Beginning Anew: Doing Qualitative Research

Abstract

Abstract: This article reports on the author's first experience in qualitative research. As a social scientist trained almost exclusively in quantitative methods, the author describes some of the difficulties, dilemmas, fears, challenges, and rewards of conducting a study involving long intensive and relatively unstructured interviews. The subject of the research -- the association between religious faith and personal well-being -- is of less importance here than the methodological insights that may be of use to other quantitatively-oriented researchers who venture into qualitative work. Specifically, the paper discusses the place of the authorial voice, the salience of emotion and language in interview-based research, the need to reconceptualize the meaning of common quantitative terms such as data and analysis, and the challenges of communicating the results of the research in a very unfamiliar way. Resume: Cet article relate la premiere experience de l'auteur dans le domaine de la recherche qualitative. En tant que specialiste des sciences humaines presque exclusivement formee en methodes quantitatives, l'auteur decrit des difficultes, dilemmes, craintes, drifts et satisfactions rencontres au cours d'une serie de longues interviews non structurees. Le sujet de cette etude, l'association entre la foi (religieuse) et le bien-etre personnel, est moins important ici que les reflexions methodologiques que d'autres chercheurs d'orientation quantitative peuvent trouver utiles s'ils se lancent dans la recherche qualitative. Plus particulierement, l'article examine la place de la voix de l'auteur, l'importance de l'emotion et du langage pour la recherche basee sur des interviews, la necessite de redefinir des termes quantitatifs ordinaires comme donnees et analyse, et le defi de communiquer les resultats de la recherche. I've never been this nervous about any research project in my whole career! I wonder how much longer I can avoid getting started with the real work of interviewing. (The first entry in my field notes, dated October 12, 1994, some seven months after I received the study grant.) Introduction It ought to be quite clear from this quotation that I was a very nervous novice when I began this qualitative study. My first experiences with qualitative research may not be strikingly different from those of other quantitatively-trained investigators who have made the transition. I believe, nonetheless, that the tale is worth telling again, in yet another context and yet another voice so that perhaps one more researcher may see the benefits of using different approaches to learning about the social world and may become open at least to the consideration of some of these approaches. It is my hope that the telling will not resort to what Tierney (1995: 382) has called navel gazing. I believe that it is important for those who read about the study (Perry, 1998) to understand how I came to do it, how I did it, and how I felt about the whole process. I also believe that it is important for quantitatively-oriented researchers to stand back and examine the work in a somewhat dispassionate way, especially around the issue of the involvement of the investigator in the investigation. In most qualitative work, especially in long interviews, the researcher literally becomes part of the project design (cf. McCracken, 1988). There is, therefore, an obligation on the part of the researcher to allow the reader to learn something about the kind of person undertaking the investigation and the kinds of motivations that led to the inquiry in the first place (Wolcott, 1990: 19; Rubin and Rubin, 1995). Such self-revelation can be extremely challenging for the newly-initiated qualitative investigator who is struggling with a host of other challenges in unfamiliar terrain. I have had a long-abiding professional interest in the determinants of individual well-being and recently I became interested in the relationship between religious faith and well-being. …