Qualitative Research: For Life Scientists Rachel Orritt rorritt@lincoln.ac.uk

Qualitative Research: For Life Scientists

Rachel Orrittrorritt@lincoln.ac.uk

Paradigms

Concepts

What’s Possible

Arguments Against

Qualitative Research:

ParadigmsPositivism

Positivism Reality

Constructivism

Things to get your head aroundPositivism

Top Down (Deductive)

Bottom-Up (Inductive)

Researchers aren’t machines!

http://composer99.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/national-posts-war-on-science-boogeymen.html

What’s Possible?

Thematic AnalysisCase Studies

Grounded TheoryHypothesis Generation

Arguments AgainstPositivism

You can’t generalise outside your data

Time consuming

Difficult to break into

Mixed MethodsPositivism

Constructivism ?

+ =

Positivism

Quantitative Reality

+ =Qualitative

ConclusionsPositivism

Qualitative methods are useful outside of arts, humanities and social sciences

They can add another dimension to quantitative methods, especially if you are working on a project that has a practical application.

There’s no such thing as overuse of a metaphor ( )

Please feel free to contact me:rorritt@lincoln.ac.ukwww.rachelorritt.com