Qualitative research
In qualitative research is understood in the social sciences, the non-standardized data collection and evaluation. Particularly common interpretative and hermeneutic methods are used here as an analytical means.
Legitimacy
Theoretical foundations of qualitative methodologies in the social sciences provide, among other theoretical traditions such as the phenomenological sociology, symbolic interactionism, which are often collectively referred to as interpretive paradigm or interpretive sociology.
In everyday life and shared by scientists and non-scientists living world constructions of meaning and the reasonable character of social action in specific cultural contexts are already always given before the sociological analysis ever turns its object. In contrast to scientific facts of social science subject is therefore always in some way pre-structured by the examinee and respondents and thus reflexive. The methods of qualitative research tradition is trying to bring this special character of social science subject areas by the open nature of the data collection and interpretive nature of the data analysis into account. This qualitative social researchers usually put great emphasis on capturing the actor's perspective and the action orientation and the interpretation of patterns of respondents, especially if they feel committed to the interpretative sociology.
Methodenstreit
Critics of qualitative research methods that keep the use of quantitative methods for most social science subject areas more appropriate to throw qualitative social researchers sometimes unscientific: first, they criticize the subjectivity and arbitrariness of the data collected ( be the yes not charged with a uniform standardized scheme) and the building upon analytical results and interpretations. On the other criticism is that qualitative research work ( because of the great effort that means, for example, the conduct of qualitative interviews and their interpretative analysis) only with very small numbers of cases, and therefore could not provide representative results. Overall, the quality criteria and quality standards of empirical social research, such as objectivity, reliability and validity were not met. Representatives of the qualitative research tradition argue in response that a waiver of the social sciences would lead to qualitative, hermeneutic methods cause significant social phenomena could not be analyzed because they standardized methods such as questionnaires and the analysis of demographic data is evading. Furthermore, qualitative researchers argue that any method, whether qualitative and quantitative, create a specific knowledge. A positivist view that maintains a separation between knowledge and context for given, lets ignore that knowledge arises only in this very context. The reflection of the effects of those used in the research methods come sometimes in quantitative research on briefly while she was an integral part in qualitative research.
To counter the accusation that qualitative methods would yield only subjective or arbitrary results, a number of methodologically controlled method of qualitative research has been developed as grounded theory, the hermeneutic sociology of knowledge, the objective hermeneutics, qualitative content analysis, the documentary method according to Bohnsack or the qualitative type of education, represent the desire to provide documented and inter-subjectively debatable methods. At the same time the quality criteria and quality standards of qualitative research are discussed in recent years strengthened.
Development and history
The first qualitative studies conducted by anthropologists and ethnologists such as Franz Boas and Bronisław Malinowski in the early 20th century. Later, the social scientists of the Chicago school of sociology resorted to these methods to investigate urban subcultures. Already in the 1920s, the use of qualitative methods by some sociologists but was also criticized as pseudoscientific. The discussion of the scientific qualitative methods continues to this day. Here, many aspects of an old Methodenstreit find, which was conducted since the early days of sociology as a scientific discipline between the supporters of science and scientific methods unit ideal and the opponents of his takeover in the social sciences. Among other things, this confrontation led to become known as positivism dispute dispute that in the 60s came to a head as a result of a pre- assigned on a work conference of the German Society for Sociology, 1961 by Karl Popper and Theodor W. Adorno lectures on " Logic of the Social Sciences".
Since the 1980s, qualitative methods gained increasing attention and quality oriented projects and research approaches of becoming widespread, so Mayring 1988, a "qualitative change" diagnosed. It developed a growing willingness to accept the degree of relevance of the different research approaches for a given problem and to recognize the limits of their own direction. This development eventually found expression in the (albeit accompanied by heated discussions ) establish a working group " methods of qualitative social research " in the German Sociological Association (DGS ) in October 1997 and the establishment of a same section in November 2003.
The width of the different qualitative approaches has increased significantly since the mid-20th century. Today's spectrum ranges from software-based text analysis, which also allow quantification ( mixed methods ), over more codified methods, such as narrative analysis, the hermeneutic sociology of knowledge, the reconstructive social research, discourse analysis and objective hermeneutics, and open procedures of participatory field research to specifically into field engaging action research.