Post reflection - Theme 6: Qualitative research method and case study

The theme for this week was “qualitative methods and case studies”. Qualitative methods is research methods where you go deeper into a subject and get more profound knowledge. These methods was first used in social science. Examples of qualitative methods is interviews, focus groups and observations. During the seminar we didn’t talk that much about qualitative methods, we just tried to define what it was. Humans is involved in qualitative studies in another degree than quantitative since they are often observations and interview types of methods. You also get another kind of data that you need to work with in another way to find structures and themes. When you use a qualitative method I found that it is important to have several information sources, like several interviews, focus groups or observation objects. This is important so you can compare these and really see if there is similarities and differences between the sources. There is also good if there is two or more people involved in the gathering of data and the analysis, and that these people has different backgrounds so the analysis doesn’t get shaped by past experiences.

When it comes to case studies I want to present some things that came up during the seminar and that got more clear to me from being at the seminar. A case study isn’t a method, it’s more like a framework that says how you should conduct a profound and comprehensive study about a subject. The case is a event, object or person and a case study can consist of one or a few cases. Important aspects in a case study is that you don’t start with a theory and/or hypothesis, you only have a research question in the beginning. You start collecting data and then when you have something to built on you start formulating a theory. I think that this is because case studies are usually done on unexplored territories, and then it’s hard to formulate a theory about a subject that you have no knowledge about. In case studies you look at literature and previous studies in the end of the process which is opposite to the usual process, as I understand. A case study usually ends when you think that you can’t get any more knowledge about it without having to put a lot of effort to it, that you reach saturation in knowledge.