Qualitative Methodology

Abstract

Sometimes, the researcher wants to study more deeply an individual, an event or a series of specific events. Instead of asking questions such as "how people think about it?" (as prevalent in grounded research) or "if I do such a thing, what will happen?" (as done in empirical research), the researcher asks "how these people act?" or "how events happen?" or "how people are described?" To answer such questions, researchers use a number of research methods under the title of "qualitative research". This article explains necessary steps for conducting qualitative research. Those researches that study the quality of relations, activities, situations or cases are often classified as qualitative research. This kind of research is different from methods involved in quantitative research, and it is based on a comprehensive description, that is elaborating on all the happenings which occur during a specific activity or situation. There are various kinds of qualitative methods, but only a certain number of them are general and representative of qualitative research

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