ANALYZING QUALITATIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN TERMS OF METHODOLOGICAL, REFLEXIVE, AND ETHICAL ISSUES
Focus Groups
This is a method of qualitative research method whereby selected people are give their views, perceptions and stand concerning the phenomenon in question, under research. These people are asked questions for example their take, feeling and attitude towards the phenomenon in question and their response is recorded.
Qualitative research is the kind of research that seeks to understand human behavior and its influence on people’s derived attitude towards the phenomenon/ issue in question. Studying people’s behavior towards a product has its own advantages and limitations.
Strengths of using focus groups as a qualitative research method
The main advantage about using focus groups as a data collection method is because the data collected is accurate and more so primary data. It is always easier to work with primary data because it is accurate and more precise compared to secondary data. Secondary data may be altered and distorted unlike primary data which is correct and more accurate, because it represents the people’s true feeling towards the given phenomenon.
Secondly, the use of focus groups is important and an essential tool when conducting survey, which is yet another important tool of qualitative research. On the same note, it is less expensive to use questionnaires as a data collection method, and the use questionnaire is only possible with focus groups.
Limitations of using Focus Groups
The group picked as the sample may be biased on the topic under investigation, thereby giving misleading results. Secondly, it’s a tiresome method because the population to be covered is big, and at the same time it may be trick because due to people’s different personalities, their response may be different. For example whereas one group of people may be okay with a particular topic, another group may be reluctant to talk about it, due to differences in culture and lifestyle. His may lead to different outcomes on the same topic and biasness.
As a method of aforementioned study, the use of focus groups may not be the best in qualitative study because the information they may have about something may be wrong and not based on facts.
Trustworthiness
This is the essence of being counted upon to give correct, accurate, unbiased and accountable information concerning a given question or phenomenon.
When collecting data from a focus group, honesty and trustworthy are very important virtues because data collectors and researchers hope that the information they get is accurate and correct. Any misleading or incorrect information would lead to wrong conclusions from the findings. This is the main reason why a data collection justification is usually conducted to ensure that the information corrected is accurate and unbiased. Collecting data from a focus group may be cumbersome especially when the topic under scrutiny is not favored by the focus group, or is extremely favored. This will lead to biased outcome which will affect the qualitative research. For this reason, qualitative researchers are usually very particular and cautious with the data they collect, because they are dealing with the focus group’s humanistic behavior and feelings.
In aforementioned study whereby there is some background information about the topic in question, trustworthiness is very important because it should be ensured that the focus group’s results are not influenced by the aforementioned study, rather by their individual feeling and perception towards the topic/ issue. This will consequently lead to more accurate results. This can be enhanced by asking research questions on the basis of the focus group’s perspective and compare it to the aforementioned study results.
The Grounded Theory
This is a theory that focuses on generation of theories from the data collected after a research has been carried out by the researchers and a conclusion made. It is a reverse form of research whereby instead of a hypothesis being formulated and stated before the research is carried out, it comes after the research already been conducted and findings settled upon.
In grounded theory, hypotheses are generated and developed based on conceptual ideas. It does not endeavor to meet the actual and accurate information concerning a given topic, but it aims at conceptualizing what is included in the conceptual data collected during the research.
In the context of an aforementioned study, grounded theory would be a theory most likely to be applied because there already is some background information concerning the topic. This will therefore mean that through the grounded theory, there will be some data to formulate a hypothesis that will help researchers in future works and research.
