3.7 Qualitative Research Methods Part 2
In this section, we will take a closer look at the qualitative research methodologies of interviewing and secondary data analysis. The next section will focus on community-based research.
Interviews
Interviews, sometimes referred to as in-depth interviews, are one-on-one conversations with participants designed to gather information about a particular topic. When you have a research topic, there are several questions to consider to determine if interviewing is the best method for your study:
- Are you looking for nuance and subtlety?
- Does answering the research question require you to trace how present situations resulted from prior events?
- Is an entirely fresh view required? If the existing literature cannot explain your research problem or the current approaches to the topic do not seem to be headed anywhere, interviews can possibly provide new perspectives on the issue.
- Are you trying to explain the unexpected?
If you answered yes to these questions, qualitative interviewing would most likely be an appropriate method (Weiss 1994).
Interviews can take a long time to complete, but they can produce very rich data. In fact, a respondent might say something that the researcher had not previously considered, which can help focus the research project. However, researchers have to be careful not to use leading questions that prompt respondents to give certain answers. For example, avoid asking questions like, “You really like eating vegetables, don’t you?” Instead, researchers should allow the respondent to answer freely by asking questions like, “How do you feel about eating vegetables?” A strength of interviews is the back-and-forth conversation that occurs, which gives the researcher the opportunity to ask for clarification, spend more time on a subtopic, or ask additional questions.
Secondary Data Analysis
While sociologists often engage in original research studies, they also contribute knowledge to the discipline through secondary data analysis. Secondary data does not result from firsthand research collected from primary sources. Instead secondary data analysis (also called existing research data) uses data collected by other researchers or data collected by an agency or organization. Sociologists might study works written by historians, economists, teachers, or early sociologists. They might search through periodicals, newspapers, magazines, or organizational data from any period in history.
Content analysis applies a systematic approach to record and value information gleaned from secondary data as it relates to the study at hand. Using available information not only saves time and money but can also add depth to a study. Sociologists often interpret findings in a new way that was not part of an author’s original purpose or intention. For example, to study how women were encouraged to act and behave in the 1960s, a researcher might watch movies, television shows, and situation comedies from that p