When confronted with social phenomena, do you tend to ask questions like, "Why is that person driving 30 miles over the speed limit?" or "Why did this person leave me a voicemail instead of send a text?" If the answer is yes, then you might find yourself drawn to qualitative research.
Qualitative research helps us explore people, societies, and the relationships between them to understand the world as others experience it. Although the journey from conceptualizing and designing to producing qualitative research is undoubtedly complex, the following five steps offer a broad overview of how to approach the intricate process.
1. Focus the topic
The first step is to identify and narrow your topic of exploration. Let's take today's hot topic of remote work. Lately, you've noticed that after several years of remote work during the peak of COVID-19, some employers are calling employees back to the office, while some employees would rather preserve their flexible work environment. In some cases, employers and employees have taken to social media to publicize their stance on the issue. As you read their declarations, you wonder, "Why are employers pushing for a return to office, and why are employees hesitant to return?" or "How have employers and employees experienced the phenomenon of remote work?" With qualitative research methods, you have the opportunity to find out.
2. Review existing research on the topic
Now that you've identified the scope of your research, your next step is to review existing literature on the topic. By reviewing existing research, you can learn about how other scholars have studied and written about the topic, substantiate that your topic is a worthwhile pursuit of exploration, and further refine your research questions. Once you've established a clear sense of how the topic has been studied to date and identified how to contribute to the scholarly conversation, you're ready to design your study.
3. Design the study
When designing a qualitative study for academic research, you are likely to use one of five methodologies: narrative, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, or case study. Simply put:
- Narrative research collects and retells the stories of human experience;
- Phenomenology investigates a phenomenon shared or experienced by participants;
- Grounded theory seeks to develop theory when little is known about a phenomenon;
- Ethnography examines communities and cultural traditions such as values, beliefs, behaviors, and language;
- Case study involves an in-depth investigation of a specific subject such as a person, group, place, event, organization, or phenomenon.
To study the topic of employer and employee perspectives on remote work, you decide on a phenomenological design. Remote work is the phenomenon, and you plan to conduct in-depth interviews with employers and employees who have experienced remote work and shifts in remote work policies. Therefore, the research scope and methodology are aligned, and you are ready to obtain ethical approval and recruit participants.
4. Collect and analyze data
Before you begin recruiting participants, you must obtain ethical approval to conduct the study and include the eligibility criteria that are essential for participation. For example, you might only be interested in recruiting employers and employees who: (1) have worked remotely for a minimum of two years in the last three years and (2) have experienced a shift in remote work policies during the last 60 days. Through recruitment efforts such as social media posts or email listservs, to name a few, you are thrilled to have recruited 10 employers and 10 employees to participate in the study.
Following your successful recruitment efforts, you are ready to begin data collection. To align with your phenomenological study design, you've decided to conduct in-depth, semi-structured, individual interviews with the 10 employers and 10 employees that comprise your sample. After coordinating the interview date and location with your first participant, an employer, the day of your first interview has finally arrived! You remind the participant of their rights and responsibilities, confirm their consent to participate, and begin recording the interview. Following your interview protocol, you pose prompts and questions such as:
- Tell me about your experiences with remote work before, during, and after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- What was it like to manage a team while you were all working remotely? What successes did you celebrate? What challenges did you experience?
- What does work flexibility mean to you? What do you think work flexibility means to your employees?
- Tell me about your relationship with your employees. In what ways, if any, did your relationships change throughout the peak of the pandemic and in the recent months?
- In what ways, if any, have your remote work policies shifted since before, during, and after the peak of the pandemic? Who and what has influenced the decisions involved in remote work policies?
- What, if anything, do you wish your employees understood about your perspective as it relates to remote work? Why?
In your second interview, this time with an employee, you repeat the interview preparation procedures and pose similar prompts and questions such as:
- Tell me about your experiences with remote work before, during, and after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- What were your experiences like when your whole team was working remotely? What successes did you celebrate? What challenges did you experience?
- What does work flexibility mean to you? What do you think work flexibility means to your colleagues? Your employer?
- Tell me about your relationship with your colleagues and your employer. In what ways, if any, did your relationships change throughout the peak of the pandemic and in the recent months?
- In what ways, if any, have remote policies at your organization shifted since before, during, and after the peak of the pandemic? Who and what has influenced the decisions involved in remote work policies? How do you feel about current policies and the processes used to inform them?
- What, if anything, do you wish your employer understood about your perspective as it relates to remote work? Why?
After concluding the second interview and repeating the process with your other 18 participants, you are ready to transcribe the recorded interviews in preparation for data analysis.
After transcribing your interviews, it's time to begin coding. There are many coding approaches you can use, though like selecting your methodology, the coding approach should align with the goals of your study. As you begin coding, remember to make note of the procedures used, as describing each step of the process will ensure trustworthiness and transparency in your eventual report. Consider:
- How and why were codes created?
- How and why were codes reconciled to form clusters or categories?
- Why were some codes deemed more significant than others?
- Was intercoder reliability employed? How might the answer to this question influence the findings?
- How did you arrive at the final themes or findings?
- Was member-checking employed to ensure your interpretations aligned with participants' beliefs and expressions?
Think of data analysis and reporting like teaching a child who has never cooked anything or heard of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before. Would you tell them to: "Put peanut butter on one side, jelly on the other, and you'll be done"? The answer is (hopefully) no.
Rather, you might say, "First, take a plate out of the cupboard and place it on the table. Second, take the bread out of the pantry and pull out two slices of bread. Third, place the slices of bread next to each other on the plate. Fourth, take the jar of peanut butter out of the pantry…and so on."
If I'm the child, I'm thinking, "Ah, yes, now I know how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Thank you for providing me with such clear, detailed, and explicit procedures for getting from point A (desiring a PB&J sandwich) to points B-Y (making a PB&J sandwich) to point Z (eating that delicious PB&J sandwich)."
5. Write the report
At last! You've completed data analysis and you're ready to write the report. The following outline provides a structure and associated reflection questions for writing a qualitative research report.
- Introduction
- What is the research topic?
- What issues or questions does your study seek to inform?
- Literature Review
- What prior research was conducted on the topic?
- How are the existing studies in conversation with each other?
- Theoretical Framework
- What theory or theories were distilled from existing literature and used to frame the study?
- Why were these theories selected to inform your lens of analysis?
- Methods
- Methodology: Which methodology or research design did you use, and how is it intentionally aligned with your research scope and questions?
- Ethical Approval: When and how did you obtain ethical approval to conduct your study?
- Positionality: Who are you in relation to the research, what experiences led you to the research, and why are you well-positioned to carry out this work?
- Context and Participants: Where and how did you recruit participants, and what were the eligibility criteria for their participation?
- Data Collection: What procedures and data sources (e.g., interviews, observations, focus groups) did you use to collect data?
- Data Analysis: When and how did you analyze data, and have you explained your data analysis procedures in enough detail for other researchers to replicate your methods?
- Trustworthiness: How were trustworthiness and ethical considerations upheld throughout data collection and analysis?
- Findings
- How and why did you decide to organize and present your findings a certain way (e.g., chronologically, thematically)?
- How do your findings inform the research questions?
- What evidence or raw data (e.g., participant quotes) are provided in your findings to substantiate their credibility?
- Discussion and Implications
- What do your findings suggest, and why do they matter? What can be learned or better understood from your findings?
- How do the findings of your study compare or contrast with the existing literature and theory that you introduced in your literature review? How do your findings contribute to the field and enter the existing scholarly conversation?
- What were the limitations of your study, and what directions for future research do you suggest?
- What are the implications of your study for research, practice, or policy? How can the findings of your study be used to inform remote work research, practice, or policy tomorrow? In the next six months? The next year? The next five years?
Qualitative research empowers individuals and communities, elevates participants' authentic voices, and uncovers the lived human experiences that may bear meaning beyond what is observed or interpreted on the surface.
Qualitative research also harnesses the power of empathy, allowing researchers and readers to understand and appreciate how others think, feel, and interact with our world. The next time you see someone driving 30 miles over the speed limit, rather than rush to assumptions, consider interviewing them. You might be surprised to find out that the driver was speeding to the hospital where their partner just went into labor. The next time you wonder why someone left you a creative voicemail instead of a text, consider interviewing them. You might develop a new awareness and appreciation for intergenerational differences and how individuals prefer to communicate. In addition to understanding others' unique experiences, these newfound insights can foster your personal, professional, social, and academic growth in transformative and intersectional ways.
Header photo by Pixabay.