9.3 Qualitative research questions
Learning Objectives
Learners will be able to…
- List the key terms associated with qualitative research questions
- Distinguish between qualitative and quantitative research questions
Qualitative research questions differ from quantitative research questions. Because qualitative research questions seek to explore or describe phenomena, not provide a neat nomothetic explanation, they are often more general and openly worded. They may include only one concept, though many include more than one. Instead of asking how one variable causes changes in another, we are instead trying to understand the experiences, understandings, and meanings that people have about the concepts in our research question. These keywords often make an appearance in qualitative research questions.
Let’s work through an example from our last section. In Table 9.1, a student asked, “What is the relationship between sexual orientation or gender identity and homelessness for late adolescents in foster care?” In this question, it is pretty clear that the student believes that adolescents in foster care who identify as LGBTQ+ may be at greater risk for homelessness. This is a nomothetic causal relationship—LGBTQ+ status causes changes in homelessness.
However, what if the student were less interested in predicting homelessness based on LGBTQ+ status and more interested in understanding the stories of foster care youth who identify as LGBTQ+ and may be at risk for homelessness? In that case, the researcher would be building an idiographic causal explanation. The youths whom the researcher interviews may share stories of how their foster families, caseworkers, and others treated them. They may share stories about how they thought of their own sexuality or gender identity and how it changed over time. They may have different ideas about what it means to transition out of foster care.
Because qualitative questions usually center on idiographic causal relationships, they look different than quantitative questions. Table 9.3 below takes the final research questions from Table 9.1 and adapts them for qualitative research. The guidelines for research questions previously described in this chapter still apply, but there are some new elements to qualitative research questions that are not present in quantitative questions.
- Qualitative research questions often ask about lived experience, personal experience, understanding, meaning, and stories.
- Qualitative research questions may be more general and less specific.
- Qualitative research questions may also contain only one variable, rather than asking about relationships between multiple variables.
| Quantitative Research Questions | Qualitative Research Questions |
| How does witnessing domestic violence impact a child’s romantic relationships in adulthood? | How do people who witness domestic violence understand its effects on their current relationships? |
| What is the relationship between sexual orientation or gender identity and homelessness for late adolescents in foster care? | What is the experience of identifying as LGBTQ+ in the foster care system? |
| How does income inequality affect ambivalence in high-density urban areas? | What does racial ambivalence mean to residents of an urban neighborhood with high income inequality? |
| How does race impact rates of mental health diagnosis for children in foster care? | How do African-Americans experience seeking help for mental health concerns? |
Qualitative research questions have one final feature that distinguishes them from quantitative research questions: they can change over the course of a study. Qualitative research is a reflexive process, one in which the researcher adapts their approach based on what participants say and do. The researcher must constantly evaluate whether their question is important and relevant to the participants. As the researcher gains information from participants, it is normal for the focus of the inquiry to shift.
For example, a qualitative researcher may want to study how a new truancy rule impacts youth at risk of expulsion. However, after interviewing some of the youth in their community, a researcher might find that the rule is actually irrelevant to their behavior and thoughts. Instead, their participants will direct the discussion to their frustration with the school administrators or the lack of job opportunities in the area. This is a natural part of qualitative research, and it is normal for research questions and hypothesis to evolve based on information gleaned from participants.
However, this reflexivity and openness unacceptable in quantitative research for good reasons. Researchers using quantitative methods are testing a hypothesis, and if they could revise that hypothesis to match what they found, they could never be wrong! Indeed, an important component of open science and reproducability is the preregistration of a researcher’s hypotheses and data analysis plan in a central repository that can be verified and replicated by reviewers and other researchers. This interactive graphic from 538 shows how an unscrupulous research could come up with a hypothesis and theoretical explanation after collecting data by hunting for a combination of factors that results in a statistically significant relationship. This is an excellent example of how the positivist assumptions behind quantitative research and intepretivist assumptions behind qualitative research result in different approaches to social science.
Key Takeaways
- Qualitative research questions often contain words or phrases like “lived experience,” “personal experience,” “understanding,” “meaning,” and “stories.”
- Qualitative research questions can change and evolve over the course of the study.
Exercises
TRACK 1 (IF YOU ARE CREATING A RESEARCH PROPOSAL FOR THIS CLASS):
- Using the guidance in this chapter, write a qualitative research question. You may want to use some of the keywords mentioned above.
TRACK 2 (IF YOU AREN’T CREATING A RESEARCH PROPOSAL FOR THIS CLASS):
Imagine you are studying health care disparities in communities of color and are interested in learning more about culturally appropriate interventions.
- In the last few sections, you have been working on developing a quantitative research question on this topic. Using the guidance in this chapter, now write a qualitative research question. You may want to use some of the keywords mentioned above.
attempts to explain or describe your phenomenon exhaustively, based on the subjective understandings of your participants
"Assuming that the null hypothesis is true and the study is repeated an infinite number times by drawing random samples from the same populations(s), less than 5% of these results will be more extreme than the current result" (Cassidy et al., 2019, p. 233).