In my opinion, one of the key features of a qualitative approach is that it is about how the social world is interpreted. These kind of studies cannot be detached from the context where they take place. For instance, if you want to study a language, doing so considering it only a system or a set of formal rules will fall short. As we know, a language is embedded in a social and cultural context so, to study it fully, it is necessary to take into account its social uses and to have a good knowledge of the context that surrounds it. 

To generate data about such studies, standardized or rigid scales detached from the context will not be of much use. You will need a qualitative approach where the means to obtain information useful for the study are more flexible and more open to interpretation. In a qualitative study, you have to be fully aware of the complexity of the context in which the research takes place.

To my mind one of the most important features of qualitative research is included into emic approach, according to which the aim of the researcher is to study the language not from his own perspective, without taking into consideration any preconsidered theories, but to understand language practice from the point of view of its users, i.e. to dive into data collection, interpret them and finally see what emerges. 

This approach is different from other approaches to the study of language because usually before starting the research a scholar grounds on some theory and has a definite hypothesis about the outcome of the research. Applying emic approach the researcher doesn’t really know what conclusion he will come to. It goes without saying that this approach implies flexibility of data generation methods, depending on the social context, participants and situation of the research. These features are important to carry out qualitative research because allow to get objective data, without any prejudices and preconsideration, and these data will come from real life situations, which can not be predicted, because language is anchored in life, culture and society.

In contrast to quantitative statistics, qualitative research is less concerned to test what is already known (e.g. a theory already formulated in advance), but rather to develop theories that are empirically grounded. Conducting research in any field of social studies has to be considered from more than one point of view. The study of subjective meanings and everyday experience and practice is as essential to add credibility and validity to a study in social sciences.

Furthermore, results in quantitative research can often be perceived as rather abstract or hardly applicable to everyday life. In qualitative research the study is assessed with reference to the object under study and therefore does not exclusively follow abstract academic criteria of science. In quantitative research however, in order to meet methodological standards, results often remain too far removed from everyday questions and problems.

There are various features of qualitative research as presented in the articles of this field. The one that I would like to mention here is data collection. The approach to collecting data can be observations, interviews, document analysis, videotaping and so on. Whatever approaches to data collection that a researcher is utlizing, the collecting process could be high time-consuming, which might be over many continuous hours or days. 
In this vein, great importance shall be attached to data collection in qualitative research, because the researcher hopes that his data could be as valid, reliable, and un-biased as possible so that he could achieve a more accurate interpretation of the issues that are being studied.

Various features can be concluded from qualitative analysis, among which one of the most important is that the data of the qualitative anaylsis is in the form of words, pictures or objectives, and the analysis aim and outcome are clearly different from quantitative research. Richess and Precision from the title refer to that the data chosen is rich, time consuming and unlikely to be generalized, also. No attempt needs to be assigned frequencies to the linguistic features which are identified in the data.

The outcome of data analysis is distinct, concrete and precise. The qualitative research uses unstructured, flexible and open methodology, in other words, the aim of the analysis is a complete, contextual detailed description rather than to classify features, count them, and construct statistical models in an attempt to expain what is oberserved as quantitative research does. What's more, in qualitative reasearch there is strong attachment between the researcher and objects, qualitative research is meant to have an insight into the objects through broad and delicate researches. It will take into consideration the view of researchers and emphasize on the explanatory comprehension of realities in order to provide some references for similar researches.

In mi opinion qualitative research is an important scientific research that allows us to seek answers to interrogates, collect evidence and it is especially effective in obtaining specific information about opinions, behaviors and values of a particular group or population. Since I am interested in the field of education, I believe that qualitative research could be a beneficial tool for me, due to the different ways in which this kind of research can be used, for example by doing interviews to students and teachers, or by doing participant observation.

From my point of view, qualitative research studies subjective opinions. It provides a set of techniques developed to analyze daily life content and the behavior of natural studies. It emphasizes on feelings, motivations or emotions by analyzing each case on a deeper level. It is focused on subjective data that cannot be showed on numbers or statistics which is quantitative research. The aim of using qualitative research is to try to understand why things are the way they are or try to understand and explain the participants behavior. But we can also use quantitative research as support in order to interpret the results of the investigation.

Qualitative research instead of seeking to confirm hypotheses about phenomena focusses more on seeking to explore phenomena. Bearing this in mind, qualitative research analytical objectives are to describe variation, describe and explain relationships and to describe individual experiences or group norms. 

So what can we learn then from it? It provides information about the “human” side of an issue (beliefs, opinions, emotions, and relationships, behaviour…) Qualitative methods are also effective in identifying intangible factors, such as social norms, socioeconomic status, gender roles, ethnicity, and religion, which normally aren’t considered in other kinds of research. This is mainly because some aspects of the study are flexible (for example, the addition, exclusion, or the way an interviewee uses its own words in a particular interview question). Therefore, participant responses might affect how and which questions researchers ask next. In other words, the study design is kind of interactive, that is, data collection and research questions are adjusted according to what is being learned by the researcher. 

Qualitative research focuses on the nature or structure of attitudes and motivations rather than their frequency and distribution. So subjective individual’s interpretation of events is important through participants’ observation, in-depth interviews, etc. However, data collected from qualitative research is normally in the form of words, pictures or objects, which makes result analysis more complicated and time-consuming, compared to direct quantitative statistics analysis. Taking this into account, is there a better way to optimize the process?

Personally I think there may be a way to combine the advantages of qualitative research and quantitative one by remaining subjectively immersed in the subject matter, while making qualitative research numerical through, such as, designing questions that require closed ‘yes-no’ or ‘tick-cross’ responses, where data can either take a “1” or a “0” response. For example, instead of “Why will you vote for Trump?” The questions I ask participants will be – Do you vote for Trump because 1. he has blond hair? 2. he is honest? 3. he is from New York? 4. he is a successful businessman? 5 he supports ordinary Americans? And participants only need to choose yes or no, which will be converted into numbers “1” or “0” and calculated altogether (However, more space will also be put aside for participants’ subjective thoughts and attitudes beyond the question form.). In this way, by using these responses, we can then convert participants’ subjective attitudes to objective statistical data.

One of the main contrasts between qualitative and quantitative research is the use of inductive vs deductive approaches. Qualitative research involves analyzing outcomes from the inside out as opposed to quantitative research which focuses on confirming or denying a hypothesis by looking at general causality. Inductive approaches have a way of exploring new phenomena by way of the data itself, producing multi layered results. This is suited to situations where more detailed results are required, such as emotional responses which are challenging to research using quantitative methods. 
Although a deductive method seems more logical, inductive reasoning makes broad generalizations from very specific observations. Inductive reasoning has a place in scientific method as scientists use the results to form hypotheses to then test with deductive reasoning.

Last week, in our Sentence and Word Order class, professor Montse had a power point slide stating that one of the key features distinguishing the two approaches are that quantitative studies test hypotheses whereas qualitative ones do not. This is not consistent with my understanding. For some time now, I thought that both methods can be used to test hypotheses. For instance, in Social and Cultural Anthropology, if one were to study the significance of a particular ritual of a social group, they can develop a hypothesis about said ritual and test it by describing their observations in a qualitative fashion.

Another feature of the approaches that seems to be significant to mention is their complimentary nature. I could easily be wrong, but I tend to think that quantitative research helps add a degree of credibility and objectivity to qualitative research. Conversely, qualitative studies serve to create meaning out of the quantitative. I think this distinction is significant as it leads one to conclude that they are both needed for a proper scholarly work.