. The interviewer is free to modify the questions and to follow up on the answers.To understand complex behaviours and meanings without imposing any a priori categorization.Ethnography, counselling, psychotherapy, social research.• Very adaptable to different contexts and cultures, and to unexpected situations• It may be difficult or lengthy to have significant information about the topic of interestFontana, A. & Frey, J.H. (2000)
• Provides a great breadth of data• It may not be suitable for less-verbal people
• Transmits to the interviewee the feeling of deep and genuine acceptance by the interviewer
5 Narrative interview: the individual is asked to present the history of an area of interest, in which the interviewee participated, in an extemporaneous narrative.• To expand or increase the consistency of the personal story about an identified area, from its beginning to its endBiographical research, counselling, life review in adult development.• Allows the researcher to approach the interviewee's experiential world in the way the person presents it• Generates substantial textual material in the transcripts of narrative interviewsPolkinghorne, D.E. (1988); Flick, U. (1998)
• To highlight subjective development and coherence• Highlights the structure, the progression and the development of the person's history• The lack of structure may make the recognition of main narratives difficult
6 Group discussion: systematic questioning of several individuals simultaneously in a formal or informal setting, with emphasis on group dynamics.• Studying of group dynamics in their natural setting, and observing the production, expression, exchange, and negotiation of opinions among membersMarketing research, group counselling and therapy.• Has been used as an alternative to open interviews, with considerable time and money saving• Difficulties in defining what is an optimal group (e.g. natural vs. artificial groups; homogeneous vs. heterogeneous; determining the role of the moderator)Fontana, A. & Frey, J.H. (2000); Flick, U. (1998)
• Analysis of common processes of problem solving in the group• Group discussions provide validating statements and views• Unpredictable dynamics and outcomes
• A breadth of information from various points of view, with an anticipation of the potential dynamics that may be linked to specific topics or arguments• As for semi-structured interviews, the mediation between the course of the discussion and the research topic may be difficult
• It may reveal how opinions are created and above all changed, asserted or suppressed in social exchange• Potentially, there may be difficulties in facilitating the development of group dynamics, and the integration of all the participants
• Difficulties in comparing data from different groups
7 Focus group (Merton, R.K., Fiske, M. & Kendall, P.L., 1956). A limited number of homogeneous members discuss a specific topic, within a permissive and non-threatening milieu. Inclusion and use of group interaction.Data generation from participants' interaction and insights on experiences and beliefs.Group counselling; marketing and media research; research on social issues (health, sexual abuse, etc.) and multiculturalism;• Applicable in natural and social settings, typical of everyday life• Its use is not always appropriate (i.e. when it is necessary to share confidential information). Participants may not feel comfortable with each other.Morgan, D.L. (1998); Madriz, E. (2000)
Development of alternative interpretations through meaning discussion and negotiation with other members. Generation of hypothesis.programme evaluation; development of survey instruments; alternative to test validation (use of the group for finding alternative interpretations of data obtained from other methodological procedures).• Accentuates empathy, commonality of experience and fosters self-disclosure and self-validation among participants and in that part of the population that can identify with the group. At the same time it emphasizes diversity and differences from discussions and negotiations. Generates awareness and consciousness by developing interactive data and by contributing to the social construction of meaning.• Difficult to generalize from the research results
• Easy to use with other methods (i.e. observation, personal interviews)Kvale (1996)
8 In depth interview: the conversation does not use present questions, but is shaped by a defined set of topics or dynamics between the assessor and the interviewee.Exploring personal and deep issues or topics in detail.Counselling psychology, psychotherapy.It allows the exploration of deep idiosyncratic meanings that play a significant and ordering role in the person's system, both psychological and social.• It requires a good relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee in order to reach a satisfactory depth
• Requires expertise by the assessor

Nearly a century ago, for example, Max Weber (1906/1949) criticized the positivistic aspiration towards absolute knowledge by situating objectivity in the method(s) of inquiry rather than in the properties of the object or events being studied. By articulating the tacit agreement among 19th century scientists that the object imposes or determines the method, Weber drew attention to the alternative viewpoint that the method and the subject both play roles in the construction of the object. In this way Weber presaged much of this century's development in relation to qualitative assessment. Fundamental to this assessment is a blurring of the boundaries between subject and object, between the knower and the known, highlighting the thorough going interrelationship of each with the other. The focus turns from understanding the independent qualities of an objective, knowable, stable, and universal object, to the contextualized interpretation or co-construction of the events or experience from a particular perspective. According to this viewpoint, scientific inquiry ‘is, therefore, no passive copying of reality but is, rather, an active construction or constitution of it’ (Madison, 1988: 17).

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