Home Blog Types of Qualitative research designs
Grounded theory, ethnographic, narrative research, historical, case studies, and phenomenology are several types of qualitative research designs. The proceeding paragraphs give a brief over view several of these qualitative methods.
Grounded theory is a systematic procedure of data analysis, typically associated with qualitative research, that allows researchers to develop a theory that explains a specific phenomenon. Grounded theory was developed by Glaser and Strauss and is used to conceptualize phenomenon using research; grounded theory is not seen as a descriptive method and originates from sociology. The unit of analysis in grounded theory is a specific phenomenon or incident, not individual behaviors. The primary data collection method is through interviews of approximately 20 – 30 participants or until data achieves saturation.
Aligning theoretical framework, gathering articles, synthesizing gaps, articulating a clear methodology and data plan, and writing about the theoretical and practical implications of your research are part of our comprehensive dissertation editing services.
Schedule Your FREE Consultation
with a Dissertation Expert Today
- Bring dissertation editing expertise to chapters 1-5 in timely manner.
- Track all changes, then work with you to bring about scholarly writing.
- Ongoing support to address committee feedback, reducing revisions.
Ethnographic studies are qualitative procedures utilized to describe, analyze and interpret a culture’s characteristics. Ethnography was developed in the 19thand 20th centuries and used by anthropologists to explore primitive cultures different from their own; it originated from Anthropology. Ethnography is used when a researcher wants to study a group of people to gain a larger understanding of their lives or specific aspects of their lives. The primary data collection method is through observation over an extended period of time. It would also be appropriate to interview others who have studied the same cultures.
Phenomenology is used to identify phenomena and focus on subjective experiences and understanding the structure of those lived experiences. It was founded in the early 20th century by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heideggar and originated from philosophy. Phenomenology is used to describe, in depth, the common characteristics of the phenomena that has occurred. The primary data collection method is through in-depth interviews.
Case studies are believed to have originated in 1829 by Frederic Le Play. Case studies are rooted in several disciplines, including science, education, medicine, and law. Case studies are to be used when (1) the researcher wants to focus on how and why, (2) the behavior is to be observed, not manipulated, (3) to further understand a given phenomenon, and (4) if the boundaries between the context and phenomena are not clear. Multiple methods can be used to gather data, including interviews, observation, and historical documentation.
1. Cambridge Online Dictionary. 2019. //dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/research. Accessed 24 Feb 2019, Research.
2. Bynum W, Artino A, Uijtdehaage S, Webb A, Varpio L. Sentinel emotional events. The nature, triggers, and effects of shame experiences in medical residents. Acad Med. 2018 doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000002479. [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
3. Hooker C. Understanding empathy: why phenomenology and hermeneutics can help medical education and practice. Med Health Care Philos. 2015;2015(18):541–552. doi: 10.1007/s11019-015-9631-z. [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
4. Patel RS, Tarrant C, Bonas S, Shaw RL. Medical students’ personal experience of high-stakes failure: case studies using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Bmc Med Educ. 2015;15:1–9. doi: 10.1186/s12909-015-0371-9. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
5. Ajjawi R, Higgs J. Using hermeneutic phenomenology to investigate how experienced practitioners learn to communicate clinical reasoning. Qual Rep. 2007;12:612:38. [Google Scholar]
6. Teherani A, Martimianakis T, Stenfors-Hayes T, Wadhwa A, Varpio L. Choosing a qualitative research approach. J Grad Med Educ. 2015;7:669–670. doi: 10.4300/JGME-D-15-00414.1. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
7. Contributions to phenomenology. In: Embree L, editor. Encyclopedia of phenomenology. Vol. 18. Netherlands: Springer; 1997.
8. Ashworth P. An approach to phenomenological psychology: the contingencies of the lifeworld. J Phenom Psychol. 2003;34:145–156. doi: 10.1163/156916203322847119. [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
9. Vagle M. Crafting phenomenological research. London and New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group; 2018. [Google Scholar]
10. Tuffour I. A critical overview of interpretative phenomenological analysis: a contemporary qualitative research approach. J Healthc Commun. 2017;2(4:52):1–5. [Google Scholar]
11. Smith, David Woodruff. Phenomenology. Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. //plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/. Accessed 9 Oct 2018.
12. Manen MV. Researching lived experience: human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. London and New York: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group; 1997. [Google Scholar]
13. Laverty SM. Hermeneutic phenomenology and phenomenology: a comparison of historical and methodological considerations. Int. J. Qual. Methods. 2003;2:1–29. doi: 10.1177/160940690300200303. [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
14. Kafle NP. Hermeneutic phenomenological research method simplified. Bodhi: Interdiscip J. 2011;5:181–182. [Google Scholar]
15. Jones WT. The twentieth century to Wittgenstein and Sartre. San Francisco, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 1975. [Google Scholar]
16. Moran D. Introduction to phenomenology. Milton Park: Routledge; 2000. [Google Scholar]
17. Staiti A. The pedagogic impulse of Husserl’s ways into transcendental phenomenology: an alternative reading of the Erste Philosophie lecture. Grad Fac Philos J. 2012;33:39–56. doi: 10.5840/gfpj20123313. [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
18. Moustakas CE. Phenomenological research methods. 1. Thousand Oaks: SAGE; 1994. [Google Scholar]
19. Husserl E. The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. 1. Evanston: Northwestern University Press; 1970. [Google Scholar]
20. Barua A. Husserl, Heidegger, and the transcendental dimension of phenomenology. Indo-Pacific J Phenomenol. 2015;7:1–10. doi: 10.1080/20797222.2007.11433942. [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
21. Reiners GM. Understanding the differences between Husserl’s (descriptive) and Heidegger’s (interpretive) phenomenological research. J Nurs Care. 2012;1:1–3. [Google Scholar]
22. Lopez KA, Willis DG. Descriptive versus interpretive phenomenology: their contributions to nursing knowledge. Qual Health Res. 2004;14:726–735. doi: 10.1177/1049732304263638. [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
23. Davidsen AS. Phenomenological approaches in psychology and health sciences. Qual Res Psychol. 2013;10:318–339. doi: 10.1080/14780887.2011.608466. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
24. Presuppose Nothing AP. The suspension of assumptions in phenomenological psychological methodology. J Phenomenol Psychol. 1996;27:1–25. [Google Scholar]
25. Gill MJ. The possibilities of phenomenology for organizational research. Organ Res Methods. 2014;17:118–137. doi: 10.1177/1094428113518348. [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
26. Colaizzi P. Psychological research as a phenomenologist views it. In: Valle RS, King M, editors. Existential-phenomenological alternatives for psychology. Oxford, UK: Open University Press; 1978. [Google Scholar]
27. Giorgi A. Phenomenology and psychological research. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press; 1985. [Google Scholar]
28. Polkinghorne DE. Phenomenological research methods. In: Valle RS, Halling S, editors. Existential-phenomenological perspectives in psychology: exploring the breadth of human experience. New York: Springer; 1989. pp. 41–60. [Google Scholar]
29. Varpio L, Martimianakis T, Mylopoulos M. Qualitative research methodologies: embracing methodological borrowing, shifting, and importing. In: Durning SJ, Cleland J, editors. Researching medical education. 1. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell; 2015. pp. 245–255. [Google Scholar]
30. Arksey H, Knight PT. Interviewing for social scientists. London: SAGE; 1999. [Google Scholar]
31. Birt L, Scott S, Cavers D, Campbell C, Walter F. Member checking: a tool to enhance trustworthiness or merely a nod to validation? Qual Health Res. 2016;26:1802–1811. doi: 10.1177/1049732316654870. [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
32. Tavakol S, Dennick R, Tavakol M. Medical students’ understanding of empathy: a phenomenological study. Med Educ. 2012;46:306–316. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2923.2011.04152.x. [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
33. Neumann M, Edelhauser F, Tauschel D, et al. Empathy decline and its reasons: a systematic review of studies with medical students and residents. Acad Med. 2011;86:996–1009. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0b013e318221e615. [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
34. Del Canale S, Louis DZ, Maio V, et al. The relationship between physician empathy and disease complications: an empirical study of primary care physicians and their diabetic patients in Parma, Italy. Acad Med. 2012;87:1243–1249. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0b013e3182628fbf. [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
35. Bynum W, Varpio L. When I say … hermeneutic phenomenology. Med Educ. 2018;52:252–253. doi: 10.1111/medu.13414. [PubMed] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
36. Enos T, editor. Encyclopedia of rhetoric and composition. New York: Routledge; 2010. [Google Scholar]
37. Heidegger M. Being and time. Blackwell: Oxford UK and Cambridge USA; 1867. [Google Scholar]
38. Van Manen M. Researching lived experience: human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. Albany, NY: SUNY; 1990. [Google Scholar]
39. Van Manen M. Phenomenology of practice. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, Inc; 2014. [Google Scholar]
40. Grondin J. Gadamer’s basic understanding of understanding. In: Dostal RJ, editor. The cambridge companion to Gadamer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2002. pp. 36–51. [Google Scholar]
41. Polkinghorne D. Methodology for the human sciences. Albany: SUNY; 1983. [Google Scholar]
Page 2
Comparison of transcendental and hermeneutic phenomenology
| Philosophical origins | Husserl | Heidegger Gadamer |
| Ontological assumptions | Reality is internal to the knower; what appears in their consciousness | Lived experience is an interpretive process situated in an individual’s lifeworld |
| Epistemological assumptions | Observer must separate him/herself from the world including his/her own physical being to reach the state of the transcendental I; bias-free; understands phenomena by descriptive means | Observer is part of the world and not bias free; understands phenomenon by interpretive means |
| Researcher role in data collection | Bracket researcher subjectivity during data collection and analysis | Reflects on essential themes of participant experience with the phenomenon while simultaneously reflection on own experience |
| Researcher role in data analysis/writing | Consider phenomena from different perspectives, identify units of meaning and cluster into themes to form textural description (the what of the phenomenon). Use imaginative variation to create structural (the how) description. Combine these descriptions to form the essence of the phenomenon | Iterative cycles of capturing and writing reflections towards a robust and nuanced analysis; consider how the data (or parts) contributed to evolving understanding of the phenomena (whole) |
| Methodological texts | Polkinghorne [28] Moustakas [18] Giorgi [27] | Van Manen [12] |
| Examples | Takavol [32] | Bynum [2] |