Historical Roots of Qualitative Research

The proliferation of qualitative studies in current research literature can be traced to at least one clear historical benchmark—the application to the human or social sciences of the German term Verstehen, loosely translated as “to understand” or “to interpret,” by the German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey in the mid-nineteenth century. Dilthey and other philosophers used the term to describe an individual's first-person perspective on his or her own experience, culture, history, and society. Subsequently, German sociologists Max Weber and Georg Simmel advocated Verstehen as a mode of sociological research in which an outside observer systematically gathers information on a particular phenomenon from the perspective of insiders, rather than interpreting it in terms of the researcher's outsider view. Advocates of this perspective argue that researchers are not really able to see the world as study participants experience it. These investigators are therefore obligated to gain insider views that may well differ from their own.

In the early twentieth century, German philosopher Edmund Husserl's (1913/1982) work on phenomenology advanced a research method to capture the processes through which humans come to know the world. In the early decades of that century, University of Chicago sociologists (called the Chicago School) listened to and recorded the views of those underrepresented in society, including immigrants, criminals, and the impoverished (Merriam, 2009). These and other social theorists laid the groundwork for qualitative researchers, who now use different methodologies and methods, seeking to uncover the meanings individuals bring to life experiences. The growth in the application of qualitative research approaches was pronounced by the 1970s, with the most significant expansion occurring in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Today there are dozens of journals, handbooks, research texts, and organizations devoted to qualitative designs and strategies (for examples, see Organizations and Web Sites at the end of this chapter).

The assumption in popular discourse and among novice researchers is that quantitative researchers count and qualitative researchers describe. And in truth, from the terms qualitas and quantitas, the term qualitative implies observing the kinds of things in the world, whereas the term quantitative suggests locating the amount. Quantitative researchers, on the one hand, do ask such questions as “How many of something are there in this place in the world?” Qualitative researchers, on the other hand, ask questions like “What are the kinds of things that are important for the conduct of social action in this local community of social practice?” Specifically, the quantitative investigator is likely to pose such a research question as this: “Is there a measurable increase in students' achievement after they experience the special science program?” The qualitative researcher, by contrast, might ask: “What are the participants' experiences with and reactions to the special science program?” In practical terms, though, quantitative researchers also describe, and qualitative researchers also count.

As a cautionary note, Strauss and Corbin (1998) remind us to carefully examine studies that may purport to be qualitative but do not actually follow the dictates of the paradigm:

Thus the terms quantitative and qualitative function as shorthand for differences far more complicated than the simple dichotomy of counting or not counting. They illuminate different assumptions about how we come to know the world. These differences are epistemological, asking questions about knowledge and how knowledge is acquired, and ontological, inquiring about the nature of reality and what it means to be or exist. These underlying assumptions reflect what Thomas Kuhn called different paradigms, or sets of practices that define a scientific discipline or approach to conducing research.

For the quantitative researcher, seeking understanding involves the concerted effort to remain independent of the phenomenon being studied, and when possible to establish cause-and-effect relationships that may be generalizable to other settings. This perspective has a long history beginning with the scientific method and early ideas of positivism (a precursor to current quantitative frameworks), but it has been thoroughly revised in a more advanced framework.

Current literature suggests that quantitative researchers have become ever more circumspect in regard to the trustworthiness of their research designs. These cautions are based on proposing generalization of findings only after recognizing the unique characteristics of both the nature of each study setting (ecological validity) and the explicit characteristics of each study sample (population validity). In addition, emerging issues identified as conflict of interest validity threats have been exposed related to insiders in pharmaceutical and other industries conducting their own research (House, 2011. Many standard research sources are available that provide more complete discussions of experimental and other quantitative or statistical research frameworks (see, for example, Gall, Gall, & Borg, 2003; Martin & Bridgmon, 2009; Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002).

In contrast to those adhering to the more or less quantitative views outlined earlier, those who conduct qualitative research place much less emphasis on examining cause and effect and seldom find it necessary or even possible in most cases to draw conclusions that can be generalized beyond the research setting. For qualitative researchers, truth is context-as well as time-specific. As Merriam (2009) summarizes,

Whereas quantitative researchers seek to find what works best or which variables best explain a particular result, qualitative investigators strive to thoroughly explore day-to-day interactions, how things transpire, and the individual meanings of these events for the people involved. Certainly, this detail-oriented investigative approach can involve an intermix of both quantitative and qualitative observations (methods), but the underlying assumptions concerning the general views of research are distinctly different from those of quantitative researchers.

Qualitative researchers generally hold one of two research perspectives: interpretivist or critical. Interpretive researchers in this text (in the fields of biography and life story research, historical research, ethnographic research, autoethnography, narrative inquiry, case study research, arts-based research, practitioner action research, and program evaluation) assume that people create their own meanings in interaction with the world around them. For interpretive researchers, there is no single, unitary reality apart from our perceptions, and because each individual is unique and lives in a unique reality, individuals cannot be aggregated or averaged to explain phenomena. This notion of uniqueness applies to the researcher as well; in interpretive research, the effect of the researcher on the research itself is acknowledged. Interpretive investigators attempt to understand phenomena by accessing the meaning and value that study participants assign to them. These researchers ask open questions about how participants experience the world, and even allow questions to emerge and change as a situation becomes familiar.

Research grounded in critical theory draws on many of the same assumptions as the interpretive view, which acknowledges that reality is constructed through the meaning individuals give to a particular phenomenon. The important difference is that critical theorists focus on the ways power is embedded in the structure of society and how individuals become empowered to transform themselves, the social organization around them, and society as a whole. The critical researchers in this text (who focus on African American evaluation, critical ethnography, feminist research, indigenous research, and democratic research) are informed by principles of social justice, in terms of both working with and affecting outcomes in the community. Critical theorists ask about the sources of inequality and oppression in society, how language and communication patterns are used to oppress people, and how individuals achieve autonomy in the face of societal oppression.

As noted earlier, current educational and social scientific research literature continues to reflect both quantitative and qualitative views, represented by studies that employ many methodologies. Quantitative research may take a range of forms, including true experiments, quasi-experiments (with nonrandom sampling), correlational studies, and survey research. These all share the characteristics of linearity, precise quantitative measurement (often testing), and statistical analysis. Qualitative research, however, emphasizes texts over numbers. As Strauss and Corbin (1998) explain, “It can refer to research about persons' lives, lived experiences, behaviors, emotions, and feelings as well as about organizational functioning, social movements, cultural phenomena, and interactions between nations” (p. 11). These qualitative studies focus on giving voice to those who live experiences no one else could know about directly, asking research questions that encourage reflection and insight rather than assessing performance on tests or other quantitative measures emphasized in traditional quantitative research.