Qualitative Data Collection Methods in Each Design or Approach
The Department of Counseling approves five approaches or designs within qualitative methodology. Each of these designs uses its own kind of data sources. Table 1 outlines the main primary and secondary sources of data in each design.
- Primary sources are data from actual participants.
- Secondary data sources are from others.
- Field notes in qualitative terminology can mean either of the following:
- The researcher's notes describing observations of participants or behaviors in their natural environments. This is the more common usage, and is most common in ethnographic studies.
- The researcher's notes to self about themes noticed while collecting data, possibly important points in the data, ideas to come back to, and so on.
- Another related term is memos, although memos in grounded theory tend to be brief or extended essays charting the development of theory, rather than simple notes. Strictly speaking, these notes or memos are not data in themselves, but point to data in another source.
Table 1. The Fit of the Method and the Type of Data
| Chosen Method | Likely Data Sources |
| Ethnography | Primary: participant observation, field notes, unstructured or structured interviews (sometimes audiotaped or videotaped).
Secondary: documents, records, photographs, videotapes, maps, genograms, sociograms, focus groups. |
| Case Study | Primary: interviews (audiotapes), participant and nonparticipant observations, documents and records, detailed descriptions of context and setting, chronological data, conversations recorded in dairies and field notes.
Secondary: audiovisual data. |
| Grounded Theory | Primary: interviews (audiotapes), participant and nonparticipant observations, conversations recorded in dairies and field notes.
Secondary: documents and records. |
| Phenomenology | Primary: audiotapes of in-depth conversational interviews or dialogue.
Secondary: journals, poetry, novels, biographies, literature, art, films. |
Generic Qualitative Inquiry |
Primary: Structured and unstructured interviews (usually audiotaped), open-ended qualitative surveys, participant observations, field notes.
Secondary: documents, journals. |
Data Collection in Ethnography
Typically, ethnographers collect data while in the field. Their data collection methods can include:
- Participant observation.
- Naturalistic observation.
- Writing field notes.
- Conducting unstructured or structured interviews (sometimes audiotaped or videotaped).
- Reviewing documents, records, photographs, videotapes, maps, genograms, and sociograms.
- Any accessible and dependable source of information about the behaviors, interactions, customs, values, beliefs, attitudes, and practices of the members of that culture can be a source of data.
It is worth remembering that the time-world of cultural groups is longer than it is for individual persons, and so:
- Data collection may need to cover a longer time in order to capture the true flavor of the culture.
- Field research methods need to adapt to the demands of the field; ethnography allows for flexibility in the design of its methods to accommodate the challenges of the field.
However, for both of these reasons—the longer time-world of the culture or group and the occasional need to change data collection methods to meet challenges in the field—Institutional Review Board (IRB) complications can be introduced and must be addressed, further lengthening the time of the ethnographic study.
Data Collection in Case Studies
Case studies always include multiple sources of information because the case includes multiple kinds of issues. For example, a case study of a training program would obtain and analyze information about:
- The participants.
- The nature of the organizational issues calling for the training.
- The kinds of training provided.
- The outcomes of the program.
- The background and training of the staff, and so on.
In addition to multiple information sources, every case study provides an in-depth description of the contexts of the case:
- Its setting (for example, the kind of business structure and office complex set-up where the training program takes place).
- Its contexts (social contexts, political contexts, affiliations affecting outcomes, and so on).
The setting and context are an intrinsic part of the case.
Consequently, because cases contain many kinds of information and contexts, case studies use many different methods of data collection. These can include the full range of qualitative methods such as:
- Open-ended surveys.
- Interviews.
- Field observations.
Reviews of documents, records, and other materials.
- Evaluation of audiovisual materials.
- Descriptions of contexts and collateral materials; and so on.
A well-designed case study does not rely on a single method and source of data because any true case (bounded system) will have many characteristics and it is not known ahead of time which characteristics are important. Determining that is the work of the case study.
Data Collection in Grounded Theory
The dominant methods of data collection in grounded theory research are:
- Interviews (usually audiotaped).
- Participant and nonparticipant observations.
- Conversations.
Recorded diaries.
- Field notes.
- Descriptions of comparative instances.
- Personal narratives of experiences.
The participants in a grounded theory study often will be interviewed more than once and asked to reflect on and refine the preliminary conclusions drawn by the researcher.
- In an analogy to hypothesis testing procedures in quantitative analysis, grounded theorists will often test their theories by:
- Reinterviewing participants about them, asking for their feedback, or;
- Interviewing a new round of participants about how well the hypothesized elements of the new theory actually explain their experiences.
The methods of doing these forms of data collection do not differ markedly from similar methods across all qualitative approaches. However, grounded theorists sometimes avoid too much study of the extant literature on their topic before going into the field, in hopes that they will not be biased by previous conjectures and data about the topic. It is their aim to allow the data to teach them and guide their analyses into rich explanations.
Data Collection in Phenomenology
There are two descriptive levels of the empirical phenomenological model that arise from the data collected:
- Level 1: The original data are comprised of naïve descriptions obtained from participants through open-ended questions and dialogue. Naïve means simply, “in their own words, without reflection.”
- Level 2: The researcher describes the structures of the experiences based on reflective analysis and interpretation of the research participant’s account or story.
To collect data for these levels of analysis, the primary tool is the in-depth personal interview:
- Interviews typically are open (meaning, no forced answers), with three main kinds of questions:
- An opening or initial question. Usually this is only pre-written question, designed carefully to inquire into the participant’s lived (everyday) experience of the phenomenon under investigation.
- Follow-up questions are asked to tease out deeper or more detailed elaborations of the earlier answers or to clarify unclear statements or ask about non-verbal gestures.
- Guiding questions are asked to help the respondents return to the topic of the interview when they stray or digress.
- The goal of the opening question (and all other questions) is to allow the respondent the maximum freedom to respond from within his or her lived (everyday, non-reflective) experience.
Because the objective is to collect data that are profoundly descriptive (rich in detail) and introspective, these interviews often can be lengthy, sometimes lasting as long as an hour or more.
Sometimes other sources of data are used in phenomenological studies, when those sources are equivalent in some way to the in-depth interview. For example:
- In a study of the lived experience of grief, poems or other writings by the participants (or other people) about personal grief experiences might be collected in the same way as the in-depth interviews.
- Audiovisual materials having a direct bearing on the lived experience of grief might be included as data (for example, photos of the participant with the deceased person).
Although other less personal data sources (such as letters, official documents, and news accounts) are seldom used as direct information about the lived experience, the researcher may find in a particular case that these are useful either in illuminating the participant's story itself or in creating a rich and textured background description of the contexts and settings in which the participant experienced the phenomenon.
Data Collection in Generic Qualitative Inquiry
Data collection in this approach typically uses data collection methods that elicit people’s verbal reports on their ideas about things that are outside themselves. However, its focus on real events and issues means it seldom uses unstructured data collection methods (such as open-ended conversational interviewing from phenomenology, participant and nonparticipant field observation from ethnography, and the like).
Instead, generic qualitative inquiry requires:
- Semi- or fully structured interviews.
- Qualitative questionnaires.
- Qualitative surveys.
- Content- or activity-specific observations, and the like.
The core focus is external and real-world as opposed to internal, psychological, and subjective. (The attitudes and opinions in opinion polling, for example, are valued for their reflection on the external issues.) Here are some characteristics of generic qualitative data collection:
- Generic qualitative data collection seeks qualitative information from representative samples of people about:
- Real-world events.
- Observable and experienced situations or conditions.
- Attitudes, opinions, or beliefs about external situations or conditions, or
- Their experiences.
- Researchers want less to “go deep” and more to get a broad range of opinions, ideas, or reflections:
- Occasionally, a small, non-representative but highly informed sample can provide rich information about the topic. For instance, a few experienced nurses can often provide rich, accurate, and helpful information about common patient reactions to certain procedures, because part of a nurse’s role is to observe patients’ experiences and reactions carefully.
- More often, however, the sampling in this approach aims for larger representation of the population in mind. Although this is not a hard-and-fast rule, generic qualitative data collection typically uses larger samples than other qualitative approaches use because larger samples tend to be more widely representative.
- As with all qualitative inquiry, if the sample is transparently and fairly representative of the target population or is clearly rich in information about the topic, readers may be persuaded to apply the findings to similar people or situations outside the sample itself.
Most generic qualitative studies rely on the following data collection methods:
- Semi- or fully structured (pre-written questions) interviews, either oral (the most common method) or written (uncommon). In these qualitative interviews, the questions are structured based on the knowledge of the researcher, although there may be opportunities for “tell me more” kinds of questions. In other words, the data collected in this approach can be obtained from questions based on theoretical constructs in the existing literature, unlike other forms of qualitative data collection.
- Questionnaires. Usually these are mix-scaled or quantitative items (for example, Likert-type scales asking preferences or degrees of agreement) with opportunities for qualitative comments; this approach requires mixed-method designs. Again, the researcher will build these questionnaires and their items from preknowledge about the topic.
- Written or oral surveys. The standard opinion or voter poll is a good example, but survey research has its own rather deep literature and can be much more sophisticated that simple opinion or voter surveying. Once again, the items in the survey will be constructed on the basis of previous knowledge about the topic.
This concludes the discussion of qualitative data collection methods. Please review the Presentation on “Quantitative Data Analysis Methods” in Unit 4, if you have not done so already.
(For a more thorough discussion of data collection, see the guide Qualitative Research Approaches in Psychology and Human Services.)
Consider this quotation from Charmaz (2006), “Simply thinking through how to word open-ended questions averts forcing responses into narrow categories” (p. 18).
Reference
Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. ISBN: 9780761973522.
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