"The working design is a preliminary plan for getting the research under way."
Working Hypothesis:
- Qualitative research uses inductive inquiry
- Data collection is undertaken without preconceived theories or hypotheses
- Researchers are influenced by their backgrounds
- Questions, hypotheses and foreshadowed problems may be reviewed, deleted, or extended as the data collection and analysis proceed
Data Collection:
- the researcher must gain access to do the research
- data collection can be interactive or non-interactive
- most common methods include observation, interviews, collection and reviews of related documents, taking specimen records, and taking oral histories.
Data Analysis and Interpretation:
- Analysis and Interpretation begins shortly after data collection begins
- it continues as data is collected
- concurrent collection and analysis allows the researcher to check working hypotheses and unanticipated results
- qualitative data analysis requires organizing information and data reduction
- early data might suggest a theory
- more data might support, dis-confirm or extend the hypothesis or theory
- The data may suggest categories for characterizing information. Coding is a process where the researcher decides on one or more categories for organizing data.
- Qualitative research is a process of successive approximations toward an accurate description and interpretation of the phenomenon.
