All are characteristic of qualitative research except one.

Qualitative Research Methods – Qualitative research is a research method to explore and understand the meaning that some individuals or groups of people think come from social or human problems (Creswell, 2013). The final report of a qualitative study has a flexible structure or framework. The perspective used in this study is inductive style, focuses on individual meanings, and translates the complexity of a problem.

Qualitative research begins in the field which is based on natural environments, not theory. The data and information that have been obtained from the field are taken for the meaning and concept, presented in descriptive analytic and generally without using numbers, because they prioritize the processes that occur in the field.

Qualitative research objectives

In general, this type of research includes information about the main phenomenon that is being explored in a study, research participants, and the location of a study. Qualitative research can also state the research design chosen.

In the world of education, qualitative research has the objective of describing the process of educational activities based on what is in the field as study material to find shortcomings and weaknesses so that efforts can be determined to improve them; analyzing a symptom, facts, and educational events in the field; compile a hypothesis related to the concepts and principles of education based on information and data that occur in the field.

Qualitative Research Characteristics

The following are some of the characteristics of qualitative research:

1. Natural environment (natural setting).Qualitative researchers collect field data at the locations where participants experience the problem or issue to be studied. Qualitative researchers do not change the environmental settings and activities of the participants. Information is gathered by talking directly to people and seeing them act directly in a natural context.

2. Researcher as a key instrument (researcher as key instrument). Qualitative researchers generally collect their own research data through participant observation, documentation, or direct interviews with participants. These researchers generally do not use instruments or questionnaires made by other researchers, because they are the only key to the study.

3. Multiple sources of data.Qualitative researchers generally choose to collect the required data from various sources such as interviews, documentation, and observations, rather than relying only on one source data.

4. Inductive data analysis. Qualitative researchers build categories, patterns and themes from the ground up (inductive) or from separate data into a complete conclusion.

5. The meaning of the participants (participant’s meaning). In the entire research process, the researcher must focus on studying the meaning obtained from the participants about the issue or research problem, not the meaning conveyed by other authors or researchers in certain literatures.

6. Design that develops (emergent design). Qualitative researchers argue that qualitative research is always evolving and dynamic. This can mean that the initial plan is not a standard that must be adhered to, all stages of research may change after the researcher goes into the field and collects data. Provided that these changes are still in line in achieving the research objectives, namely obtaining information about the problem or research issue.

7. Theoretical perspective (theoritical lens). Qualitative researchers often use certain perspectives in conducting research such as ethnography, cultural concepts, gender differences, race and others.

8. Interpretive. Qualitative researchers make an interpretation of what they see, hear and what they understand. Usually there are differences in interpretation between researchers and readers and participants, so it appears that qualitative research offers different views on a content or problem.

9. A holistic account.Qualitative researchers usually try to make a complex picture of a research issue or problem. Researchers describe the perspectives and factors associated with the problem as a whole.

Qualitative research strategies

The following are the strategies in qualitative research:

1. Ethnography
• Ethnography is a branch of anthropology to analyze the culture of a nation or society in its natural environment over a long period of time in collecting main data, observational data and interviews.
• The purpose of the analysis is to understand a view of life from the perspective of the indigenous people.
• This research was conducted with observation, long enough observations of a group, tribe / community, to find the meaning of each behavior, the language of interaction / something related to the community itself.

2. Case studies
• Researchers carefully investigate a program, event, activity, process, or group of individuals.
• Cases are limited by time and activity, and researchers collect complete information using time-based procedures.

3. Phenomenology
• Researchers identify the nature of human experience about a particular phenomenon.
• Understanding the experience of human life makes phenomenological philosophy a research method whose procedures require the researcher to study a number of subjects with a relatively long and direct involvement in it to develop patterns and meaning relations.

4. Grounded Theory
• Researchers produce a general and abstract theory of a particular action, process, or interaction that comes from the views of participants.
• Researchers must go through a number of stages of data collection and filtering categories for the information that has been obtained.
• It has main characteristics, namely: (1) constant comparison between data and emerging categories and (2) theoretical sampling of different groups to maximize information similarity and difference.

5. Narrative
• Researchers investigate the lives of individuals and ask a person or group of individuals to tell their life.
• This information is retold by the researcher in a narrative chronology.
• In the final stage of the research, the researcher must combine with a narrative style his views on the participant’s life with the views held by the researcher himself.

Data collection strategy

The following are strategies that need to be carried out in qualitative research:

1. Qualitative observation
Qualitative observation is an observation in which the researcher goes directly to the field to observe participant behavior and activities at the research location. In this observation, the researcher can record and record both structured and unstructured notes. Usually researchers are involved in a variety of roles, it can be as a complete participant or non-participant.

2. Qualitative interview
In qualitative interviews, qualitative researchers can interview face-to-face or face to face with participants, by telephone, or can also be involved in focus group interviews or group interviews. The questions are unstructured and open questions for the purpose of capturing the opinions and views of participants on a particular issue.

3. Quality documents
Qualitative documents can be public documents such as newspapers, magazines or papers or in the form of personal documents such as diaries, diaries and e-mails.

4. Audio and visual material
This data can be in the form of recordings of both sound and images and printed results such as pictures, photographs and paintings.

That was a little explanation about qualitative research methods, hopefully they can provide benefits.

Source: Creswell, J.W, (2013). Research Design.Thousand Oaks California: SAGE publications.

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