What is Qualitative Research? Definition, Methodologies, Case Studies & More

What is Qualitative Research?

Qualitative research is the process of collecting, interpreting, and analysing rich, non-numerical data. This data can include text, videos, and audio, such as written field notes from an observation, or an audio recording from an interview. Qualitative research allows us to interpret the unique and subjective nature of the real world. It is a multi-method approach that aims to make sense of the ‘what’ and ‘why’ behind our behaviours, thoughts, and feelings. 

Core Goals of Qualitative Research: 

Numbers and statistics have their strengths and value. However, numerical data does not always give us the bigger picture or the full story. Qualitative research and its open-ended data provide a broader outlook that is essential for particular questions, topics, and phenomena. Using an exploratory approach, this type of research uncovers people’s perceptions, motivations, and attitudes. This can help us to understand ‘how’ or ‘why’ things exist or operate as they do. 

Qualitative research helps us to:

• Understand a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours
• Gain insight into someone’s beliefs, experiences, and attitudes
• Learn about the social reality of individuals, groups, and cultures from those who live and feel it
• Reveal the ‘why’ behind behaviours and perceptions
• Extract rich, in-depth insights into problems and topics
• Generate new ideas for areas of research 
• Give a voice to people on important or controversial issues and topics 

Popular Use Cases: 

Qualitative research is used in a wide range of contexts, including academic research, market research, and user research. In academia, qualitative research is mostly used for the humanities and social sciences such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, education, and health sciences. It can be used to understand the lived experiences of illnesses and treatments, the reasons behind behaviour, and the experiences of students. 

However, qualitative research is also important for market and user research. Businesses can use qualitative research to understand their target audience in a number of ways. This allows them to make educated assumptions and improve decision-making. For example, qualitative research can be used to understand a customer’s purchasing behaviours. 

For user researchers and product developers, qualitative research can be used to understand how a person interacts with a product. This can be useful for understanding whether a product is easy and intuitive to use. Qualitative research can also provide in-depth insights into the pain points of the end customer and user. This can help define the problem that the product aims to solve with the real world in mind. 

Qualitative Research Methodologies:

Methodologies are the specific ways qualitative researchers collect data. It’s common for multiple methods to be used when collecting data, rather than relying on one single source. These methods are combined to gather rich and in-depth data that paints a detailed picture. 

In-Depth Interviews

This is a common qualitative research method where people are asked questions in a one-on-one conversation. Researchers can use this conversational approach to understand a person’s perspective on an experience, event, or topic. Using open-ended questions, researchers can dive deeper into the discussion and gain rich and detailed information. Interviews can take place over the phone, face-to-face, or via video calls, and often involve an audio recording to analyse later. 

Focus Groups

Similar to interviews, focus groups are a common method that involves generating and facilitating conversation amongst a group of people. Focus groups are usually made up of 6-10 demographically similar people. Researchers can use this method to understand complex processes, like people’s beliefs and opinions. It’s a good method for understanding the ‘what’, ‘how’, and ‘why’ behind people’s attitudes and their understanding of social norms. 

Observations 

This is an in-depth approach to understanding people in their natural environment. It involves paying careful attention to how people are behaving in the given context. Researchers collect a detailed record of everything they saw, heard, and encountered using field notes. 

Surveys

Surveys are questionnaires with open-ended questions about the topic of interest. These can also include close-ended and demographic questions, allowing a range of data to be collected at once. Surveys are often used to support other qualitative research methods, like interviews and focus groups. Researchers can save time and reach more people by using an open-ended survey. This method can be beneficial for addressing sensitive topics where people might feel more comfortable answering in the comfort of their homes. 

Secondary Data

This method focuses on using existing text, image, video, and audio data to answer a research question. Sometimes it can be easier to tap into secondary data that already exists. This can include a wide range of rich, relevant information such as case studies, previous research, documents, government reports, articles, and video or audio interviews.

Approaches to Qualitative Research: 

Researchers use qualitative research approaches to determine their chosen research methods. These approaches are flexible and can help researchers to approach their subject with the right tools. Each approach will often use a mixture of research methods. 

Grounded Theory

This approach aims to develop theories that are ‘grounded’ or ‘rooted’ in rich data, such as observations and in-depth interviews. It is a flexible, iterative and data-driven approach that can be used to solve problems within businesses and organisations. Researchers can use this approach to uncover the reasons and explanations behind specific events, activities, or behaviours. This can be done using a mix of observations, in-depth interviews, and secondary data. 

For example, grounded theory can be used to:

• Understand why employees are unsatisfied or unmotivated
• Uncover the reasons behind people’s voting behaviour 
• Explain why customers are satisfied with a product or service 
• Learn about students’ engagement in online lectures 

Ethnography

Using immersion, this process is focused on understanding the cultures, behaviours, and norms that exist in a particular group, environment, or organisation. Traditionally, this approach was used in anthropology to understand different cultures. However, it’s now also used to understand things like workplace cultures, customer behaviour, and social behaviour on the internet. 

For this use case, some may refer to this approach as ‘field research’. Researchers can use first-hand experience in a natural setting to understand the goals, challenges, and motivations of people in a particular environment. This can be done using a mixture of observations and in-depth interviews to form a detailed picture. 

Ethnography (field research) can be used to be: 

• Understand company cultures
• Learn about behaviours of social groups, like gen z university students
• Investigate how consumers use a particular product 
• Observe online behaviours on social media (also known as digital ethnography)

Phenomenological Research

This approach describes and interprets the lived experiences of people to understand a particular phenomenon or event. It can be used to describe places, actions, processes, and events using the perspectives of people. Researchers can do this using in-depth interviews or focus groups. It’s commonly used in psychology, education, and sociology to understand something from the first-hand perspectives of a target group. 

For example, phenomenological research can be used to:

• Understand the lived experiences of people who have rare illnesses
• Investigate how a community was impacted by a specific event, i.e. COVID-19
• Uncover lifestyle habits of carers  
• Learn about students’ experiences with therapy 

Narrative Research 

Narrative research focuses on interpreting how stories are told and constructed by people. This can help us to understand how a person views and makes sense of their own experiences. Using these individual stories, researchers can extract a range of themes and insights using in-depth interviews and secondary data (diaries, photographs, or histories). 

Narrative research be used to:

• Develop customer personas for a business or product 
• Outline customer journey maps 
• Understand a patient’s experience of their treatment 
• Investigate how someone is adapting to a new lifestyle change i.e. a new diet or exercise plan

Case Studies:

These are rich, detailed descriptions of a person, group, community, or organisation that highlights a specific theme, topic, or issue. Researchers can create case studies using interviews, secondary data, and observations. Case studies are often used as real-life (or fictitious) examples to demonstrate experiences. 

For example, case studies can be created for:

• Businesses to highlight the effectiveness of their products or services
• Patients who are undergoing treatments
• Students trying out online courses 
• History to document the lived experiences of a specific person, family, or community 

Case studies are essentially stories that provide a conclusion about how something turned out. For example, how a business used a sales technique to grow, or how a student improved their grades using a particular study method. 

Example Case Studies:

Market Research Example:

A tech start-up wants to release a new pro subscription to its app users. To learn more about their target audience, they decide to take a phenomenological research approach and conduct focus groups. These focus groups help them understand what features users are willing to pay for. They also conduct some follow-up interviews to understand the reasons behind the user’s chosen paid features. This helps the start-up to develop a pro plan that users want. 

Business Research Example:

A company recently onboarded several interns and is worried they are unsatisfied. To understand what is happening in the office, they decide to take an ethnography research approach and observe their interns. They follow up with some interns using in-depth interviews to fully understand their feelings. This data revealed that the interns didn’t feel engaged or challenged by their work. They often would complete tasks quickly and have little to do. The company was able to assign better work tasks and set up a space for the interns to communicate if they needed more or less work. 

Psychology Research Example:

A local mental health service wants to develop a support program for carers. To do this, they take a narrative approach and use in-depth interviews to understand how carers perceive their caring role. This helped them outline the challenges each carer faced and extract some common themes. They were able to create a program that was rooted in real-life carers’ experiences.