Qualitative Data

The term qualitative data is simply defined as information that is expressed in natural language and therefore is not conveyed, or is easily reduced or summed up, by numbers. The term data may not be fully embraced by some qualitative researchers due to its historical association with quantitative or numerical ways of knowing. The modifying adjective qualitative seems to be needed when used with data, whereas the phrase quantitative data is rare and seems redundant. Because of this bias, qualitative researchers often prefer terms such as discourse, language, or information over the use of data. If, however, we take the word data from its original Latin roots to mean “something given,” or simply “pieces of information,” then we can more freely discuss what that might mean for qualitative research. The “qual” in qualitative comes from the root meaning of qualities, which is in the sense of properties characteristics, or the “nature of” something. Therefore, when we look at qualitative data, we are looking at pieces of information that give us insight into the qualities of communication, meanings, language, social interactions, and the like. These pieces of information are not numbers (that would be quantitative—meaning the “quantity” or count of something), but rather chunks of language, discourse, and meanings symbolized in a variety of ways (but that exclude statistical sums).

Whether the research is interpretive or critical in nature (those being the dominant forms of qualitative inquiry), the overarching goal of collecting and examining qualitative data is to better understand the meanings held by participants, and to dig into the processes, rules, and categories that their meaning management seems to follow and fall into. In pursuit of those goals, qualitative data is typically collected in one of three ways: (1) observations: directly observing communication and interaction in the environment in which it occurs; (2) questions and answers: the use of interviews and/or surveys to ask questions of participants to elicit their perspectives and meanings; and (3) document and/or textual analysis: researchers analyzing texts that have been previously recorded and often are available in the public realm. The three ways of qualitative data collection are discussed in greater detail in the following sections.