QUALITATIVE RESEARCH DESIGN
Lecture 2
Dr. Bela Nawaz
Research Design
Research design is a plan for collecting and
analyzing evidence that will make it possible for
the investigator to answer whatever questions he
or she has posed.
The design of an investigation touches almost all
aspects of the research, from the minute details
of data collection to the selection of the
techniques of data analysis.
Components of Research Design
What is the purpose of the research?
How is the research problem defined?
What is the larger conceptual framework?
What questions will address the research problem?
What methods will best address the research questions?
Who should participate?
How should the data be collected?
How will the data be analyzed?
Resources, research skills, perceived problems, ethical standards,
the research setting, and the data you collect and results you draw
from these data during the study are not part of the design of a
study, but are products of the research.
1. Goals: Why are you doing this study
Guide your other design decisions to
ensure that your study is worth doing
Essential to justifying your study
Types of Goals
• Things that motivate you to do the study
• include the desire to change or improve some practice or
Personal Goals situation that you’re involved in, curiosity about a specific
issue or event, a preference for conducting a particular type
of research, or simply the need to advance your career.
• Focused on accomplishing something—meeting some need,
Practical Goals changing some situation, or achieving some objective.
• Including administrative or policy goals
• Focused on understanding something—gaining insight into
Intellectual what is going on and why this is happening, or
Goals • Answering some question that previous research has not
adequately addressed.
2. Conceptual Framework: What Do You Think Is
Going On?
Miles and Huberman (1994) defined a conceptual framework as a visual or
written product, one that “explains, either graphically or in narrative
form, the main things to be studied—the key factors, concepts, or
variables—and the presumed relationships among them”.
The most important thing to understand about your conceptual framework
is that it is primarily a conception or model of
a. what is out there that you plan to study,
b. what is going on with these things and
c. why—a tentative theory of the phenomena that you are
investigating.
3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS: What Do You
Want to Understand?
What, specifically, do you want to better understand about
the settings or participants that you are studying? —are
called RESEARCH QUESTIONS
In your research design, the research questions serve two vital functions:
1. to help you to focus the study (the questions’ relationships to your goals and
conceptual framework) and
2. to give you guidance for how to conduct it (their relationship to methods and
validity)
Design Purpose Statement Guiding Questions Research Questions
Phenomenological The purpose of this What is the essence of the lived How do participants describe or
Phenomenological study is to experience under study? ascribe meaning regarding a lived
uncover the lived experience experience shared by others?
of . . .
Ethnographic The purpose of this How can we study, uncover, and How can we understand a culture
ethnographic study is to understand the intact culture of and the interactions, cultural
understand the culture of . . . this group? forms, and history of an intact
cultural group?
Grounded theory The purpose of this grounded What theory emerges from the How can we discover the process
theory study is to systematic, comparative analysis and sequence of steps that
represent participant perspectives of data originating from individuals employ to adjust,
on the transition from . . . participants sharing the same change, transform, or make a
experience? transition in their lives?
Design Purpose Statement Guiding Questions Research Questions
Case Study The purpose of this QL case How do How can we explore a process
study is to assess the stakeholders/participants or event that is currently
program/phenomenon that describe this process or event, underway or has already
contributed to the development and what does it tell us about occurred that will help us
of…… future practice(s)? understand that process or
event more comprehensively?
Narrative The purpose of this narrative What does this story(ies) What are the stories of key
study is to report the life reveal about this individuals? What do they tell
history of . . . individual(s) and his or her us about critical events?
(their) world(s)?
Type of Question Purpose Examples
Experience/behavior Intended to elicit descriptions of experiences, behaviors, If I were present when you talk to your adolescent son
questions actions, activities; what a person has done, seen, heard, or about AIDS, what would I hear?
thought.
How did you introduce your partner to the idea of using
a condom as well as the IUD?
Opinion/value questions Aimed at how people interpret specific events or issues; What do you think about a girl your age getting
answers reflect a decision-making process and may reveal pregnant?
goals, opinions, norms, intentions, desires and values
In the reorganization of this health service, what
programs do you think should have highest priority?
In your opinion who should have the final say in
decisions about how many children to have?
Type of Question Purpose Examples
Feeling questions Probes emotional responses to experiences. Typically How did you feel when you learned you were HIV
spontaneous, often not the result of a decision, often positive?
nonrational. May emerge in responses to other kinds of
questions How do women react to situations where they fear
physical violence?
Knowledge questions Intended to discover what people consider factual Tell me about some different kinds of family planning
information of family planning you know. what people you know.
think is true. Interviewer records but does not correct
misinformation except at the end of the interview. If a man and woman have just had unprotected sex, is
there anything they can do to avoid a pregnancy?
What are some ways that a person can get the AIDS
virus?
4. METHODS: What Will You Actually Do?
Methods —What will you actually do in conducting
this study? What approaches and techniques will you
use to collect and analyze your data? use to collect
and analyze your data?
1. Sampling Techniques
2. Sample Size
3. Recruiting Participants
4. Relationship with Participants
5. Collecting Data
Purposeful selection/ Purposive sampling.
Particular settings, persons, or activities are selected deliberately to provide information that is particularly
relevant to your questions and goals.
• Focuses on candidates who share similar traits or specific
Homogenous sampling characteristics.
• Understand how a phenomenon is seen and understood among different
Maximum variation sampling people, in different settings and at different times.
• When there is an unusual manifestations of the phenomenon of interest,
Extreme/Deviant case sampling such as outstanding success, notable failures, top of the class, dropouts,
exotic events, crises etc.
• Selecting a small number of important cases that are likely to yield the
Critical case sampling most information and have the greatest impact on the development of
knowledge.
• Involves asking participants who have already been selected for the
Snowball sampling study to recruit other participants
• Used to select additional study participants— making an “on-the-spot
Opportunistic Sampling decision to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities after fieldwork
has begun”
5. Data Analysis—Before starting your data analysis, you will need to document your
data—what you have observed or what you have been told—in order to have a basis for
analyzing it. Analysis and preparation happen in parallel and include the following steps:
1. Getting familiar with the data: Since most qualitative data is just words, the researcher
should start by reading the data several times to get familiar with it and start looking for
basic observations or patterns. This also includes transcribing the data.
2. Revisiting research objectives: Here, the researcher revisits the research objective and
identifies the questions that can be answered through the collected data.
3. Developing a coding framework: Here the researcher identifies broad ideas, concepts,
behaviors, or phrases and assigns codes to them. For example, coding age, gender, socio-
economic status, and even concepts such as the positive or negative response to a question.
Coding is helpful in structuring and labeling the data.
4. Identifying patterns and connections: Once the data is coded, the research can start
identifying themes, looking for the most common responses to questions, identifying data or
patterns that can answer research questions, and finding areas that can be explored further.
