In this section, we will take a closer look at the qualitative research methodologies of interviewing and secondary data analysis. The next section will focus on community-based research.

Interviews

Interviews, sometimes referred to as in-depth interviews, are one-on-one conversations with participants designed to gather information about a particular topic. When you have a research topic, there are several questions to consider to determine if interviewing is the best method for your study:

• Are you looking for nuance and subtlety?
• Does answering the research question require you to trace how present situations resulted from prior events?
• Is an entirely fresh view required? If the existing literature cannot explain your research problem or the current approaches to the topic do not seem to be headed anywhere, interviews can possibly provide new perspectives on the issue.
• Are you trying to explain the unexpected?

If you answered yes to these questions, qualitative interviewing would most likely be an appropriate method (Weiss 1994).

Interviews can take a long time to complete, but they can produce very rich data. In fact, a respondent might say something that the researcher had not previously considered, which can help focus the research project. However, researchers have to be careful not to use leading questions that prompt respondents to give certain answers. For example, avoid asking questions like, “You really like eating vegetables, don’t you?” Instead, researchers should allow the respondent to answer freely by asking questions like, “How do you feel about eating vegetables?” A strength of interviews is the back-and-forth conversation that occurs, which gives the researcher the opportunity to ask for clarification, spend more time on a subtopic, or ask additional questions.

Secondary Data Analysis

While sociologists often engage in original research studies, they also contribute knowledge to the discipline through secondary data analysis. Secondary data does not result from firsthand research collected from primary sources. Instead secondary data analysis (also called existing research data) uses data collected by other researchers or data collected by an agency or organization. Sociologists might study works written by historians, economists, teachers, or early sociologists. They might search through periodicals, newspapers, magazines, or organizational data from any period in history.

Content analysis applies a systematic approach to record and value information gleaned from secondary data as it relates to the study at hand. Using available information not only saves time and money but can also add depth to a study. Sociologists often interpret findings in a new way that was not part of an author’s original purpose or intention. For example, to study how women were encouraged to act and behave in the 1960s, a researcher might watch movies, television shows, and situation comedies from that period. Similarly, to research changes in behavior and attitudes due to the emergence of television in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a sociologist would rely on new interpretations of secondary data. Decades from now, researchers will most likely conduct similar studies on the advent of mobile phones, the internet, or social media.

Social scientists also learn by analyzing the research of a variety of agencies. Governmental departments and global groups, like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics or the World Health Organization (WHO), publish studies with findings that are useful to sociologists. A public statistic like the foreclosure rate might be useful for studying the effects of a recession. A racial demographic profile might be compared with data on education funding to examine the resources accessible by different groups.

One of the advantages of secondary data like old movies or WHO statistics is that it is nonreactive research (or unobtrusive research), meaning that it does not involve direct contact with subjects and will not alter or influence people’s behaviors. Unlike studies requiring direct contact with people, using previously published data does not require entering a population or the investment and risks inherent in that research process.

Using available data does have its challenges. Public records are not always easy to access. A researcher will need to do some work to track them down and gain access to records. To guide their search through a vast library of materials and avoid wasting time reading unrelated sources, sociologists employ content analysis techniques.

Another problem arises when data are unavailable in the exact form needed or do not survey the topic from the precise angle the researcher seeks. For example, the average salaries paid to professors at a public school are public record. However, these figures do not necessarily reveal how long it took each professor to reach the salary range, what their educational backgrounds are, or how long they’ve been teaching.

When conducting content analysis, it is important to consider the date of publication of an existing source and to take into account attitudes and common cultural ideals that may have influenced the research. For example, when Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd gathered research in the 1920s on a small town in the Midwest, attitudes and cultural norms were vastly different than they are now. Beliefs about gender roles, race, education, and work have changed significantly since then. At the time, the study’s purpose was to reveal insights about small U.S. communities. Today, it is an illustration of 1920s attitudes and values.

Licenses and Attributions for Qualitative Research Methods Part 2

Open Content, Original

“Qualitative Interviews” by Jennifer Puentes is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Open Content, Shared Previously

“Secondary Data Analysis” is adapted from “2.2 Research Methods” by Tonja R. Conerly, Kathleen Holmes, Asha Lal Tamang in Introduction to Sociology 3e, OpenStax, which is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Edited for clarity and brevity.

“Content Analysis” definition from “Ch. 2 Key Terms” by Heather Griffiths and Nathan Keirns, Introduction to Sociology 3e, OpenStax, is licensed under CC BY 4.0.