1. The major approaches to collecting qualitative data all fall under the rubric of what is called field research, ethnography or the study of people in their natural settings. Field studies tend to be of a concentrated geographic community while ethnographic studies tend to be of a particular cultural group. These approaches range from observation to participation with the two major approaches being participant observation and intensive interviewing. Some qualitative studies use a combination of both. It would be unlikely that a field or ethnographic study would not employ some intensive interviewing, though many intensive interview studies are done with individuals who do not come from the same geographical area or cultural group. In addition to the examples provided in Rubin and Babbie, Elliot Liebow's Tell Them Who I am is an example of a field research that relies on intensive intervieiwng..
2. Field studies, which have evolved from Anthropology and Sociology, have been used to examine social processes over time, including responses to chronic physical and/or mental illnesses; life in mental institutions, convents, and prisons; responses to disasters of all types; encounters between different groups of people; and community, neighborhood, or organizational studies. Field studies are always longitudinal and usually involve the researcher living among the people he is studying for a year or several years.
3. Intensive interview studies, an increasingly common approach in the fields of Education, Sociology, Nursing, and Conununications, are topic specific rather than setting specific, which characterizes most field studies. Intensive interviews lend themselves nicely to understanding conditions (being elderly, being a student, being a patient); processes (becoming a new mother, deciding to seek medical treatment, etc.); and events or effects (a disaster, losing a child or spouse, changes in welfare policies, etc.).
4. Both fieldwork and intensive interviews strive for what Max Weber, a German sociologist, called verstehen, or deep understanding, grasping the situation from the insider’s perspective, or a holistic understanding. Typically such approaches are used when the investigator does not know a lot about the subject matter and typically begins with an inductive approach to knowledge development. In other words, observations are made, general patterns among these observations are noted, and tentative conclusions about the patterns of these relationships are drawn. Often the researcher alternates between inductive and deductive approaches.
5. The results of the an intensive interview or field study can range from the development of sensitizing concepts (for example "racial safety" and "shadow values") to field interventions, (that study the effects of interventions or staged situations), qualitative methods are not limited to exploratory/descriptive purposes, but can be also be used for providing background for the explanation and the development of causal arguments.
6. The researcher initiating either a field or intensive interview study begins the research enterprise with some preconceived notions (e.g., the researcher is not a tabula rasa) and should do a thorough literature review before beginning to gather data. Without doing the latter, everything in an intensive interview or field study is equally obvious. The literature review sharpens the capacity for surprise.
7. Unlike traditional survey or experimental research, these qualitative approaches do not develop operational definitions or employ a variable language (e.g., dependent, independent, or control variables).
8. These approaches are intentionally less structured than survey or experimental approaches, providing a more flexible approach to data collection. Likewise, unlike surveys, which tend to ignore the context in which the interviews take place, interview context is an extremely important component of an intensive interview study.
9. For example, when intensive interviews are used, they usually are largely open-ended in format, with frequent use of probes and a flexible sequencing of questions. They are also tape-recorded. The interview questions form an interview guide rather than a structured questionnaire or interview schedule. Because the intent is to extend the information obtained, questions often beginning with "how" rather than "why"; "what was it like for you"; "take me through a typical day"; "what happened next," etc. In gathering information, the interviewer’s job is to talk less and listen more; provide little of a personal nature, since these responses may alter what the respondent says; and continually follow up on what the respondent says, particularly if it isn’t clear. The interviewer should be able to visualize the experience the respondent is discussing, which requires the solicitation of concrete details.
10. The raw data of an intensive interview study are the audiotapes and transcriptions of the interviews. The raw data of field studies are field notes, interview notes (taped or not), available statistical data about the community, photographs of the setting, etc.
11. Other issues in field studies include: 1) gaining access; 2) the trade-offs between involvement (becoming overidentified with the group) and detachment; 3) maintaining objectivity; 4) the level of participation (from complete observer to full participant); reactivity, which ebbs and flows; 5) the need to use triangulation and 6) sampling (snowball, maximum variation sampling, use of deviant case analysis). Sampling is purposive, not random, and often involves interviewing 30 to 50 people or less. The less frequently reported in research reports. Reliability refers to the internal consistency and relative stability of findings over time.
12. Unlike traditional measurement, reliability is not assessed by correlation coefficients or percent agreement. Nonetheless, reliability is quite important in qualitative studies, though less frequently reported in research reports. Reliability refers to the internal consistency and relative stability of findings over time.
13. Validity in qualitative studies also involves corroborating evidence, asking "have I got it right;" is the social world accurately represented; have I interpreted the results in a "correct way," is the account plausible, is the account convincing, and are the results grounded in the data? It also involves triangulating data from different points of view. Increasingly, in field studies, researchers will give copies of the results to participants to see if they have gotten the story right. They can then use footnotes to indicate where the participants feel questions of fact or interpretation are not correct. The researcher does not have to change his interpretations, but should not divergent views from respondents.
14. One of the biggest problems with qualitative research is data reduction. The researcher can have over 1000 pages of transcription from an intensive interview study with an N of 30. Field notes can be voluminous. Data reduction typically involves reading through all data sources, developing descriptive and analytic files, developing categones from these files and gradually reducing the number of categories in a parsimonious fashion. With intensive interviews, the process involves marking excerpts of interest in the transcripts, grouping like excerpts together, and naming these groupings, called categories. Gradually the number of different analytic categories are grouped and regrouped until a manageable number emerges and a logical pattern or model across categories can be developed. Sensitizing concepts and theoretical models can result. It is the development of conceptual models than distinguish field and intensive interview studies from newspaper accounts.
15. The researcher needs to watch out for pitfalls in analysis, including suppressed evidence, provincialism, overidentification, hasty conclusions, and questionable causation.
16. The major advantage of field and intensive interview studies is the nuanced depth of understanding that can be obtalned. The major disadvantages include subjectivity, and weak generalizability in the statistical sense. On the other hand, concepts can emerge which can be tested with other populations and in different settings. Hence there can be conceptual generalizability.