The development of concepts that help us to understand social phenomena in natural (rather than experimental) settings, giving due emphasis to the meanings, experiences, and views of all participants.

Qualitatiive research-Data collection: used when the researcher focuses on people who provide the richest insights

To test hypotheses, explore causal relationships, make predictions and generalize the findings within a population

They generate rich, detailed data that leave the participants’ perspectives intact and provide multiple contexts for understanding the phenomenon under study

Qualitative Research Type:

- describe experiences as they are lived

- examine the uniqueness of the individual’s lived situations

- each person has their own reality; reality is subjective

Qualitative Research Type:

- a story of the day in the lives of individuals as told by these individuals

- re-tells or re-stories this into a narrative chronology

Qualitative Research Type:

- to describe a culture’s characteristics

- gather data through direct observation and interaction with subjects

Qualitative Research Type:

- to describe in-depth the experience of one person, family, group, community, or institution

Qualitative Research Type:

- to describe and examine events of the past to understand the present and anticipate potential future effect

Qualitative Research Type:

- Used in discovering what problems exist in social science and how people handle them

- where the researcher is developing their own theory

Quantitative Research Type:

- To study variables that cannot be manipulated for ethical and practical reason

- To determine a cause-and-effect relationship

Quantitative Research Type:

To test for the relationships between two variables using statistical data.

"what is the effect of one on the other and how that affects the relationship"

Quantitative Research Type:

- cause-and-effect relationship

- manipulating ONE parameter to observe the influence on another

• Cause changes in the subject

• stands alone and is not changed by the other variables the researcher is attempting to measure

• bear or manifest the effects

• dependent on other factors

Totality of individuals or objects that are the focus of the study (general group)

A subset of a particular population relevant to your study.

The list of all individuals or objects included in the target population.

The number of elements in the sample set.

Quantitative: Sample Size

n = N / (1+Ne 2 )

Quantitative: Sample Size

Universal Sampling Sample Size:

Informal Rule of Thumb:

Case Study

Informal Rule of Thumb:

Phenomenology

Informal Rule of Thumb:

Grounded Theory, Ethnography, Narrative