Question

As a qualitative researcher, the person doing the study becomes the instrument of inquiry. How would you propose to discuss the researcher’s role in a qualitative study?

Answer 1

The qualitative research is used to describes and answering question about participants and contexts. It examine the participants perspective towards events, belief or practices. Qualitative research begins with a general topic of research problem and the group of population expected to be studied.

In qualitative study researcher have less understanding about phenomenon and population under study. Only broad objective may be planned. The research designs in qualitative studies are phenomenolgical design, ethnographic design, grounded theory, case study, historical research and action research. Small sample and video taping, focus group interviews, photographs etc are the data collection tool. The data analysis in qualitative study are listing, categorizing, comparing and laddering.

Qualitative research is a loosely defined category of research design or models, all of which elicit verbal, visual tactile, olfactory and gustatory data in the form of descriptive narrative like field notes, recording or other transcription from audio and video tape and other written records and pictures or film.

The primary role of research is to safeguard participants and their data. The researchers should maintain a relationship with participants to strengthen researchers loyalty towards respondent.

The researchers should maintain integrity of participants by erasr or change all name in transcript and other material.