Comparing Qualitative Descriptive Research with Other Qualitative Designs
Comparing Qualitative Descriptive Research with Other Qualitative Designs
Essential Questions
- How does a qualitative, descriptive design differ from phenomenological, narrative, case study and grounded theory designs?
The following table was adapted from the Grand Canyon University Core Research Design document.
Qualitative Designs | ||
Design | Description | General Requirements |
Qualitative descriptive | A phenomenon is described or summarized. |
|
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 |
|
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. |
|
Case Study | An in-depth analysis of one or more cases (a process, program, activity, city event, or person), using multiple data collection approaches. |
|
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. |
|
Adapted from Grand Canyon University Core Design Document (2016).
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