Since 1990, the application of qualitative research has been significantly increasing in psychology. Apparently, the larger number of qualitative methods in psychology textbooks implies that qualitative methods have been teaching in many countries for psychological education as it can provide tremendous beneficial knowledge that is substantial and sufficient for psychological field (Howitt, 2013).
First of all, qualitative research provides rich and detailed descriptions about human behaviour and experience. It is corresponding and satisfactory with psychology which is the study about how and why people behave and think in a particular way (Sevilla, Rovira, Vendivel, & Punsalan, 1995). As Aaron, Alvin, Jack (1958) proposed the nature of psychology was to investigate experience and behavior of people. According to Breakwell, Smith, and Wright, (2012), qualitative research allows researchers to get to know participants’ subjective experience and focus on how they construct their world, including the relationships they have in their life and the objects they face through in their particular situation. Data collection methods in qualitative research, such as, unstructured interview, allow participants to express their own thoughts using their own words. Thus, it helps researchers gather rich information with deeper understanding of participants’ perspective of which quantitative research could not generate. As in a study by Per Lindqvist and his colleagues, for example, they wanted to learn how the families of adolescent suicide victims handled with their loss (Lindqvist, Johansson, & Karlsson, 2008). Unstructured interviews were applied without using any specific research questions or hypothesis in order to clearly understand the reactions of each family towards the situation from their own perspective. The interviews were conducted with 10 families in rural Sweden that had adolescent suicide victims, started by letting the families describe about the victim and later allowed participants to freely talk about anything else that they desired to tell the interviewer. There was a crucial theme that revealed from these unstructured interview, families still had been keeping on wondering why their adolescent committed suicide.
Crucially, many interesting research questions and hypotheses in psychology have been discovered by qualitative research. As an explicit illustration from Lindqvist research, as mentioned above, proposed that there might be an association between the degree of suicide unexpectation and how consumed the family is coping on to seek the reason behind the suicide of their children. This relationship can later be investigated by conducting quantitative research. However, without the use of qualitative research, such as unstructured interview for this case that researchers directly and closely had a conversation with participants and openly allowed them to talk about their perspectives and experiences about the situation, this question might not be discovered.
It is clearly seen that the application of qualitative research methods empowers researchers to develop closer social relationship with participants since qualitative researchers tend to position themselves as insiders that could shrink distance between themselves and participants (Howitt, D. 2013). Mansfiel, Nathanson, Jayesinghe, and Foyle (2011) suggested that closer relationships create trust and effective communication that will enable researchers or psychologist to work in partnership with their participants in order to address individual’s complex experience and help researchers avoid overt interpretation (Willig, Steinten-Rogers, 2017). Researchers can put themselves in the position of the participant or subject and attempts to understand the world from that participants’ perspective (Rohleder & Lyons, 2014).
Importantly, qualitative research can provide the sense to be a member of a particular group or in a particular situation, usually termed as individual’s lived experience, which may not be uncovered by quantitative research. For instance, Lindqvist and colleagues’s research, as mentioned earlier, outlined that the families were instinctively willing to show their teens’ bedroom where the incident happened to the interviewers.
Another significant aspect of qualitative research is openness towards topics (Breakwell, Smith, & Wright, 2012) in order to gain a more holistic understanding. As outlined in Dennis Howitt (2013), qualitative researchers focus on understanding individuals thus, normally they do not make predictions and test hypothesis, instead they aim for immersion and informed curiosity. Consider the study of Wilhelm Wundt (Breakwell, Smith, & Wright, 2012), his study was about conscious mind and individual subjective experience. Self-observation combined with document analysis such as, personal letter or diaries, were used in his research in attempt to understand participants’ situated behaviors and experiences. From this example, it is clearly seen that in order for researchers to develop deeper understanding about their participants or patients qualitative research is necessary.
Qualitative research activities, particularly grounded theory discovered by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (Howitt, 2013) promote researchers’ theoretical sensitivity. It allows researchers to draw their attention to action and interaction as meaningful units of analysis in their own right (Nolas, 2011), turning qualitative research to become more powerful for psychology. It is a popular approach for studying action and interaction frequently used in areas such as nursing, social work and clinical psychology (Frost, 2011).
One illustration of applications of grounded theory analysis is the work of Singh (2003), her research was about mothers’ and fathers’ experiences of parenting a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (Nolas, 2011). She started with ADHD’s historical analysis with her immersion in the field through participant observation in a clinical setting and teaching at a primary school, her theoretical sensitivity had been enhanced by many issues appeared during her study. For example, she noticed that in the clinic setting, fathers tended to be less engaged in their child’s diagnosis and ADHD management. Other than that, she found that articles that referred to ‘parents’ and ‘children’ in relation to ADHD usually represented mothers and sons. Hence, she conducted interviews using open-ended questions with mothers and fathers asking their experiences of having a child diagnosed with ADHD (Nolas, 2011).
Remarkably, using qualitative research, such as participant observation, it enables researchers to become active participants in the group or situation they would like to collect data in which there may be significant or valuable information that is only reveal to someone who is an active participant in the group or situation (Price, Jhangiani & Chiang, 2015).