Qualitative Designs

Design

Description

General Requirements

Qualitative descriptive

A phenomenon is described or summarized. 

• Useful for situations where existing research or theory are limited.
• Phenomenon must be clearly defined.
• Interviews are primary source of data, but can be supplemented with other sources, such as focus groups, archival data, or observations.
• Purposive or convenience sampling are common. 

Phenomenology

Focus is on how participants experience a phenomenon. The essence of a “lived” experience described by the participants who experienced them are synthesized to describe the phenomenon 

• Phenomenon is defined as a “lived” experience and focuses on how the participants ascribe meaning to those experiences  
• Participants must have experience with the phenomenon in common, such as experiencing the death of a child, or living with cancer.
• In-depth, open-ended interviews are the primary data collection tool, but may use two forms of qualitative data.
• Purposive or a combination of purposive and snowball sampling can be used. 

Narrative

Focus is on the lives of participants as told through their stories. Stories are told by the participants in an interactive fashion with the researcher with the intent of creating a unified narrative or story that describes or explains a life episode.

• Phenomenon is defined as a story of an event which will be better understood including causality and relationships; Purpose is a collection of stories around a phenomenon. 
• Primary source of data is usually open-ended, interactive interviews with participants who tell “their individual story” with regard to the phenomenon.
• May use other story-telling techniques such as creating timelines of events, etc.
• Interview guide includes open-ended questions that get the participant to tell their personal story regarding the phenomenon.
• Purposive sampling is used.

Case Study

An in-depth analysis of one or more cases (a process, program, activity, city event, or person), using multiple data collection approaches.

• Phenomenon is defined as a process, program, activity, city event, or person studied over a specified time period.
• Multiple sources of data are used. Includes triangulation.
• May include both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis.
• Focus groups, data, videos, artifacts, and documents can be data sources. 
• Interviews may include closed-ended questions with a dominance of open-ended questions.
• Purposive or convenience sampling are used.

Grounded Theory

Focus is on systematic collection and analysis of data, from which a theory or model is developed to describe the phenomenon as a concept, process, interactions, components, or actions.

• Grounded theory studies yield a theory or model. The outcome is a theory or model developed to describe the phenomenon
• Involves multiple stages of collecting data often using multiple approaches and multiple groups 
• Data include iterative interviews, observations, document collection, and questionnaires with various groups. 
• May include both qualitative as well as quantitative data collection and analysis.
• Requires collecting a large volume of data either by larger samples or repeated (iterative) collection from participants.  
• Purposive sampling or snowball sampling are used.