Qualitative Research Methods

• Qualitative research involves collecting primary data through observation, ethnography, focus groups, interviews (online/face-to-face, structured/unstructured), surveys, and experiments.
• Qualitative research techniques include focus groups, depth interviews, and projective techniques (indirect).

Asylum Video

• Provides numerical data and videos, requires site visits, and involves direct interviews.
• Trip Advisor ratings usually come from people who had very good or very bad experiences.

Focus Groups

• Interview with a trained moderator and a small group of participants
• These are conducted in an unstructured or structured manner.
• Moderators should be qualified, kind, and allow for expansion and focus.
• Moderators should encourage all participants, even shy ones, and be firm when needed.

Hawthorne/Observer Effect

• The experimental group performs better than normal due to being observed.
• Performance isn't impacted by lighting; knowing they are watched impacts performance.
• Groups will change behavior when aware of observation.
• Downsides include potential misuse and misjudgment, which could result in research bias.
• Proper moderation is essential.
• Unstructured can be hard to analyze, code, and interpret, and focus groups may not be representative.

Projective Techniques

• These use indirect questions that encourage respondents to reveal underlying motivations.

Psychoanalysis

• Id: pleasure principle
• Super-ego: conscience (values, ideals, shame, and guilt)
• Ego: mediator, reality principle
• Repressed wishes and drives often lead to painful emotions.
• Unconscious desires can manifest as psychological or behavioral deficits.
• Meta-analysis shows psychoanalysis is no more effective than spontaneous remission.
• Psychoanalysis can take up to 4 years, much longer than alternative therapies
• Some consider psychoanalysis a pseudoscience as it is unfalsifiable, and argue tracing behavior to sexual drives is too simplistic.
• Scientific falsifiability and empirical testing are difficult due to measuring the unconscious.

Measuring the Unconscious: Projective Tests

• These tests use ambiguous stimuli to reveal hidden emotions and internal conflicts.
• Examples include the Rorschach test (1921) and the Thematic Apperception Test (1930).
• Projective tests are easier for children to express thoughts through words.
• These tests often reveal fear.
• Projective tests are not without problematic aspects.
• Inter-rater reliability is the ability for different psychologists to get the same results from something, but they may not come to the same conclusion
• Test-retest reliability can you do the tests several times?
• Validity establishes a benchmark.

Assessing Association

• Free association involves respondents saying the first thing that comes to mind
• Stimulus association involves forming a story, dialogue, or description.
• Sentence/word completion involves completing incomplete sentences or word stems.

Reliability vs. Validity

• Something can be reliable but not valid, but it cannot be valid without being reliable.

Coding

• Seeks to make data intelligible
• Represents responses to questions.
• Codes are made after fieldwork and before in survey research
• Coding is interpretation by the researcher and embedded

Summary of Qualitative Research

• Aims to discover phenomena/observations that the researchers did not know to look for.
• It uses a wide variety of data collection.
• Qualitative research is exploratory but not representative, and it provides no proof.
• The coding and interpretation of unstructured data can be challenging.

Overview of qualitative research methods including observation, ethnography, focus groups, and interviews. Discusses techniques like focus groups, depth interviews, and projective techniques. The Hawthorne effect shows observation impacts performance.