What Is Qualitative Research?

This four-and-a-half-hour course delves into the intricacies of qualitative research in psychology, emphasizing the exploration of individuals’ lived experiences through methods like interviews and observations. Rooted in historical and cross-disciplinary foundations, the course offers a rich understanding of qualitative inquiry, enriched with examples, activities, and self-assessments.

Exploring the foundations of qualitative research, we seek to understand the historical and cross-disciplinary origins of qualitative research and to explore the philosophical underpinnings and interpretive frameworks, including postpositivism, constructivism, transformative, and pragmatism.

We explore foundational research methods and techniques, emphasizing the iterative, naturalistic, and contextual facets of qualitative research. Then, we explore the concept of trustworthiness in qualitative research and four key criteria for judging the soundness of qualitative studies: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. We also address common critiques of qualitative research from a quantitative perspective and understand their misalignment with qualitative principles.

In keeping with emphases in the research literature, we explore the researcher’s role and the concept of reflexivity. The course focuses on the importance of the researcher’s closeness to participants and the impact of the researcher’s own biases and assumptions, as well as how to conduct a self-assessment for reflecting on one’s own research interests and experiences.

Principles discussed in the course are illustrated with examples from the research literature, allowing the user to gain insight into how researchers explore the lived experiences of individuals, groups, and cultures using qualitative inquiry. This course provides a deep dive into the world of qualitative research, offering tools and techniques to understand and appreciate the depth and nuance it brings to the study of human experiences.

Learning objectives

• Describe the iterative, naturalistic, and contextual facets of qualitative research.
• Examine the philosophical underpinnings and interpretive frameworks informing qualitative research.
• Explore the features of qualitative studies in psychology.
• Evaluate qualitative studies by their associated rigor criteria, which differ from criteria used to evaluate quantitative studies.
• Describe four methods to enhance the trustworthiness of qualitative studies: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability.
• Discover practical strategies that promote credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability in qualitative studies.