Limitations Of Qualitative Research Methods

By definition, qualitative research is the study towards social reality and description experiences, feelings, perspectives of human lives. Qualitative research is an empirical research under the non-numeric form, concerned with collecting and analysing information on many forms, words samples. It is likely associated with inductive approach, which generates theories, develops and interprets qualitative data to understand the social world. In qualitative research methods, studies focus deeply on understanding insider of the field, which is beneficial to researchers who examine forms of knowledge. In term of collecting qualitative data, there are three typical ways: interviews, observation from director participating such as participant characteristics,

Quantitative is based on empirical research, critical interpretation of data in forms of numbers. Mostly, quantitative research uses deductive approach, which begins with a theory, generalizes and tests theory or hypothesis. Quantitative is suitable for researcher aiming at answering questions, operational definitions, an experiment of time series to see how things are changed in number, casual explanation and deductive reasoning. Quantitative research data is based on questionnaires collected from descriptive information, attitude survey, explanatory survey through an interview, form filling, portal, email. (Sue, 2017; University of Surrey, 2017)

In term of similar comparison, though quantitative research focuses more on testing theory, it is possible to explore an area and generating hypothesis, meanwhile, qualitative research can be used for hypothesis or theory testing. Qualitative data also includes qualification studies and quantitative research can collect qualitative data through open investigations. (Sue, 2017; University of Surrey,

Data sources can come from interview, participant observation, documents, artefacts. There are four main ways of collecting qualitative data such as interviews, focus group, observation and action research (University of Surrey, 2017). Among those, interview is considered to be more convenient. The interview is better when carried in fairly informal way in which participants have the equal right in the discussion, and the purpose is to collect stories for analysis not answer. In order to have a good conversation, interviewer should know their role, be confident, maintain motivation and well prepare beforehand. Interview can be in various forms from unstructured, semi structured to structured. Structured interview is similar to questionnaires with prepared questions and order, ready-made answer options and open questions. Semi-structured interview includes scope, specific reactions, deep and personal context, experience. It can be open questions on a specific topic, broad questions under investigation. Unstructured interview requires few informants, investigation of history, background in different cases. The discussion can have limited number of topics but great details. Qualitative interview requires careful consideration and planning. (University of Surrey,