Application of Qualitative Research in Public Health

Abstract

Qualitative research is a type of scientific research where in depth responses from the people are collected about the research topic. It seeks to understand the research problem or topic from the perspectives of the local population to whom it involves. Qualitative research is effective to collect rich textual information about the values, behaviour, opinions, custom, and social context of a particular population. These methods are also effective in identifying influence of some factors like ethnicity, gender, religion, socioeconomic status, social norms in the research problem, which might not be obvious from survey methods. The purpose of doing qualitative study is to learn about these people, places, events, activities and generate new understanding.1 So we get the answer of ‘why’ and ‘how’ rather than ‘what’ or ‘how many’ in this type of study. From quantitative survey, we can gather data about how many people are smoking or what the type of smoking is. But qualitative methods help us to interpret why people do not stop smoking even after knowing the harmful effects of smoking or what are the barriers for compliance to dietary restrictions and physical exercise in the treatment of diabetes.