Qualitative research methods

Summary

Qualitative methods can be important tools in understanding context, gaining insight into certain issues and exploring questions in an open way. They can be used in addition to quantitative methods, in some cases beforehand (to identify the range of possible answers/options/variables, etc.) or following a quantitative data collection (to shed light on why we got the data we got). Using qualitative methods requires special skills for data collection, analysis and interpretation, but some basic information can get you started.