Thesis Qualitative Research

9) Be selective In can be a challenge to meet the dissertation word limit.

It won’t be possible to present all the themes generated by your dataset so focus!

Scientific knowledge is generally disseminated in peer-reviewed journals.

However, this does not mean that everything that gets published is necessarily meeting the highest standard of scientific rigor.

Veronika warns against falling into the pitfall of thinking writing up is, “Two interviews said this whilst three interviewees said that”.

7) It’s not just about the average experience When analysing your data, consider the outliers or negative cases, for example, those that found the intervention unacceptable.Since quantitative and qualitative studies involve two different types of research processes with dissimilar research philosophies and methodologies, the two are often evaluated against different criteria.For example, while a single participant can sometimes suffice for a good qualitative research project, the sample needs to be a lot larger for a quantitative study to be deemed valid and publishable.Although in the minority, these respondents will often provide more meaningful insight into the phenomenon or concept you are trying to study.8) Bounce ideas Veronika recommends sharing your emerging ideas and findings with someone else, maybe with a different background or perspective.Simply stating that ‘there is a knowledge gap’ is not sufficient.The article needs to include a comprehensive review of the field of study so that the reader knows where this research fits, and what it helps to address. Qualitative methodology shouldn’t be used just because the researcher is familiar with it; there should be a clear connection between the problem and the research methodology.Be open to considering there are alternative ways to generate and understand knowledge.2) Reflect on your role Quantitative research strives to produce “clean” data unbiased by the context in which it was generated.To clarify the difference between the two methodologies, you can read this post.Here we outline a quick checklist you can use when doing an appraisal of a qualitative paper: The literature review (and/or the background of the study) should provide you with enough information to convince you that the research is important.