qualitative

Examples of qualitative in the following topics:

• Quantitative and Qualitative

  • Qualitative methods of sociological research tend to approach social phenomena from the Verstehen perspective.
  • Rather than attempting to measure or quantify reality via mathematical rules, qualitative sociologists explore variation in the natural world people may see, touch, and experience during their lives.
  • Further, qualitative sociologists typically reject measurement or quantities (essential to quantitative approaches) and the notion or belief in causality (e.g., qualitative sociologists generally argue that since there is no demonstrated possibility of ever exploring all potential variables or influences in one study, causality is always incomplete and beyond empirical means).
  • They view quantitative and qualitative approaches as complementary.
  • For example, quantitative methods could describe large or general patterns in society while qualitative approaches could help to explain how individuals understand those patterns.

• Determining the Research Design

  • One of the most intensive forms of qualitative research is participant observation.
  • Another distinction can be made between quantitative methods and qualitative methods.
  • Qualitative methods are often used to develop a deeper understanding of a particular phenomenon.
  • Qualitative sociological research is often associated with an interpretive framework, which is more descriptive or narrative in its findings.
  • These two researchers are debating the relative merits of using qualitative or quantitative methods to study social phenomena such as the learning processes of children.

• Intorduction to qualitative analysis

• Sociology and Science

  • Arriving at a verstehen-like understanding of society thus involves not only quantitative approaches, but more interpretive, qualitative approaches.
  • Qualitative sociology generally opts for depth over breadth.
  • The qualitative approach uses in-depth interviews, focus groups, or the analysis of content sources (books, magazines, journals, TV shows, etc.) as data sources.
  • Drawing a hard and fast distinction between quantitative and qualitative sociology is a bit misleading, however.
  • Quantitative sociology focuses on numerical representations of the research subjects, while qualitative sociology focuses on the ideas found within the discourse and rhetoric of the research subjects.

• Analyzing Data and Drawing Conclusions

  • One way in which analysis often varies is by the quantitative or qualitative nature of the data.
  • Qualitative data can involve coding--that is, key concepts and variables are assigned a shorthand, and the data gathered is broken down into those concepts or variables .
  • Coding is the process of categorizing qualitative data so that the data becomes quantifiable and thus measurable.
  • How data is coded depends entirely on what the researcher hopes to discover in the data; the same qualitative data can be coded in many different ways, calling attention to different aspects of the data.
  • Qualitative data can be coded, or sorted into categories.

• Sociology Today

  • Contemporary sociology does not have a single overarching foundation—it has varying methods, both qualitative and quantitative.
  • Social researchers draw upon a variety of qualitative and quantitative techniques.

• Defining the Sample and Collecting Data

  • Defining the sample and collecting data are key parts of all empirical research, both qualitative and quantitative.
  • While quantitative research requires at least 30 subjects to be considered statistically significant, qualitative research generally takes a more in-depth approach to fewer subjects.
  • Sampling can be used in both quantitative and qualitative research.

• Tradition vs. Science

  • Quantitative and qualitative methods can be complementary: often, quantitative methods are used to describe large or general patterns in society while qualitative approaches are used to help explain how individuals understand those patterns.
  • To find out why, the sociologist may need to employ qualitative methods, such as interviews.
  • A common sense explanation of the quantitative findings might be that welfare recipients are lazy and prefer not to work, but using qualitative methods and the sociological imagination, the investigator could find that women strategically choose not to work because the cost of childcare would mean less net income.
  • Sociology embodies several tensions, such as those between quantitative and qualitative methods, between positivist and interpretive orientations, and between objective and critical approaches.

• Categorical REGE for geodesic distances (Padgett's marriage data)

  • The categorical REGE algorithm (Network>Roles & Positions>Maximal Regular>CATREGE) can be used to identify regularly equivalent actors by treating the elements of the geodesic distance matrix as describing "types" of ties -- that is different geodesic distances are treated as "qualitatively" rather than "quantitatively" different.
  • Figure 15.7 shows the results of regular equivalence analysis where geodesic distances have been used to represent multiple qualitative types of relations among actors.

• History

  • The contrast between positivist sociology and the verstehen approach has been reformulated in modern sociology as a distinction between quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches, respectively.
  • Qualitative sociology generally opts for depth over breadth.
  • The qualitative approach uses in-depth interviews, focus groups, or analysis of content sources (books, magazines, journals, TV shows, etc.) as the data source.
  • Drawing a hard and fast distinction between quantitative and qualitative sociology is a bit misleading.
  • After this initial stage, however, researchers typically take one of two paths, which may be seen to varying degrees in both quantitative and qualitative methodologies.