how to do qualitative research in psychology

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7.4 Qualitative Research

Learning objectives.

• List several ways in which qualitative research differs from quantitative research in psychology.
• Describe the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative research in psychology compared with quantitative research.
• Give examples of qualitative research in psychology.

What Is Qualitative Research?

This book is primarily about quantitative research . Quantitative researchers typically start with a focused research question or hypothesis, collect a small amount of data from each of a large number of individuals, describe the resulting data using statistical techniques, and draw general conclusions about some large population. Although this is by far the most common approach to conducting empirical research in psychology, there is an important alternative called qualitative research. Qualitative research originated in the disciplines of anthropology and sociology but is now used to study many psychological topics as well. Qualitative researchers generally begin with a less focused research question, collect large amounts of relatively “unfiltered” data from a relatively small number of individuals, and describe their data using nonstatistical techniques. They are usually less concerned with drawing general conclusions about human behavior than with understanding in detail the experience of their research participants.

Consider, for example, a study by researcher Per Lindqvist and his colleagues, who wanted to learn how the families of teenage suicide victims cope with their loss (Lindqvist, Johansson, & Karlsson, 2008). They did not have a specific research question or hypothesis, such as, What percentage of family members join suicide support groups? Instead, they wanted to understand the variety of reactions that families had, with a focus on what it is like from their perspectives. To do this, they interviewed the families of 10 teenage suicide victims in their homes in rural Sweden. The interviews were relatively unstructured, beginning with a general request for the families to talk about the victim and ending with an invitation to talk about anything else that they wanted to tell the interviewer. One of the most important themes that emerged from these interviews was that even as life returned to “normal,” the families continued to struggle with the question of why their loved one committed suicide. This struggle appeared to be especially difficult for families in which the suicide was most unexpected.

The Purpose of Qualitative Research

Again, this book is primarily about quantitative research in psychology. The strength of quantitative research is its ability to provide precise answers to specific research questions and to draw general conclusions about human behavior. This is how we know that people have a strong tendency to obey authority figures, for example, or that female college students are not substantially more talkative than male college students. But while quantitative research is good at providing precise answers to specific research questions, it is not nearly as good at generating novel and interesting research questions. Likewise, while quantitative research is good at drawing general conclusions about human behavior, it is not nearly as good at providing detailed descriptions of the behavior of particular groups in particular situations. And it is not very good at all at communicating what it is actually like to be a member of a particular group in a particular situation.

But the relative weaknesses of quantitative research are the relative strengths of qualitative research. Qualitative research can help researchers to generate new and interesting research questions and hypotheses. The research of Lindqvist and colleagues, for example, suggests that there may be a general relationship between how unexpected a suicide is and how consumed the family is with trying to understand why the teen committed suicide. This relationship can now be explored using quantitative research. But it is unclear whether this question would have arisen at all without the researchers sitting down with the families and listening to what they themselves wanted to say about their experience. Qualitative research can also provide rich and detailed descriptions of human behavior in the real-world contexts in which it occurs. Among qualitative researchers, this is often referred to as “thick description” (Geertz, 1973). Similarly, qualitative research can convey a sense of what it is actually like to be a member of a particular group or in a particular situation—what qualitative researchers often refer to as the “lived experience” of the research participants. Lindqvist and colleagues, for example, describe how all the families spontaneously offered to show the interviewer the victim’s bedroom or the place where the suicide occurred—revealing the importance of these physical locations to the families. It seems unlikely that a quantitative study would have discovered this.

Data Collection and Analysis in Qualitative Research

As with correlational research, data collection approaches in qualitative research are quite varied and can involve naturalistic observation, archival data, artwork, and many other things. But one of the most common approaches, especially for psychological research, is to conduct interviews . Interviews in qualitative research tend to be unstructured—consisting of a small number of general questions or prompts that allow participants to talk about what is of interest to them. The researcher can follow up by asking more detailed questions about the topics that do come up. Such interviews can be lengthy and detailed, but they are usually conducted with a relatively small sample. This was essentially the approach used by Lindqvist and colleagues in their research on the families of suicide survivors. Small groups of people who participate together in interviews focused on a particular topic or issue are often referred to as focus groups . The interaction among participants in a focus group can sometimes bring out more information than can be learned in a one-on-one interview. The use of focus groups has become a standard technique in business and industry among those who want to understand consumer tastes and preferences. The content of all focus group interviews is usually recorded and transcribed to facilitate later analyses.

Another approach to data collection in qualitative research is participant observation. In participant observation , researchers become active participants in the group or situation they are studying. The data they collect can include interviews (usually unstructured), their own notes based on their observations and interactions, documents, photographs, and other artifacts. The basic rationale for participant observation is that there may be important information that is only accessible to, or can be interpreted only by, someone who is an active participant in the group or situation. An example of participant observation comes from a study by sociologist Amy Wilkins (published in Social Psychology Quarterly ) on a college-based religious organization that emphasized how happy its members were (Wilkins, 2008). Wilkins spent 12 months attending and participating in the group’s meetings and social events, and she interviewed several group members. In her study, Wilkins identified several ways in which the group “enforced” happiness—for example, by continually talking about happiness, discouraging the expression of negative emotions, and using happiness as a way to distinguish themselves from other groups.

Data Analysis in Quantitative Research

Although quantitative and qualitative research generally differ along several important dimensions (e.g., the specificity of the research question, the type of data collected), it is the method of data analysis that distinguishes them more clearly than anything else. To illustrate this idea, imagine a team of researchers that conducts a series of unstructured interviews with recovering alcoholics to learn about the role of their religious faith in their recovery. Although this sounds like qualitative research, imagine further that once they collect the data, they code the data in terms of how often each participant mentions God (or a “higher power”), and they then use descriptive and inferential statistics to find out whether those who mention God more often are more successful in abstaining from alcohol. Now it sounds like quantitative research. In other words, the quantitative-qualitative distinction depends more on what researchers do with the data they have collected than with why or how they collected the data.

But what does qualitative data analysis look like? Just as there are many ways to collect data in qualitative research, there are many ways to analyze data. Here we focus on one general approach called grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). This approach was developed within the field of sociology in the 1960s and has gradually gained popularity in psychology. Remember that in quantitative research, it is typical for the researcher to start with a theory, derive a hypothesis from that theory, and then collect data to test that specific hypothesis. In qualitative research using grounded theory, researchers start with the data and develop a theory or an interpretation that is “grounded in” those data. They do this in stages. First, they identify ideas that are repeated throughout the data. Then they organize these ideas into a smaller number of broader themes. Finally, they write a theoretical narrative —an interpretation—of the data in terms of the themes that they have identified. This theoretical narrative focuses on the subjective experience of the participants and is usually supported by many direct quotations from the participants themselves.

As an example, consider a study by researchers Laura Abrams and Laura Curran, who used the grounded theory approach to study the experience of postpartum depression symptoms among low-income mothers (Abrams & Curran, 2009). Their data were the result of unstructured interviews with 19 participants. Table 7.1 “Themes and Repeating Ideas in a Study of Postpartum Depression Among Low-Income Mothers” shows the five broad themes the researchers identified and the more specific repeating ideas that made up each of those themes. In their research report, they provide numerous quotations from their participants, such as this one from “Destiny:”

Well, just recently my apartment was broken into and the fact that his Medicaid for some reason was cancelled so a lot of things was happening within the last two weeks all at one time. So that in itself I don’t want to say almost drove me mad but it put me in a funk.…Like I really was depressed. (p. 357)

Their theoretical narrative focused on the participants’ experience of their symptoms not as an abstract “affective disorder” but as closely tied to the daily struggle of raising children alone under often difficult circumstances.

Table 7.1 Themes and Repeating Ideas in a Study of Postpartum Depression Among Low-Income Mothers

The Quantitative-Qualitative “Debate”

Given their differences, it may come as no surprise that quantitative and qualitative research in psychology and related fields do not coexist in complete harmony. Some quantitative researchers criticize qualitative methods on the grounds that they lack objectivity, are difficult to evaluate in terms of reliability and validity, and do not allow generalization to people or situations other than those actually studied. At the same time, some qualitative researchers criticize quantitative methods on the grounds that they overlook the richness of human behavior and experience and instead answer simple questions about easily quantifiable variables.

In general, however, qualitative researchers are well aware of the issues of objectivity, reliability, validity, and generalizability. In fact, they have developed a number of frameworks for addressing these issues (which are beyond the scope of our discussion). And in general, quantitative researchers are well aware of the issue of oversimplification. They do not believe that all human behavior and experience can be adequately described in terms of a small number of variables and the statistical relationships among them. Instead, they use simplification as a strategy for uncovering general principles of human behavior.

Many researchers from both the quantitative and qualitative camps now agree that the two approaches can and should be combined into what has come to be called mixed-methods research (Todd, Nerlich, McKeown, & Clarke, 2004). (In fact, the studies by Lindqvist and colleagues and by Abrams and Curran both combined quantitative and qualitative approaches.) One approach to combining quantitative and qualitative research is to use qualitative research for hypothesis generation and quantitative research for hypothesis testing. Again, while a qualitative study might suggest that families who experience an unexpected suicide have more difficulty resolving the question of why, a well-designed quantitative study could test a hypothesis by measuring these specific variables for a large sample. A second approach to combining quantitative and qualitative research is referred to as triangulation . The idea is to use both quantitative and qualitative methods simultaneously to study the same general questions and to compare the results. If the results of the quantitative and qualitative methods converge on the same general conclusion, they reinforce and enrich each other. If the results diverge, then they suggest an interesting new question: Why do the results diverge and how can they be reconciled?

Key Takeaways

• Qualitative research is an important alternative to quantitative research in psychology. It generally involves asking broader research questions, collecting more detailed data (e.g., interviews), and using nonstatistical analyses.
• Many researchers conceptualize quantitative and qualitative research as complementary and advocate combining them. For example, qualitative research can be used to generate hypotheses and quantitative research to test them.
• Discussion: What are some ways in which a qualitative study of girls who play youth baseball would be likely to differ from a quantitative study on the same topic?

Abrams, L. S., & Curran, L. (2009). “And you’re telling me not to stress?” A grounded theory study of postpartum depression symptoms among low-income mothers. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 33 , 351–362.

Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures . New York, NY: Basic Books.

Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research . Chicago, IL: Aldine.

Lindqvist, P., Johansson, L., & Karlsson, U. (2008). In the aftermath of teenage suicide: A qualitative study of the psychosocial consequences for the surviving family members. BMC Psychiatry, 8 , 26. Retrieved from http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-244X/8/26 .

Todd, Z., Nerlich, B., McKeown, S., & Clarke, D. D. (2004) Mixing methods in psychology: The integration of qualitative and quantitative methods in theory and practice . London, UK: Psychology Press.

Wilkins, A. (2008). “Happier than Non-Christians”: Collective emotions and symbolic boundaries among evangelical Christians. Social Psychology Quarterly, 71 , 281–301.

Research Methods in Psychology Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Qualitative Research: Characteristics, Design, Methods & Examples

Lauren McCall

MSc Health Psychology Graduate

MSc, Health Psychology, University of Nottingham

Lauren obtained an MSc in Health Psychology from The University of Nottingham with a distinction classification.

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Saul McLeod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Qualitative research is a type of research methodology that focuses on gathering and analyzing non-numerical data to gain a deeper understanding of human behavior, experiences, and perspectives.

It aims to explore the “why” and “how” of a phenomenon rather than the “what,” “where,” and “when” typically addressed by quantitative research.

Unlike quantitative research, which focuses on gathering and analyzing numerical data for statistical analysis, qualitative research involves researchers interpreting data to identify themes, patterns, and meanings.

Qualitative research can be used to:

• Gain deep contextual understandings of the subjective social reality of individuals
• To answer questions about experience and meaning from the participant’s perspective
• To design hypotheses, theory must be researched using qualitative methods to determine what is important before research can begin. 

Examples of qualitative research questions include: 

• How does stress influence young adults’ behavior?
• What factors influence students’ school attendance rates in developed countries?
• How do adults interpret binge drinking in the UK?
• What are the psychological impacts of cervical cancer screening in women?
• How can mental health lessons be integrated into the school curriculum? 

Characteristics 

Naturalistic setting.

Individuals are studied in their natural setting to gain a deeper understanding of how people experience the world. This enables the researcher to understand a phenomenon close to how participants experience it. 

Naturalistic settings provide valuable contextual information to help researchers better understand and interpret the data they collect.

The environment, social interactions, and cultural factors can all influence behavior and experiences, and these elements are more easily observed in real-world settings.

Reality is socially constructed

Qualitative research aims to understand how participants make meaning of their experiences – individually or in social contexts. It assumes there is no objective reality and that the social world is interpreted (Yilmaz, 2013). 

The primacy of subject matter 

The primary aim of qualitative research is to understand the perspectives, experiences, and beliefs of individuals who have experienced the phenomenon selected for research rather than the average experiences of groups of people (Minichiello, 1990).

An in-depth understanding is attained since qualitative techniques allow participants to freely disclose their experiences, thoughts, and feelings without constraint (Tenny et al., 2022). 

Variables are complex, interwoven, and difficult to measure

Factors such as experiences, behaviors, and attitudes are complex and interwoven, so they cannot be reduced to isolated variables , making them difficult to measure quantitatively.

However, a qualitative approach enables participants to describe what, why, or how they were thinking/ feeling during a phenomenon being studied (Yilmaz, 2013). 

Emic (insider’s point of view)

The phenomenon being studied is centered on the participants’ point of view (Minichiello, 1990).

Emic is used to describe how participants interact, communicate, and behave in the research setting (Scarduzio, 2017).

Interpretive analysis

In qualitative research, interpretive analysis is crucial in making sense of the collected data.

This process involves examining the raw data, such as interview transcripts, field notes, or documents, and identifying the underlying themes, patterns, and meanings that emerge from the participants’ experiences and perspectives.

Collecting Qualitative Data

There are four main research design methods used to collect qualitative data: observations, interviews,  focus groups, and ethnography.

Observations

This method involves watching and recording phenomena as they occur in nature. Observation can be divided into two types: participant and non-participant observation.

In participant observation, the researcher actively participates in the situation/events being observed.

In non-participant observation, the researcher is not an active part of the observation and tries not to influence the behaviors they are observing (Busetto et al., 2020). 

Observations can be covert (participants are unaware that a researcher is observing them) or overt (participants are aware of the researcher’s presence and know they are being observed).

However, awareness of an observer’s presence may influence participants’ behavior. 

Interviews give researchers a window into the world of a participant by seeking their account of an event, situation, or phenomenon. They are usually conducted on a one-to-one basis and can be distinguished according to the level at which they are structured (Punch, 2013). 

Structured interviews involve predetermined questions and sequences to ensure replicability and comparability. However, they are unable to explore emerging issues.

Informal interviews consist of spontaneous, casual conversations which are closer to the truth of a phenomenon. However, information is gathered using quick notes made by the researcher and is therefore subject to recall bias. 

Semi-structured interviews have a flexible structure, phrasing, and placement so emerging issues can be explored (Denny & Weckesser, 2022).

The use of probing questions and clarification can lead to a detailed understanding, but semi-structured interviews can be time-consuming and subject to interviewer bias. 

Focus groups 

Similar to interviews, focus groups elicit a rich and detailed account of an experience. However, focus groups are more dynamic since participants with shared characteristics construct this account together (Denny & Weckesser, 2022).

A shared narrative is built between participants to capture a group experience shaped by a shared context. 

The researcher takes on the role of a moderator, who will establish ground rules and guide the discussion by following a topic guide to focus the group discussions.

Typically, focus groups have 4-10 participants as a discussion can be difficult to facilitate with more than this, and this number allows everyone the time to speak.

Ethnography

Ethnography is a methodology used to study a group of people’s behaviors and social interactions in their environment (Reeves et al., 2008).

Data are collected using methods such as observations, field notes, or structured/ unstructured interviews.

The aim of ethnography is to provide detailed, holistic insights into people’s behavior and perspectives within their natural setting. In order to achieve this, researchers immerse themselves in a community or organization. 

Due to the flexibility and real-world focus of ethnography, researchers are able to gather an in-depth, nuanced understanding of people’s experiences, knowledge and perspectives that are influenced by culture and society.

In order to develop a representative picture of a particular culture/ context, researchers must conduct extensive field work. 

This can be time-consuming as researchers may need to immerse themselves into a community/ culture for a few days, or possibly a few years.

Qualitative Data Analysis Methods

Different methods can be used for analyzing qualitative data. The researcher chooses based on the objectives of their study. 

The researcher plays a key role in the interpretation of data, making decisions about the coding, theming, decontextualizing, and recontextualizing of data (Starks & Trinidad, 2007). 

Grounded theory

Grounded theory is a qualitative method specifically designed to inductively generate theory from data. It was developed by Glaser and Strauss in 1967 (Glaser & Strauss, 2017).

This methodology aims to develop theories (rather than test hypotheses) that explain a social process, action, or interaction (Petty et al., 2012). To inform the developing theory, data collection and analysis run simultaneously. 

There are three key types of coding used in grounded theory: initial (open), intermediate (axial), and advanced (selective) coding. 

Throughout the analysis, memos should be created to document methodological and theoretical ideas about the data. Data should be collected and analyzed until data saturation is reached and a theory is developed. 

Content analysis

Content analysis was first used in the early twentieth century to analyze textual materials such as newspapers and political speeches.

Content analysis is a research method used to identify and analyze the presence and patterns of themes, concepts, or words in data (Vaismoradi et al., 2013). 

This research method can be used to analyze data in different formats, which can be written, oral, or visual. 

The goal of content analysis is to develop themes that capture the underlying meanings of data (Schreier, 2012). 

Qualitative content analysis can be used to validate existing theories, support the development of new models and theories, and provide in-depth descriptions of particular settings or experiences.

The following six steps provide a guideline for how to conduct qualitative content analysis.

• Define a Research Question : To start content analysis, a clear research question should be developed.
• Identify and Collect Data : Establish the inclusion criteria for your data. Find the relevant sources to analyze.
• Define the Unit or Theme of Analysis : Categorize the content into themes. Themes can be a word, phrase, or sentence.
• Develop Rules for Coding your Data : Define a set of coding rules to ensure that all data are coded consistently.
• Code the Data : Follow the coding rules to categorize data into themes.
• Analyze the Results and Draw Conclusions : Examine the data to identify patterns and draw conclusions in relation to your research question.

Discourse analysis

Discourse analysis is a research method used to study written/ spoken language in relation to its social context (Wood & Kroger, 2000).

In discourse analysis, the researcher interprets details of language materials and the context in which it is situated.

Discourse analysis aims to understand the functions of language (how language is used in real life) and how meaning is conveyed by language in different contexts. Researchers use discourse analysis to investigate social groups and how language is used to achieve specific communication goals.

Different methods of discourse analysis can be used depending on the aims and objectives of a study. However, the following steps provide a guideline on how to conduct discourse analysis.

• Define the Research Question : Develop a relevant research question to frame the analysis.
• Gather Data and Establish the Context : Collect research materials (e.g., interview transcripts, documents). Gather factual details and review the literature to construct a theory about the social and historical context of your study.
• Analyze the Content : Closely examine various components of the text, such as the vocabulary, sentences, paragraphs, and structure of the text. Identify patterns relevant to the research question to create codes, then group these into themes.
• Review the Results : Reflect on the findings to examine the function of the language, and the meaning and context of the discourse. 

Thematic analysis

Thematic analysis is a method used to identify, interpret, and report patterns in data, such as commonalities or contrasts. 

Although the origin of thematic analysis can be traced back to the early twentieth century, understanding and clarity of thematic analysis is attributed to Braun and Clarke (2006).

Thematic analysis aims to develop themes (patterns of meaning) across a dataset to address a research question. 

In thematic analysis, qualitative data is gathered using techniques such as interviews, focus groups, and questionnaires. Audio recordings are transcribed. The dataset is then explored and interpreted by a researcher to identify patterns. 

This occurs through the rigorous process of data familiarisation, coding, theme development, and revision. These identified patterns provide a summary of the dataset and can be used to address a research question.

Themes are developed by exploring the implicit and explicit meanings within the data. Two different approaches are used to generate themes: inductive and deductive. 

An inductive approach allows themes to emerge from the data. In contrast, a deductive approach uses existing theories or knowledge to apply preconceived ideas to the data.

Phases of Thematic Analysis

Braun and Clarke (2006) provide a guide of the six phases of thematic analysis. These phases can be applied flexibly to fit research questions and data. 

Template analysis

Template analysis refers to a specific method of thematic analysis which uses hierarchical coding (Brooks et al., 2014).

Template analysis is used to analyze textual data, for example, interview transcripts or open-ended responses on a written questionnaire.

To conduct template analysis, a coding template must be developed (usually from a subset of the data) and subsequently revised and refined. This template represents the themes identified by researchers as important in the dataset. 

Codes are ordered hierarchically within the template, with the highest-level codes demonstrating overarching themes in the data and lower-level codes representing constituent themes with a narrower focus.

A guideline for the main procedural steps for conducting template analysis is outlined below.

• Familiarization with the Data : Read (and reread) the dataset in full. Engage, reflect, and take notes on data that may be relevant to the research question.
• Preliminary Coding : Identify initial codes using guidance from the a priori codes, identified before the analysis as likely to be beneficial and relevant to the analysis.
• Organize Themes : Organize themes into meaningful clusters. Consider the relationships between the themes both within and between clusters.
• Produce an Initial Template : Develop an initial template. This may be based on a subset of the data.
• Apply and Develop the Template : Apply the initial template to further data and make any necessary modifications. Refinements of the template may include adding themes, removing themes, or changing the scope/title of themes. 
• Finalize Template : Finalize the template, then apply it to the entire dataset. 

Frame analysis

Frame analysis is a comparative form of thematic analysis which systematically analyzes data using a matrix output.

Ritchie and Spencer (1994) developed this set of techniques to analyze qualitative data in applied policy research. Frame analysis aims to generate theory from data.

Frame analysis encourages researchers to organize and manage their data using summarization.

This results in a flexible and unique matrix output, in which individual participants (or cases) are represented by rows and themes are represented by columns. 

Each intersecting cell is used to summarize findings relating to the corresponding participant and theme.

Frame analysis has five distinct phases which are interrelated, forming a methodical and rigorous framework.

• Familiarization with the Data : Familiarize yourself with all the transcripts. Immerse yourself in the details of each transcript and start to note recurring themes.
• Develop a Theoretical Framework : Identify recurrent/ important themes and add them to a chart. Provide a framework/ structure for the analysis.
• Indexing : Apply the framework systematically to the entire study data.
• Summarize Data in Analytical Framework : Reduce the data into brief summaries of participants’ accounts.
• Mapping and Interpretation : Compare themes and subthemes and check against the original transcripts. Group the data into categories and provide an explanation for them.

Preventing Bias in Qualitative Research

To evaluate qualitative studies, the CASP (Critical Appraisal Skills Programme) checklist for qualitative studies can be used to ensure all aspects of a study have been considered (CASP, 2018).

The quality of research can be enhanced and assessed using criteria such as checklists, reflexivity, co-coding, and member-checking. 

Co-coding 

Relying on only one researcher to interpret rich and complex data may risk key insights and alternative viewpoints being missed. Therefore, coding is often performed by multiple researchers.

A common strategy must be defined at the beginning of the coding process  (Busetto et al., 2020). This includes establishing a useful coding list and finding a common definition of individual codes.

Transcripts are initially coded independently by researchers and then compared and consolidated to minimize error or bias and to bring confirmation of findings. 

Member checking

Member checking (or respondent validation) involves checking back with participants to see if the research resonates with their experiences (Russell & Gregory, 2003).

Data can be returned to participants after data collection or when results are first available. For example, participants may be provided with their interview transcript and asked to verify whether this is a complete and accurate representation of their views.

Participants may then clarify or elaborate on their responses to ensure they align with their views (Shenton, 2004).

This feedback becomes part of data collection and ensures accurate descriptions/ interpretations of phenomena (Mays & Pope, 2000). 

Reflexivity in qualitative research

Reflexivity typically involves examining your own judgments, practices, and belief systems during data collection and analysis. It aims to identify any personal beliefs which may affect the research. 

Reflexivity is essential in qualitative research to ensure methodological transparency and complete reporting. This enables readers to understand how the interaction between the researcher and participant shapes the data.

Depending on the research question and population being researched, factors that need to be considered include the experience of the researcher, how the contact was established and maintained, age, gender, and ethnicity.

These details are important because, in qualitative research, the researcher is a dynamic part of the research process and actively influences the outcome of the research (Boeije, 2014). 

Reflexivity Example

Who you are and your characteristics influence how you collect and analyze data. Here is an example of a reflexivity statement for research on smoking. I am a 30-year-old white female from a middle-class background. I live in the southwest of England and have been educated to master’s level. I have been involved in two research projects on oral health. I have never smoked, but I have witnessed how smoking can cause ill health from my volunteering in a smoking cessation clinic. My research aspirations are to help to develop interventions to help smokers quit.

Establishing Trustworthiness in Qualitative Research

Trustworthiness is a concept used to assess the quality and rigor of qualitative research. Four criteria are used to assess a study’s trustworthiness: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability.

1. Credibility in Qualitative Research

Credibility refers to how accurately the results represent the reality and viewpoints of the participants.

To establish credibility in research, participants’ views and the researcher’s representation of their views need to align (Tobin & Begley, 2004).

To increase the credibility of findings, researchers may use data source triangulation, investigator triangulation, peer debriefing, or member checking (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). 

2. Transferability in Qualitative Research

Transferability refers to how generalizable the findings are: whether the findings may be applied to another context, setting, or group (Tobin & Begley, 2004).

Transferability can be enhanced by giving thorough and in-depth descriptions of the research setting, sample, and methods (Nowell et al., 2017). 

3. Dependability in Qualitative Research

Dependability is the extent to which the study could be replicated under similar conditions and the findings would be consistent.

Researchers can establish dependability using methods such as audit trails so readers can see the research process is logical and traceable (Koch, 1994).

4. Confirmability in Qualitative Research

Confirmability is concerned with establishing that there is a clear link between the researcher’s interpretations/ findings and the data.

Researchers can achieve confirmability by demonstrating how conclusions and interpretations were arrived at (Nowell et al., 2017).

This enables readers to understand the reasoning behind the decisions made. 

Audit Trails in Qualitative Research

An audit trail provides evidence of the decisions made by the researcher regarding theory, research design, and data collection, as well as the steps they have chosen to manage, analyze, and report data. 

The researcher must provide a clear rationale to demonstrate how conclusions were reached in their study.

A clear description of the research path must be provided to enable readers to trace through the researcher’s logic (Halpren, 1983).

Researchers should maintain records of the raw data, field notes, transcripts, and a reflective journal in order to provide a clear audit trail. 

Discovery of unexpected data

Open-ended questions in qualitative research mean the researcher can probe an interview topic and enable the participant to elaborate on responses in an unrestricted manner.

This allows unexpected data to emerge, which can lead to further research into that topic. 

The exploratory nature of qualitative research helps generate hypotheses that can be tested quantitatively (Busetto et al., 2020).

Flexibility

Data collection and analysis can be modified and adapted to take the research in a different direction if new ideas or patterns emerge in the data.

This enables researchers to investigate new opportunities while firmly maintaining their research goals. 

Naturalistic settings

The behaviors of participants are recorded in real-world settings. Studies that use real-world settings have high ecological validity since participants behave more authentically. 

Limitations

Time-consuming .

Qualitative research results in large amounts of data which often need to be transcribed and analyzed manually.

Even when software is used, transcription can be inaccurate, and using software for analysis can result in many codes which need to be condensed into themes. 

Subjectivity 

The researcher has an integral role in collecting and interpreting qualitative data. Therefore, the conclusions reached are from their perspective and experience.

Consequently, interpretations of data from another researcher may vary greatly. 

Limited generalizability

The aim of qualitative research is to provide a detailed, contextualized understanding of an aspect of the human experience from a relatively small sample size.

Despite rigorous analysis procedures, conclusions drawn cannot be generalized to the wider population since data may be biased or unrepresentative.

Therefore, results are only applicable to a small group of the population. 

While individual qualitative studies are often limited in their generalizability due to factors such as sample size and context, metasynthesis enables researchers to synthesize findings from multiple studies, potentially leading to more generalizable conclusions.

By integrating findings from studies conducted in diverse settings and with different populations, metasynthesis can provide broader insights into the phenomenon of interest.

Extraneous variables

Qualitative research is often conducted in real-world settings. This may cause results to be unreliable since extraneous variables may affect the data, for example:

• Situational variables : different environmental conditions may influence participants’ behavior in a study. The random variation in factors (such as noise or lighting) may be difficult to control in real-world settings.
• Participant characteristics : this includes any characteristics that may influence how a participant answers/ behaves in a study. This may include a participant’s mood, gender, age, ethnicity, sexual identity, IQ, etc.
• Experimenter effect : experimenter effect refers to how a researcher’s unintentional influence can change the outcome of a study. This occurs when (i) their interactions with participants unintentionally change participants’ behaviors or (ii) due to errors in observation, interpretation, or analysis. 

What sample size should qualitative research be?

The sample size for qualitative studies has been recommended to include a minimum of 12 participants to reach data saturation (Braun, 2013).

Are surveys qualitative or quantitative?

Surveys can be used to gather information from a sample qualitatively or quantitatively. Qualitative surveys use open-ended questions to gather detailed information from a large sample using free text responses.

The use of open-ended questions allows for unrestricted responses where participants use their own words, enabling the collection of more in-depth information than closed-ended questions.

In contrast, quantitative surveys consist of closed-ended questions with multiple-choice answer options. Quantitative surveys are ideal to gather a statistical representation of a population.

What are the ethical considerations of qualitative research?

Before conducting a study, you must think about any risks that could occur and take steps to prevent them. Participant Protection : Researchers must protect participants from physical and mental harm. This means you must not embarrass, frighten, offend, or harm participants. Transparency : Researchers are obligated to clearly communicate how they will collect, store, analyze, use, and share the data. Confidentiality : You need to consider how to maintain the confidentiality and anonymity of participants’ data.

What is triangulation in qualitative research?

Triangulation refers to the use of several approaches in a study to comprehensively understand phenomena. This method helps to increase the validity and credibility of research findings. 

Types of triangulation include method triangulation (using multiple methods to gather data); investigator triangulation (multiple researchers for collecting/ analyzing data), theory triangulation (comparing several theoretical perspectives to explain a phenomenon), and data source triangulation (using data from various times, locations, and people; Carter et al., 2014).

Why is qualitative research important?

Qualitative research allows researchers to describe and explain the social world. The exploratory nature of qualitative research helps to generate hypotheses that can then be tested quantitatively.

In qualitative research, participants are able to express their thoughts, experiences, and feelings without constraint.

Additionally, researchers are able to follow up on participants’ answers in real-time, generating valuable discussion around a topic. This enables researchers to gain a nuanced understanding of phenomena which is difficult to attain using quantitative methods.

What is coding data in qualitative research?

Coding data is a qualitative data analysis strategy in which a section of text is assigned with a label that describes its content.

These labels may be words or phrases which represent important (and recurring) patterns in the data.

This process enables researchers to identify related content across the dataset. Codes can then be used to group similar types of data to generate themes.

What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?

Qualitative research involves the collection and analysis of non-numerical data in order to understand experiences and meanings from the participant’s perspective.

This can provide rich, in-depth insights on complicated phenomena. Qualitative data may be collected using interviews, focus groups, or observations.

In contrast, quantitative research involves the collection and analysis of numerical data to measure the frequency, magnitude, or relationships of variables. This can provide objective and reliable evidence that can be generalized to the wider population.

Quantitative data may be collected using closed-ended questionnaires or experiments.

What is trustworthiness in qualitative research?

Trustworthiness is a concept used to assess the quality and rigor of qualitative research. Four criteria are used to assess a study’s trustworthiness: credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. 

Credibility refers to how accurately the results represent the reality and viewpoints of the participants. Transferability refers to whether the findings may be applied to another context, setting, or group.

Dependability is the extent to which the findings are consistent and reliable. Confirmability refers to the objectivity of findings (not influenced by the bias or assumptions of researchers).

What is data saturation in qualitative research?

Data saturation is a methodological principle used to guide the sample size of a qualitative research study.

Data saturation is proposed as a necessary methodological component in qualitative research (Saunders et al., 2018) as it is a vital criterion for discontinuing data collection and/or analysis. 

The intention of data saturation is to find “no new data, no new themes, no new coding, and ability to replicate the study” (Guest et al., 2006). Therefore, enough data has been gathered to make conclusions.

Why is sampling in qualitative research important?

In quantitative research, large sample sizes are used to provide statistically significant quantitative estimates.

This is because quantitative research aims to provide generalizable conclusions that represent populations.

However, the aim of sampling in qualitative research is to gather data that will help the researcher understand the depth, complexity, variation, or context of a phenomenon. The small sample sizes in qualitative studies support the depth of case-oriented analysis.

What is narrative analysis?

Narrative analysis is a qualitative research method used to understand how individuals create stories from their personal experiences.

There is an emphasis on understanding the context in which a narrative is constructed, recognizing the influence of historical, cultural, and social factors on storytelling.

Researchers can use different methods together to explore a research question.

Some narrative researchers focus on the content of what is said, using thematic narrative analysis, while others focus on the structure, such as holistic-form or categorical-form structural narrative analysis. Others focus on how the narrative is produced and performed.

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Critical Appraisal Skills Programme. (2018). CASP Checklist: 10 questions to help you make sense of a Qualitative research. https://casp-uk.net/images/checklist/documents/CASP-Qualitative-Studies-Checklist/CASP-Qualitative-Checklist-2018_fillable_form.pdf Accessed: March 15 2023

Clarke, V., & Braun, V. (2013). Successful qualitative research: A practical guide for beginners. Successful Qualitative Research , 1-400.

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The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology

• Carla Willig - City University, London, UK
• Wendy Stainton Rogers - The Open University, UK
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The second edition of the SAGE  Handbook of Qualitative Research is an extraordinary compendium of the central current issues in qualitative research in psychology. Capturing the diversity and plurality of qualitative methods of investigation, this updated handbook also considers matters such as ethics and reflexivity shared across methods. Newly revised to include recent work in the burgeoning field of qualitative inquiry, it will be an essential companion for both new and experienced qualitative researchers.  Qualitative researchers in psychology owe a debt of gratitude to these editors for pulling this together. 

This is a very welcome and timely second edition of the highly-regarded SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology . In the nine years since it was first published in 2008, qualitative research in psychology has flourished into a rich, diverse and vibrant field.  As the Editors of this Handbook note, there is a sense of sophistication that has evolved throughout these recent developments. There is also an increased confidence that can be seen across this updated Handbook, from the editors’ valuable framing of the field at the start through to the revised chapters and the inclusion of three new chapters. Notable additions to the Handbook include a chapter devoted to interpretation issues in qualitative research, new approaches to thematic analysis, developments and progress around metasynthesis, netnography and the implications of rapidly developing information and communication technologies for qualitative research. 

This Handbook will be highly valuable for a range of audiences, including for students in psychology and other social science disciplines, but also for academics, practitioners and activists (and indeed essential reading for many). It provides a comprehensive overview of the current state-of-play in qualitative research in psychology, covers a range of diverse methodologies, outlines key approaches and perspectives, and describes applications to specific subfields of psychology.  It doesn’t shy away from the many big questions, tensions, complexities and debates that are involved in qualitative research, including the range of positions and approaches that exist regarding epistemology, ethics and politics, and the varying priorities that different people bring to research. Rather it engages with these issues directly and in an accessible and welcoming manner, ensuring this Handbook will function as the clear and reliable guide for both novices and experienced researchers.  In this sense it is highly successful in meeting its purpose to “help its readers to gain a sense of the territory and to enable them to make well-informed methodological theoretical and ideological choices” (Stainton Rogers & Willig, p4).

The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology is comprehensive and bold, celebrating the wide range of methods, approaches, perspectives and applications among qualitative research in psychology.  Written by leading psychologists, this handbook covers what are now well established qualitative methods while considering methodological changes required by contemporary developments, such as social media and the routine recording of people at work, blurring the distinctions between public and private and research and everyday practice.

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Chapter 7: Nonexperimental Research

Qualitative Research

Learning Objectives

• List several ways in which qualitative research differs from quantitative research in psychology.
• Describe the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative research in psychology compared with quantitative research.
• Give examples of qualitative research in psychology.

What Is Qualitative Research?

This textbook is primarily about  quantitative research . Quantitative researchers typically start with a focused research question or hypothesis, collect a small amount of data from each of a large number of individuals, describe the resulting data using statistical techniques, and draw general conclusions about some large population. Although this method is by far the most common approach to conducting empirical research in psychology, there is an important alternative called qualitative research. Qualitative research originated in the disciplines of anthropology and sociology but is now used to study many psychological topics as well. Qualitative researchers generally begin with a less focused research question, collect large amounts of relatively “unfiltered” data from a relatively small number of individuals, and describe their data using nonstatistical techniques. They are usually less concerned with drawing general conclusions about human behaviour than with understanding in detail the  experience  of their research participants.

Consider, for example, a study by researcher Per Lindqvist and his colleagues, who wanted to learn how the families of teenage suicide victims cope with their loss (Lindqvist, Johansson, & Karlsson, 2008) [1] . They did not have a specific research question or hypothesis, such as, What percentage of family members join suicide support groups? Instead, they wanted to understand the variety of reactions that families had, with a focus on what it is like from  their  perspectives. To address this question, they interviewed the families of 10 teenage suicide victims in their homes in rural Sweden. The interviews were relatively unstructured, beginning with a general request for the families to talk about the victim and ending with an invitation to talk about anything else that they wanted to tell the interviewer. One of the most important themes that emerged from these interviews was that even as life returned to “normal,” the families continued to struggle with the question of why their loved one committed suicide. This struggle appeared to be especially difficult for families in which the suicide was most unexpected.

The Purpose of Qualitative Research

Again, this textbook is primarily about quantitative research in psychology. The strength of quantitative research is its ability to provide precise answers to specific research questions and to draw general conclusions about human behaviour. This method is how we know that people have a strong tendency to obey authority figures, for example, or that female undergraduate students are not substantially more talkative than male undergraduate students. But while quantitative research is good at providing precise answers to specific research questions, it is not nearly as good at  generating  novel and interesting research questions. Likewise, while quantitative research is good at drawing general conclusions about human behaviour, it is not nearly as good at providing detailed descriptions of the behaviour of particular groups in particular situations. And it is not very good at all at communicating what it is actually like to be a member of a particular group in a particular situation.

But the relative weaknesses of quantitative research are the relative strengths of qualitative research. Qualitative research can help researchers to generate new and interesting research questions and hypotheses. The research of Lindqvist and colleagues, for example, suggests that there may be a general relationship between how unexpected a suicide is and how consumed the family is with trying to understand why the teen committed suicide. This relationship can now be explored using quantitative research. But it is unclear whether this question would have arisen at all without the researchers sitting down with the families and listening to what they themselves wanted to say about their experience. Qualitative research can also provide rich and detailed descriptions of human behaviour in the real-world contexts in which it occurs. Among qualitative researchers, this depth is often referred to as “thick description” (Geertz, 1973) [2] . Similarly, qualitative research can convey a sense of what it is actually like to be a member of a particular group or in a particular situation—what qualitative researchers often refer to as the “lived experience” of the research participants. Lindqvist and colleagues, for example, describe how all the families spontaneously offered to show the interviewer the victim’s bedroom or the place where the suicide occurred—revealing the importance of these physical locations to the families. It seems unlikely that a quantitative study would have discovered this detail.

Data Collection and Analysis in Qualitative Research

As with correlational research, data collection approaches in qualitative research are quite varied and can involve naturalistic observation, archival data, artwork, and many other things. But one of the most common approaches, especially for psychological research, is to conduct  interviews . Interviews in qualitative research can be unstructured—consisting of a small number of general questions or prompts that allow participants to talk about what is of interest to them–or structured, where there is a strict script that the interviewer does not deviate from. Most interviews are in between the two and are called semi-structured interviews, where the researcher has a few consistent questions and can follow up by asking more detailed questions about the topics that do come up. Such interviews can be lengthy and detailed, but they are usually conducted with a relatively small sample. The unstructured interview was the approach used by Lindqvist and colleagues in their research on the families of suicide survivors because the researchers were aware that how much was disclosed about such a sensitive topic should be led by the families not by the researchers. Small groups of people who participate together in interviews focused on a particular topic or issue are often referred to as  focus groups . The interaction among participants in a focus group can sometimes bring out more information than can be learned in a one-on-one interview. The use of focus groups has become a standard technique in business and industry among those who want to understand consumer tastes and preferences. The content of all focus group interviews is usually recorded and transcribed to facilitate later analyses. However, we know from social psychology that group dynamics are often at play in any group, including focus groups, and it is useful to be aware of those possibilities.

Another approach to data collection in qualitative research is participant observation. In  participant observation , researchers become active participants in the group or situation they are studying. The data they collect can include interviews (usually unstructured), their own notes based on their observations and interactions, documents, photographs, and other artifacts. The basic rationale for participant observation is that there may be important information that is only accessible to, or can be interpreted only by, someone who is an active participant in the group or situation. An example of participant observation comes from a study by sociologist Amy Wilkins (published in  Social Psychology Quarterly ) on a university-based religious organization that emphasized how happy its members were (Wilkins, 2008) [3] . Wilkins spent 12 months attending and participating in the group’s meetings and social events, and she interviewed several group members. In her study, Wilkins identified several ways in which the group “enforced” happiness—for example, by continually talking about happiness, discouraging the expression of negative emotions, and using happiness as a way to distinguish themselves from other groups.

Data Analysis in Quantitative Research

Although quantitative and qualitative research generally differ along several important dimensions (e.g., the specificity of the research question, the type of data collected), it is the method of data  analysis  that distinguishes them more clearly than anything else. To illustrate this idea, imagine a team of researchers that conducts a series of unstructured interviews with recovering alcoholics to learn about the role of their religious faith in their recovery. Although this project sounds like qualitative research, imagine further that once they collect the data, they code the data in terms of how often each participant mentions God (or a “higher power”), and they then use descriptive and inferential statistics to find out whether those who mention God more often are more successful in abstaining from alcohol. Now it sounds like quantitative research. In other words, the quantitative-qualitative distinction depends more on what researchers  do  with the data they have collected than with why or how they collected the data.

But what does qualitative data analysis look like? Just as there are many ways to collect data in qualitative research, there are many ways to analyze data. Here we focus on one general approach called  grounded theory  (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) [4] . This approach was developed within the field of sociology in the 1960s and has gradually gained popularity in psychology. Remember that in quantitative research, it is typical for the researcher to start with a theory, derive a hypothesis from that theory, and then collect data to test that specific hypothesis. In qualitative research using grounded theory, researchers start with the data and develop a theory or an interpretation that is “grounded in” those data. They do this analysis in stages. First, they identify ideas that are repeated throughout the data. Then they organize these ideas into a smaller number of broader themes. Finally, they write a  theoretical narrative —an interpretation—of the data in terms of the themes that they have identified. This theoretical narrative focuses on the subjective experience of the participants and is usually supported by many direct quotations from the participants themselves.

As an example, consider a study by researchers Laura Abrams and Laura Curran, who used the grounded theory approach to study the experience of postpartum depression symptoms among low-income mothers (Abrams & Curran, 2009) [5] . Their data were the result of unstructured interviews with 19 participants.  Table 7.1  shows the five broad themes the researchers identified and the more specific repeating ideas that made up each of those themes. In their research report, they provide numerous quotations from their participants, such as this one from “Destiny:”

Well, just recently my apartment was broken into and the fact that his Medicaid for some reason was cancelled so a lot of things was happening within the last two weeks all at one time. So that in itself I don’t want to say almost drove me mad but it put me in a funk.…Like I really was depressed. (p. 357)

Their theoretical narrative focused on the participants’ experience of their symptoms not as an abstract “affective disorder” but as closely tied to the daily struggle of raising children alone under often difficult circumstances.

The Quantitative-Qualitative “Debate”

Given their differences, it may come as no surprise that quantitative and qualitative research in psychology and related fields do not coexist in complete harmony. Some quantitative researchers criticize qualitative methods on the grounds that they lack objectivity, are difficult to evaluate in terms of reliability and validity, and do not allow generalization to people or situations other than those actually studied. At the same time, some qualitative researchers criticize quantitative methods on the grounds that they overlook the richness of human behaviour and experience and instead answer simple questions about easily quantifiable variables.

In general, however, qualitative researchers are well aware of the issues of objectivity, reliability, validity, and generalizability. In fact, they have developed a number of frameworks for addressing these issues (which are beyond the scope of our discussion). And in general, quantitative researchers are well aware of the issue of oversimplification. They do not believe that all human behaviour and experience can be adequately described in terms of a small number of variables and the statistical relationships among them. Instead, they use simplification as a strategy for uncovering general principles of human behaviour.

Many researchers from both the quantitative and qualitative camps now agree that the two approaches can and should be combined into what has come to be called  mixed-methods research  (Todd, Nerlich, McKeown, & Clarke, 2004) [6] . (In fact, the studies by Lindqvist and colleagues and by Abrams and Curran both combined quantitative and qualitative approaches.) One approach to combining quantitative and qualitative research is to use qualitative research for hypothesis generation and quantitative research for hypothesis testing. Again, while a qualitative study might suggest that families who experience an unexpected suicide have more difficulty resolving the question of why, a well-designed quantitative study could test a hypothesis by measuring these specific variables for a large sample. A second approach to combining quantitative and qualitative research is referred to as  triangulation . The idea is to use both quantitative and qualitative methods simultaneously to study the same general questions and to compare the results. If the results of the quantitative and qualitative methods converge on the same general conclusion, they reinforce and enrich each other. If the results diverge, then they suggest an interesting new question: Why do the results diverge and how can they be reconciled?

Using qualitative research can often help clarify quantitative results in triangulation. Trenor, Yu, Waight, Zerda, and Sha (2008) [7] investigated the experience of female engineering students at university. In the first phase, female engineering students were asked to complete a survey, where they rated a number of their perceptions, including their sense of belonging.  Their results were compared by the student ethnicities, and statistically, the various ethnic groups showed no differences in their ratings of sense of belonging.  One might look at that result and conclude that ethnicity does not have anything to do with sense of belonging.  However, in the second phase, the authors also conducted interviews with the students, and in those interviews, many minority students reported how the diversity of cultures at the university enhanced their sense of belonging. Without the qualitative component, we might have drawn the wrong conclusion about the quantitative results.

This example shows how qualitative and quantitative research work together to help us understand human behaviour. Some researchers have characterized quantitative research as best for identifying behaviours or the phenomenon whereas qualitative research is best for understanding meaning or identifying the mechanism. However, Bryman (2012) [8] argues for breaking down the divide between these arbitrarily different ways of investigating the same questions.

Key Takeaways

• Qualitative research is an important alternative to quantitative research in psychology. It generally involves asking broader research questions, collecting more detailed data (e.g., interviews), and using nonstatistical analyses.
• Many researchers conceptualize quantitative and qualitative research as complementary and advocate combining them. For example, qualitative research can be used to generate hypotheses and quantitative research to test them.
• Discussion: What are some ways in which a qualitative study of girls who play youth baseball would be likely to differ from a quantitative study on the same topic? What kind of different data would be generated by interviewing girls one-on-one rather than conducting focus groups?
• Lindqvist, P., Johansson, L., & Karlsson, U. (2008). In the aftermath of teenage suicide: A qualitative study of the psychosocial consequences for the surviving family members. BMC Psychiatry, 8 , 26. Retrieved from http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-244X/8/26 ↵
• Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures . New York, NY: Basic Books. ↵
• Wilkins, A. (2008). “Happier than Non-Christians”: Collective emotions and symbolic boundaries among evangelical Christians. Social Psychology Quarterly, 71 , 281–301. ↵
• Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research . Chicago, IL: Aldine. ↵
• Abrams, L. S., & Curran, L. (2009). “And you’re telling me not to stress?” A grounded theory study of postpartum depression symptoms among low-income mothers. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 33 , 351–362. ↵
• Todd, Z., Nerlich, B., McKeown, S., & Clarke, D. D. (2004) Mixing methods in psychology: The integration of qualitative and quantitative methods in theory and practice . London, UK: Psychology Press. ↵
• Trenor, J.M., Yu, S.L., Waight, C.L., Zerda. K.S & Sha T.-L. (2008). The relations of ethnicity to female engineering students’ educational experiences and college and career plans in an ethnically diverse learning environment. Journal of Engineering Education, 97 (4), 449-465. ↵
• Bryman, A. (2012). Social Research Methods , 4th ed. Oxford: OUP. ↵

Research in which data is gathered from a large number of individuals and described using a statistical technique.

A way to collect qualitative data consisting of both general questions and more detailed questions.

Small groups of people who participate together in interviews focused on a particular topic or issue.

Researchers become active participants in the group or situation they are studying.

Researchers start with the data and develop a theory or interpretation that is “grounded in” the data.

An interpretation of the data in terms of the themes identified through qualitative research.

The combination of quantitative and qualitative research.

Using both quantitative and qualitative methods simultaneously to study the same general questions and to compare the results.

Research Methods in Psychology - 2nd Canadian Edition Copyright © 2015 by Paul C. Price, Rajiv Jhangiani, & I-Chant A. Chiang is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Non-Experimental Research

31 Qualitative Research

Learning objectives.

• List several ways in which qualitative research differs from quantitative research in psychology.
• Describe the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative research in psychology compared with quantitative research.
• Give examples of qualitative research in psychology.

What Is Qualitative Research?

This textbook is primarily about  quantitative research ,  in part because most studies conducted in psychology are quantitative in nature . Quantitative researchers typically start with a focused research question or hypothesis, collect a small amount of numerical data from a large number of individuals, describe the resulting data using statistical techniques, and draw general conclusions about some large population. Although this method is by far the most common approach to conducting empirical research in psychology, there is an important alternative called qualitative research . Qualitative research originated in the disciplines of anthropology and sociology but is now used to study psychological topics as well. Qualitative researchers generally begin with a less focused research question, collect large amounts of relatively “unfiltered” data from a relatively small number of individuals, and describe their data using nonstatistical techniques, such as grounded theory, thematic analysis, critical discourse analysis, or interpretative phenomenological analysis. They are usually less concerned with drawing general conclusions about human behavior than with understanding in detail the experience  of their research participants.

Consider, for example, a study by researcher Per Lindqvist and his colleagues, who wanted to learn how the families of teenage suicide victims cope with their loss (Lindqvist, Johansson, & Karlsson, 2008) [1] . They did not have a specific research question or hypothesis, such as, What percentage of family members join suicide support groups? Instead, they wanted to understand the variety of reactions that families had, with a focus on what it is like from  their  perspectives. To address this question, they interviewed the families of 10 teenage suicide victims in their homes in rural Sweden. The interviews were relatively unstructured, beginning with a general request for the families to talk about the victim and ending with an invitation to talk about anything else that they wanted to tell the interviewer. One of the most important themes that emerged from these interviews was that even as life returned to “normal,” the families continued to struggle with the question of why their loved one committed suicide. This struggle appeared to be especially difficult for families in which the suicide was most unexpected.

The Purpose of Qualitative Research

Again, this textbook is primarily about quantitative research in psychology. The strength of quantitative research is its ability to provide precise answers to specific research questions and to draw general conclusions about human behavior. This method is how we know that people have a strong tendency to obey authority figures, for example, and that female undergraduate students are not substantially more talkative than male undergraduate students. But while quantitative research is good at providing precise answers to specific research questions, it is not nearly as good at  generating  novel and interesting research questions. Likewise, while quantitative research is good at drawing general conclusions about human behavior, it is not nearly as good at providing detailed descriptions of the behavior of particular groups in particular situations. And quantitative research is not very good at communicating what it is actually like to be a member of a particular group in a particular situation.

But the relative weaknesses of quantitative research are the relative strengths of qualitative research. Qualitative research can help researchers to generate new and interesting research questions and hypotheses. The research of Lindqvist and colleagues, for example, suggests that there may be a general relationship between how unexpected a suicide is and how consumed the family is with trying to understand why the teen committed suicide. This relationship can now be explored using quantitative research. But it is unclear whether this question would have arisen at all without the researchers sitting down with the families and listening to what they themselves wanted to say about their experience. Qualitative research can also provide rich and detailed descriptions of human behavior in the real-world contexts in which it occurs. Among qualitative researchers, this depth is often referred to as “thick description” (Geertz, 1973) [2] . Similarly, qualitative research can convey a sense of what it is actually like to be a member of a particular group or in a particular situation—what qualitative researchers often refer to as the “lived experience” of the research participants. Lindqvist and colleagues, for example, describe how all the families spontaneously offered to show the interviewer the victim’s bedroom or the place where the suicide occurred—revealing the importance of these physical locations to the families. It seems unlikely that a quantitative study would have discovered this detail.

Table 6.3 Some contrasts between qualitative and quantitative research

Data Collection and Analysis in Qualitative Research

Data collection approaches in qualitative research are quite varied and can involve naturalistic observation, participant observation, archival data, artwork, and many other things. But one of the most common approaches, especially for psychological research, is to conduct  interviews . Interviews in qualitative research can be unstructured—consisting of a small number of general questions or prompts that allow participants to talk about what is of interest to them—or structured, where there is a strict script that the interviewer does not deviate from. Most interviews are in between the two and are called semi-structured interviews, where the researcher has a few consistent questions and can follow up by asking more detailed questions about the topics that come up. Such interviews can be lengthy and detailed, but they are usually conducted with a relatively small sample. The unstructured interview was the approach used by Lindqvist and colleagues in their research on the families of suicide victims because the researchers were aware that how much was disclosed about such a sensitive topic should be led by the families, not by the researchers.

Another approach used in qualitative research involves small groups of people who participate together in interviews focused on a particular topic or issue, known as focus groups . The interaction among participants in a focus group can sometimes bring out more information than can be learned in a one-on-one interview. The use of focus groups has become a standard technique in business and industry among those who want to understand consumer tastes and preferences. The content of all focus group interviews is usually recorded and transcribed to facilitate later analyses. However, we know from social psychology that group dynamics are often at play in any group, including focus groups, and it is useful to be aware of those possibilities. For example, the desire to be liked by others can lead participants to provide inaccurate answers that they believe will be perceived favorably by the other participants. The same may be said for personality characteristics. For example, highly extraverted participants can sometimes dominate discussions within focus groups.

Data Analysis in Qualitative Research

Although quantitative and qualitative research generally differ along several important dimensions (e.g., the specificity of the research question, the type of data collected), it is the method of data  analysis  that distinguishes them more clearly than anything else. To illustrate this idea, imagine a team of researchers that conducts a series of unstructured interviews with people recovering from alcohol use disorder to learn about the role of their religious faith in their recovery. Although this project sounds like qualitative research, imagine further that once they collect the data, they code the data in terms of how often each participant mentions God (or a “higher power”), and they then use descriptive and inferential statistics to find out whether those who mention God more often are more successful in abstaining from alcohol. Now it sounds like quantitative research. In other words, the quantitative-qualitative distinction depends more on what researchers  do  with the data they have collected than with why or how they collected the data. 

But what does qualitative data analysis look like? Just as there are many ways to collect data in qualitative research, there are many ways to analyze data. Here we focus on one general approach called  grounded theory  (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) [3] . This approach was developed within the field of sociology in the 1960s and has gradually gained popularity in psychology. Remember that in quantitative research, it is typical for the researcher to start with a theory, derive a hypothesis from that theory, and then collect data to test that specific hypothesis. In qualitative research using grounded theory, researchers start with the data and develop a theory or an interpretation that is “grounded in” those data. They do this analysis in stages. First, they identify ideas that are repeated throughout the data. Then they organize these ideas into a smaller number of broader themes. Finally, they write a  theoretical narrative —an interpretation of the data in terms of the themes that they have identified. This theoretical narrative focuses on the subjective experience of the participants and is usually supported by many direct quotations from the participants themselves.

As an example, consider a study by researchers Laura Abrams and Laura Curran, who used the grounded theory approach to study the experience of postpartum depression symptoms among low-income mothers (Abrams & Curran, 2009) [4] . Their data were the result of unstructured interviews with 19 participants.  Table 6.4  shows the five broad themes the researchers identified and the more specific repeating ideas that made up each of those themes. In their research report, they provide numerous quotations from their participants, such as this one from “Destiny:”

Well, just recently my apartment was broken into and the fact that his Medicaid for some reason was cancelled so a lot of things was happening within the last two weeks all at one time. So that in itself I don’t want to say almost drove me mad but it put me in a funk.…Like I really was depressed. (p. 357)

Their theoretical narrative focused on the participants’ experience of their symptoms, not as an abstract “affective disorder” but as closely tied to the daily struggle of raising children alone under often difficult circumstances.

The Quantitative-Qualitative “Debate”

Given their differences, it may come as no surprise that quantitative and qualitative research in psychology and related fields do not coexist in complete harmony. Some quantitative researchers criticize qualitative methods on the grounds that they lack objectivity, are difficult to evaluate in terms of reliability and validity, and do not allow generalization to people or situations other than those actually studied. At the same time, some qualitative researchers criticize quantitative methods on the grounds that they overlook the richness of human behavior and experience and instead answer simple questions about easily quantifiable variables.

In general, however, qualitative researchers are well aware of the issues of objectivity, reliability, validity, and generalizability. In fact, they have developed a number of frameworks for addressing these issues (which are beyond the scope of our discussion). And in general, quantitative researchers are well aware of the issue of oversimplification. They do not believe that all human behavior and experience can be adequately described in terms of a small number of variables and the statistical relationships among them. Instead, they use simplification as a strategy for uncovering general principles of human behavior.

Many researchers from both the quantitative and qualitative camps now agree that the two approaches can and should be combined into what has come to be called  mixed-methods research  (Todd, Nerlich, McKeown, & Clarke, 2004) [5] . (In fact, the studies by Lindqvist and colleagues and by Abrams and Curran both combined quantitative and qualitative approaches.) One approach to combining quantitative and qualitative research is to use qualitative research for hypothesis generation and quantitative research for hypothesis testing. Again, while a qualitative study might suggest that families who experience an unexpected suicide have more difficulty resolving the question of why, a well-designed quantitative study could test a hypothesis by measuring these specific variables in a large sample. A second approach to combining quantitative and qualitative research is referred to as  triangulation . The idea is to use both quantitative and qualitative methods simultaneously to study the same general questions and to compare the results. If the results of the quantitative and qualitative methods converge on the same general conclusion, they reinforce and enrich each other. If the results diverge, then they suggest an interesting new question: Why do the results diverge and how can they be reconciled?

Using qualitative research can often help clarify quantitative results via triangulation. Trenor, Yu, Waight, Zerda, and Sha (2008) [6] investigated the experience of female engineering students at a university. In the first phase, female engineering students were asked to complete a survey, where they rated a number of their perceptions, including their sense of belonging.  Their results were compared across the student ethnicities, and statistically, the various ethnic groups showed no differences in their ratings of their sense of belonging.  One might look at that result and conclude that ethnicity does not have anything to do with one’s sense of belonging.  However, in the second phase, the authors also conducted interviews with the students, and in those interviews, many minority students reported how the diversity of cultures at the university enhanced their sense of belonging. Without the qualitative component, we might have drawn the wrong conclusion about the quantitative results.

This example shows how qualitative and quantitative research work together to help us understand human behavior. Some researchers have characterized qualitative research as best for identifying behaviors or the phenomenon whereas quantitative research is best for understanding meaning or identifying the mechanism. However, Bryman (2012) [7] argues for breaking down the divide between these arbitrarily different ways of investigating the same questions.

• Lindqvist, P., Johansson, L., & Karlsson, U. (2008). In the aftermath of teenage suicide: A qualitative study of the psychosocial consequences for the surviving family members. BMC Psychiatry, 8 , 26. Retrieved from http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-244X/8/26 ↵
• Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures . New York, NY: Basic Books. ↵
• Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research . Chicago, IL: Aldine. ↵
• Abrams, L. S., & Curran, L. (2009). “And you’re telling me not to stress?” A grounded theory study of postpartum depression symptoms among low-income mothers. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 33 , 351–362. ↵
• Todd, Z., Nerlich, B., McKeown, S., & Clarke, D. D. (2004) Mixing methods in psychology: The integration of qualitative and quantitative methods in theory and practice . London, UK: Psychology Press. ↵
• Trenor, J.M., Yu, S.L., Waight, C.L., Zerda. K.S & Sha T.-L. (2008). The relations of ethnicity to female engineering students’ educational experiences and college and career plans in an ethnically diverse learning environment. Journal of Engineering Education, 97 (4), 449-465. ↵
• Bryman, A. (2012). Social Research Methods , 4th ed. Oxford: OUP. ↵

Research that typically starts with a focused research question or hypothesis, collects a small amount of numerical data from a large number of individuals, describes the resulting data using statistical techniques, and draws general conclusions about some large population. 

Research that begins with a less focused research question, collects large amounts of relatively “unfiltered” data from a relatively small number of individuals, describes data using nonstatistical techniques, such as grounded theory, thematic analysis, critical discourse analysis, or interpretative phenomenological analysis and aims to understand in detail the experience of the research participants.

A qualitative research method to collect lengthy and detailed information from participants using structured, semi-structured, or unstructured sets of open-ended questions.

Used in qualitative research which involves small groups of people who participate together in interviews focused on a particular topic or issue.

Researchers start with the data and develop a theory or an interpretation that is “grounded in” those data.

A qualitative research method that involves an interpretation of the data in terms of the themes a researcher has identified.

Research that combines both quantitative and qualitative approaches.

The idea to use both quantitative and qualitative methods simultaneously to study the same general questions and to compare the results.

Research Methods in Psychology Copyright © 2019 by Rajiv S. Jhangiani, I-Chant A. Chiang, Carrie Cuttler, & Dana C. Leighton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Qualitative Research in Psychology

• What is Qualitative Research
• Ethnography
• Phenomenology
• Grounded Theory

Definitions

All definitions on this guide unless otherwise stated, are from the Oxford English Dictionary. 

• Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window Complete text of the 20-volume 2nd edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1989), plus its 3-volume Additions Series (1993, 1997).

What is Qualitative Research?

• Qualitative research studies phenomena in the natural contexts of individuals or groups
• Qualitative researchers try to gain a deeper understanding of people’s experiences, perceptions, behavior and processes and the meanings they attach to them
• During the research process, researchers use ‘emerging design’ to be flexible in adjusting to the context
• Data collection and analysis are iterative processes that happen simultaneously as the research progresses

Image: Rauschenberg, Robert, 1925-. Interview. 1955. Artstor, library.artstor.org/asset/ARTSTOR_103_41822001599040

Practical Guidance to Qualitative Research

Moser A, Korstjens I. Series: Practical guidance to qualitative research. Part 1: Introduction. Eur J Gen Pract. 2017 Dec;23(1):271-273. doi: 10.1080/13814788.2017.1375093. PMID: 29185831; PMCID: PMC8816396.

• Series: Practical guidance to qualitative research. Part 1: Introduction
• Series: Practical guidance to qualitative research. Part 2: Context, research questions and designs
• Series: Practical guidance to qualitative research. Part 3: Sampling, data collection and analysis
• Series: Practical guidance to qualitative research. Part 4: Trustworthiness and publishing
• Series: Practical guidance to qualitative research. Part 5: Co-creative qualitative approaches for emerging themes in primary care research: Experience-based co-design, user-centred design and community-based participatory research
• Series: Practical guidance to qualitative research. Part 6: Longitudinal qualitative and mixed-methods approaches for longitudinal and complex health themes in primary care research

Handbooks on Qualitative Research

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Pathways to qualitative research education in psychology

• Teaching Psychology as a Subject
• Testing, Assessment, and Measurement

Qualitative inquiry has been a part of psychology since its inception as an academic discipline (Wertz, 2014). Qualitative inquiry began to solidify as a form of scientific investigation between the 1960s and 1980s, and subsequently began diversifying, spreading, and integrating in the field in the 1990s and early 2000s (Wertz, 2014). In recent years, the ascension of qualitative research in psychology has continued, has received growing acceptance, has increased in use, and has garnered more institutional support. This rise yields both opportunities and challenges. Although emerging qualitative researchers will enter a field with more resources, guidance, and avenues for publication, they will face limited opportunities for the kind of training needed to prepare them for the unique and arduous demands of qualitative research and teaching. Thus, many of us who are committed to meeting the educational challenges posed by this moment have begun envisioning ways to prepare future qualitative researchers for increasingly substantive and creative contributions to their areas of inquiry, as well as to the field of qualitative inquiry. In this paper, after framing the opportunities and challenges posed by the ascension of qualitative research in psychology, we present several guiding principles for programs of study, and a new program for doctoral training built on those principles.

The rise of qualitative inquiry in psychology

The history of methods and methodology within the field of psychology is marked by dynamism and contestation (Brown, Pryiomka, & Clegg, 2020; Pryiomka & Clegg, 2020). For most of the 20th century, much of the research that we might describe as qualitative was conducted with little attention to and/or articulation of method (Wertz, 2014). For some of these methodological pioneers, their efforts were met with criticism and ostracism (Head, Quigua, & Clegg, 2019). While debate and contestation persist, qualitative research has emerged, become solidified, and gained acceptance within psychology over the last several decades (Wertz, 2014).

In recent years, the increasing institutionalization of qualitative research in psychology is indicative of its continued ascent within the field. For example, The Society of Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology (SQIP) became a section of Division 5 of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 2011. More recently, the Association of European Qualitative Researchers in Psychology (EQuiP) was formed between 2018 and 2019. The rise of these organizations follows in the wake of Qualitative Methods in Psychology (QMiP), which was formed in 2005, and as of 2019, stands as the largest section of the British Psychological Society (Riley, et al., 2019). Each of these organizations have established annual research conferences, and in so doing, add to an impressive list of scholarly gatherings focused on qualitative research (e.g., the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, The Qualitative Report conference). Moreover, building upon an expansive array of resources, various major publications such as the APA journal Qualitative Psychology , the five-volume collection Qualitative Research in Psychology (Gough, 2014), and the 34-chapter Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology (2nd edition; Willig & Stainton Rogers, 2017) have been produced in the last decade. Such institutional solidification is reflective of the growing commitment to qualitative inquiry.

Beyond the emergent institutional infrastructure are other signs of this ascension. In examining the shifting regulatory landscape, we can identify multiple indicators of the growing acceptance of qualitative research. The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), for example, has called for increased financial support and training opportunities for qualitative research (Lamont & White, 2010). Within psychology, the APA's Commission on Accreditation has endorsed instruction in qualitative methods as a requirement for programmatic accreditation (APA, 2015). Such calls have not gone unheeded. The APA Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major: Version 2.0 (APA, 2016) includes learning outcomes involving qualitative research. Similarly, the BPS has included the teaching of qualitative methods in their subject benchmarks for accredited undergraduate programs (Riley et al., 2019). The macro-level accommodation for qualitative inquiry is perhaps most evident in the 2020 revision of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association , which includes sections on the presentation of qualitative research. Clearly, the formal inclusion of qualitative research within the field of psychology is taking place.

Qualitative inquiry's growing acceptance and inclusion are seemingly in accord with its increasing popularity among psychologists. In the words of Madill and Gough (2008), there has been a “surge in popularity of qualitative methods in psychology” (p. 254). Indeed, numerous scholars have noted the increasing popularity of qualitative research in psychology (e.g., Hansen, et al., 2005; Ponterrotto, 2010). Both the use of qualitative approaches and the publication of qualitative studies have been steadily rising in recent years (Hays et al., 2016; Levitt et al., 2018). One notable example of the emerging field's popularity is the fact that a recent article on qualitative reporting standards (Levitt et al., 2018) was the most downloaded article of all APA-published journals in 2018 and the most cited article in American Psychologist in 2019. Such examples signal the impressive rise of a field that, until relative recently, existed only at the margins of academic psychology (Wertz, 2014).

Not surprisingly, this ascension is reflected in changing curricular offerings. Qualitative coursework is becoming more common (Ponterotto, 2005; Rennie, 2004), and there has been marginal growth in the number of programs requiring qualitative courses (Rubin et al., 2017). Such curricular expansion seems to be in accord with student demand. Anecdotally, many of us who teach qualitative research courses find that students are hungry for such coursework and for research opportunities where they can apply knowledge developed in those courses. More concretely, student membership in SQIP, which has increased 15% over the past five years and currently stands at 25% of the society's total membership (A. Bland, personal communication, December 27, 2020), suggests that students are indeed interested in qualitative inquiry. Although qualitative research seems to be ascending in a variety of ways, graduate-level training opportunities for emerging psychologists are relatively few (Ponterotto, 2005: Harper, 2012; Povee & Roberts, 2014). This problem is being addressed by a diverse range of qualitative researchers, scholars, and teachers who are currently working to establish formal pathways for educating emerging qualitative researchers (e.g., concentrations, endorsements, certificate programs). Though exciting to those of us who see the purpose of and need for such pathways, this moment does pose challenges—from the structural to the conceptual—that warrant serious attention.

Identifying obstacles to qualitative research education

According to a recent study of graduate-level qualitative methods education (Rubin et al., 2017), the rise of qualitative inquiry is coupled with lingering uncertainty, an unclear trajectory, and a range of entrenched dilemmas. On the one hand, opportunities for qualitative education are rising, and students afforded those opportunities tend to use qualitative approaches in their dissertations; on the other hand, expanding qualitative education is impeded by a variety of factors. Those factors include a lack of university level support for qualitative research, faculty's undervaluing of qualitative approaches, a lack of trained faculty to teach qualitative courses, and the fact that those few faculty have expertise in a very few qualitative methodologies.

These challenges speak to the existing structural barriers to creating pathways for more formalized qualitative research education. Indeed, the current opportunities for graduate-level qualitative education are limited (Ponterrotto, 2005), not effectively integrated into curricula (Clarke & Braun, 2013), or adapted for curricula of subdisciplines (Rubin et al., 2017). Because overcoming such institutional challenges will play a significant role in students' inclinations to study, use, and, eventually teach, qualitative research methods (Rubin et al., 2017), those committed to establishing more formalized pathways for qualitative education will need to engage in numerous arduous tasks such as advocating for and initiating curricular changes, developing programs that fit within existing disciplinary structures, and cultivating buy-in amongst a plurality of constituents. Certainly, these are not easy tasks.

The structural impediments and the effort required to bring about institutional change pose challenges that occur in parallel to the conceptual hurdles that we must also address. While a concerted effort to make space for qualitative educational pathways is needed, improving qualitative research practice and pedagogy requires further elaborating the diversity of approaches and considering the best ways to teach qualitative methodologies as more than procedures—that is, as ways of knowing and doing that, for most students, are not familiar as science. Indeed, scholars highlight diverse goals, methods, and procedures (Gergen, 2014; Levitt et al., 2017). Some scholars go even further to highlight the array of often disharmonious epistemological, ontological, and methodological perspectives (Guba & Lincoln, 2011). Some have attempted to navigate and articulate the precarious boundary between the shared and diverse meanings and methods of qualitative inquiry (e.g. Guba & Lincoln, 2011; Levitt et al., 2017). In tension with such calls, however, is the ongoing need to establish qualitative inquiry as a somehow unitary approach. Pursuing complexity while aware of such obstacles, can, we think, serve as the foundation for increasingly fruitful education in qualitative inquiry.

Envisioning a more formalized pathway to qualitative training, we join the calls for pluralistic approaches to methodological education (Gibson & Sullivan, 2018; Gough & Lyons, 2016; Haverkamp, Morrow, & Ponterotto, 2005), for open dialogue about the aims of psychological inquiry, and for advocating for methodological pluralism in achieving these goals within U.S. psychology (Rubin et al., 2017). Rather than reducing qualitative research to one position, we imagine an educational pathway in which students learn to negotiate and expand taxonomies, transcend established hierarchies, draw on innovative approaches, and cultivate creative methodological solutions.

Such a challenging project will likely be amplified once subsumed into discussions about institutional matters such as credit allotment, coursework allocation, capstone project requirements, and faculty hiring. Addressing these challenges is far beyond the scope of this paper and will likely need to occur by a variety of actors, across institutions, over a prolonged period. As a step in this direction, we will highlight some principles that can guide us as we work toward creating curricula and discuss how those principles are manifesting in a recently established qualitative research concentration at the Graduate Center of The City University of New York.

(Some) guiding principles for qualitative research education

With qualitative research taking a foothold in mainstream psychology and in social science more broadly, the current moment requires creating guiding principles that can inform the development of pathways to qualitative education, can adapt to the pluralistic and dynamic nature of the field, and can fit into distinct pedagogical programs. Thus, such principles need to hold the general (the broad expectations for formal and recognizable education in qualitative inquiry) and the specific (particular foci of developing pathway programs) in delicate tension. Attending to this tension signifies an acknowledgement of the complexity and diversity of qualitative research methodologies. Moreover, this endeavor entails not only attention to the guiding epistemologies and ontologies that weave throughout all phases of research but also to the wide array of aims, positions, ethical commitments, designs, questions, data collection strategies, and analytic methods creating diversity within the field. Toward this goal, we present the following principles for qualitative research as a possible foundation for future pathway programs. These principles are deliberately few, as we seek insights to nurture the complexity of qualitative research. This involves managing the tension between identifying principles for organizing pedagogical programs while avoiding reductions wrought, for example, by prescribing the evaluation criteria for one approach to multiple (often incongruous) approaches.

Emphasizing the diversity of qualitative methodologies

With qualitative inquiry on the rise and the development of pathway programs in the works, we recognize the need to provide educational opportunities that help students develop a familiarity with a diverse range of qualitative approaches and an appreciation for the affordances and consequences that stem from their methodological choices. Students are often drawn to qualitative studies for scientific and ethical reasons, such as to explore underexamined phenomena, to inductively and/or abductively examine meaning construction, to privilege previously under-represented perspectives around an issue. In establishing qualitative pathways, it is important to develop curricula that support their varied interests but also highlight the complexity of the undertaking, such as acknowledging the conceptual in the methodological and the methodological in the conceptual.

We recognize that qualitative inquiries call up diverse ethics, epistemologies, research designs, questions, analyses, and findings. We aim to deepen qualitative research programs with curricula that reveal how apparently disharmonious or even competing qualitative approaches might be studied and applied to improve students' understanding of the field and to help them read and design qualitative research as a process of knowledge-building with relevant values, concepts, protocols, and attendant strategies. In so doing, we recognize the challenge of advancing a formal educational pathway that avoids the reduction of qualitative inquiry to a unitary approach, to a mere antonym of quantitative research, and/or to a codification of method(s).

In this process of studying different qualitative methodologies with different faculty who use the approaches in their own work and with their advisees, students will interact with case examples, practice applying different methods to their own projects, which will help them avoid the need to make methodological choices based on preference from among a list of methods or from among a few that have been highlighted locally. With courses that focus on diverse qualitative strategies, students will, ideally, develop the knowledge and experience for making nuanced decisions in terms of foundational issues such as researcher priorities and commitments (e.g., ethical, political), the goals of their research (e.g., to inform policy, to broaden or challenge extant theory), their ability to address those goals via distinct forms of knowledge-building (e.g., to describe, to illustrate, to generate), and the need to conduct research activities (e.g., design, analysis) in a way that is consistent with these conceptual foundations. To facilitate such complex negotiation, a dialogical and contrapuntal approach to promoting epistemological diversity is needed (Methebane & Sekudi, 2018), an approach that does not smooth over methodological disharmonies or reify dominant perspectives but rather engenders an open, critical, and creative educational framework for generating multiple routes to knowledge generation (Daiute, 2011; 2014). Such an approach allows students to negotiate existing perspectives and approaches as they draw from and cultivate a coherent system of epistemic values (see Osbeck, 2019), which better prepares them to situate their research in extant practices, establish and state a personal-professional stance, coherently enact this stance when developing and conducting research, and competently present their work to diverse audiences.

This kind of knowledges comes inductively and deductively by student participation in a range of diverse courses so that they may immerse in and follow through with a specific methodology, which allows for comparison across approaches that may seem/sound similar. Students who take multiple courses with a variety of faculty can follow through consistently on the rationale, epistemology, and details of a specific qualitative method because they've compared and learned how it works in a semester long class, read many examples, and done the same for another method. Ultimately, what students ideally gain from a pluralistic approach would be informed self-determination over their research. Such self-determination is wrought of confronting tensions between a comparative overview and immersion in a range of specific qualitative methodologies to develop knowledge for selecting among them for different research purposes and resources.

Acknowledging the role of researcher 

In developing curricula that supports students' negotiation of a diverse array of qualitative approaches, we not only aim to help them to navigate the complexity inherent in research and to prepare them to understand their position within the field but also to help them recognize and articulate their role in the research process. Such recognition entails that they not only see themselves as an engineer but also as an active participant who is inherently embedded in the research. Reflexivity has become an essential dimension of qualitative research—one that is now expected for publishing qualitative reports (Levitt et al., 2017). Reflexivity is a murky and multi-faceted construct (Finlay, 2002), and by facilitating students' negotiation of their role in the research process, we aim to encourage their responsibility and expertise. In so doing, we are helping them cultivate a more defensible philosophical/methodological position (see Finlay, 2002) but also to “own,” articulate and justify the wide array of choices that must be made throughout the research process.

Maintaining consistency across the project

Facilitating students' understanding of their role in research engenders epistemological consistency so that they are prepared to identify potential gaps in the research, such as between theory and practice, between ethical commitment and method, between analysis and research claims. Such critical reflection allows researchers to account for, minimize, and/or rectify inconsistency as they work to enact a coherent set of epistemic values within a research report. Facilitating students' development of coherent epistemological/methodological approach can help them develop a set of cohesive norms and practices that bind research projects, and accordingly, provide for consistency, comparability, and methodological legitimacy (Osbeck, 2019).

In facilitating students' negotiation of a diverse array of approaches, helping them establish a reflexive stance, and helping them cultivate cohesive research projects, we endeavor to help them be competent researchers and to produce compelling and impactful research. We do so out of a sense of ethical and pedagogical obligation to our students and because we recognize an emergent need for more thoughtful and systematic qualitative educational pathways. All too often, we witness our students undermine promising research projects by committing – seemingly without much forethought or justification—to an investigatory approach (usually some unarticulated plan for identifying themes) that is incongruent with their stated theoretical perspective, their espoused commitment to participants, and/or their goals for the research. This common occurrence is usually a harbinger of an unsuccessful research project, and more broadly, an indication that students need an educational pathway capable of preparing them for the many complexities, challenges, and choices inherent in qualitative research. The principles we have presented signify, we think, a step in that direction.

A foundational case: a critical qualitative research concentration

As an illustration of these principles in practice, we present an in-process Concentration on Qualitative Research Methods that is being developed by the PhD Programs in Psychology and Social Welfare at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Guided by a Coordinating Committee consisting of approximately five faculty members and four students, “(t) he purpose of this concentration is to provide students with instruction and practice across a range of rigorous qualitative research methods that they can use in their independent research projects and/or broaden their expertise on research methods for subsequent research.” (Qualitative Research Methods Concentration Proposal, 2020, March). To meet these goals, the concentration is structured around the following elements: an overview three-credit proseminar course titled “Conceptual and Methodological Foundations of Qualitative Research,” at least three additional three-credit electives focused on specific qualitative research methodologies, and a final research presentation delivered to faculty, students, and members of relevant public-facing communities. By the time that students present at the yearly qualitative research festival, they will be able to distinguish qualitative research approaches, not just in terms of theoretical claims, but also in terms of implicit epistemological foundations, methodological entailments, and possible contributions as relevant to different projects. Students who successfully complete these requirements will have the certification listed on their transcripts.

The structure of this concentration enacts the previously discussed guiding principles for qualitative pathway programs in a way that supports the unique foci of the hosting graduate programs. The critical/social justice orientation of the CUNY programs supporting this concentration emphasize highlighting under-represented voices (such as minorities in a practice or culture), under-exposed voices (such as those in power), and alterative and/or decolonial ways of identifying meaning. Thus, interrogating and explicating the epistemology, goals, and questions of research/research practices are of primary importance in the curriculum. While engaging in coursework and project development, students practice critically examining epistemologies and methodological consequences of diverse research practices, which provides them with criteria for designing qualitative inquiry as integrated theory and method. In so doing, students grapple with questions that are foundational to the programs' orientation: Why do research? What is the knowledge I am seeking? How will I do that consistently and ethically with others who care? and, What will my contribution be?

To uphold structural agreements that ensure accessibility of courses to the students, uptake for the faculty offerings, and diversity for student cohorts across their course-taking years, we plan the electives three years ahead, with non-overlapping courses in any single semester, and in different time slots. This requires extensive faculty collaboration and checking in, rather than any top-down or digital monitoring. For example, in the first three years of the concentration, students select from the following courses, which faculty had previously committed to teach: Critical Methods ; Listening Guide/Advanced Listening Guide ; Critical Discourse Theory and Analysis ; Using Archives in Social Justice Research, Narrative Inquiry ; Doing Visual Methods ; Study of Lives ; Feminist Ethnography ; and Critical Virtual Remote Ethnography .

In an era of budgetary restraints and shrinking seats for graduate students, this concentration needed to be developed in a way that maximized existing resources and minimized competition with existing programs. Within CUNY, many faculty have been teaching an array of qualitative research courses, which lessened some institutional impediments, such as needing to seek additional funding.

In addition to the factors that are particular to this institution/concentration, there are more ubiquitous considerations that must be addressed by others pursuing qualitative pathway programs, such as articulating the value of such a program to a wide range of faculty who may be unfamiliar with and/or opposed to qualitative inquiry. In this regard, we hope that this paper can be useful for justifying the need for such pathway programs that adhere to guiding principles and allow for programmatic specificity.

For those of us who are attuned to the field of qualitative inquiry, it seems evident that we are at an important moment. While the field has ascended in a variety of ways, this rise poses both challenges and opportunities. While recognizing the gravity of this moment, we offer this paper as an attempt to spark discussion, facilitate partnerships, and hopefully move towards a future in which students can pursue a specialized education in qualitative research that holds the general and the specific in a respectful tension. Our prediction is that, like the qualitative concentration at the CUNY Graduate Center, other qualitative education pathway programs—with their own unique foci—will emerge and that the collective success of these programs will largely depend on the extent that we navigate the tension between the general and the specific with diligence, care, a sense of mutual collaboration.

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How to Do Qualitative Research

Last Updated: October 26, 2022 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Jeremiah Kaplan . Jeremiah Kaplan is a Research and Training Specialist at the Center for Applied Behavioral Health Policy at Arizona State University. He has extensive knowledge and experience in motivational interviewing. In addition, Jeremiah has worked in the mental health, youth engagement, and trauma-informed care fields. Using his expertise, Jeremiah supervises Arizona State University’s Motivational Interviewing Coding Lab. Jeremiah has also been internationally selected to participate in the Motivational Interviewing International Network of Trainers sponsored Train the Trainer event. Jeremiah holds a BS in Human Services with a concentration in Family and Children from The University of Phoenix. There are 10 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 750,854 times.

Qualitative research is a broad field of inquiry that uses unstructured data collections methods, such as observations, interviews, surveys and documents, to find themes and meanings to inform our understanding of the world. [1] X Trustworthy Source PubMed Central Journal archive from the U.S. National Institutes of Health Go to source Qualitative research tends to try to cover the reasons for behaviors, attitudes and motivations, instead of just the details of what, where and when. Qualitative research can be done across many disciplines, such as social sciences, healthcare and businesses, and it is a common feature of nearly every single workplace and educational environment.

Preparing Your Research

• The research questions is one of the most important pieces of your research design. It determines what you want to learn or understand and also helps to focus the study, since you can't investigate everything at once. Your research question will also shape how you conduct your study since different questions require different methods of inquiry.
• You should start with a burning question and then narrow it down more to make it manageable enough to be researched effectively. For example, "what is the meaning of teachers' work to teachers" is too broad for a single research endeavor, but if that's what you're interested you could narrow it by limiting the type of teacher or focusing on one level of education. For example, "what is the meaning of teachers' work to second career teachers?" or "what is the meaning of teachers' work to junior high teachers?"

Tip: Find the balance between a burning question and a researchable question. The former is something you really want to know about and is often quite broad. The latter is one that can be directly investigated using available research methods and tools.

• For example, if your research question focuses on how second career teachers attribute meaning to their work, you would want to examine the literature on second career teaching - what motivates people to turn to teaching as a second career? How many teachers are in their second career? Where do most second career teachers work? Doing this reading and review of existing literature and research will help you refine your question and give you the base you need for your own research. It will also give you a sense of the variables that might impact your research (e.g., age, gender, class, etc.) and that you will need to take into consideration in your own study.
• A literature review will also help you to determine whether you are really interested and committed to the topic and research question and that there is a gap in the existing research that you want to fill by conducting your own investigation.

For example, if your research question is "what is the meaning of teachers' work to second career teachers?" , that is not a question that can be answered with a 'yes' or 'no'. Nor is there likely to be a single overarching answer. This means that qualitative research is the best route.

• Consider the possible outcomes. Because qualitative methodologies are generally quite broad, there is almost always the possibility that some useful data will come out of the research. This is different than in a quantitative experiment, where an unproven hypothesis can mean that a lot of time has been wasted.
• Your research budget and available financial resources should also be considered. Qualitative research is often cheaper and easier to plan and execute. For example, it is usually easier and cost-saving to gather a small number of people for interviews than it is to purchase a computer program that can do statistical analysis and hire the appropriate statisticians.

• Action Research – Action research focuses on solving an immediate problem or working with others to solve problem and address particular issues. [7] X Research source
• Ethnography – Ethnography is the study of human interaction in communities through direct participation and observation within the community you wish to study. Ethnographic research comes from the discipline of social and cultural anthropology but is now becoming more widely used. [8] X Research source
• Phenomenology – Phenomenology is the study of the subjective experiences of others. It researches the world through the eyes of another person by discovering how they interpret their experiences. [9] X Research source
• Grounded Theory – The purpose of grounded theory is to develop theory based on the data systematically collected and analyzed. It looks at specific information and derives theories and reasons for the phenomena.
• Case Study Research – This method of qualitative study is an in-depth study of a specific individual or phenomena in its existing context. [10] X Research source

Collecting and Analyzing Your Data

• Direct observation – Direct observation of a situation or your research subjects can occur through video tape playback or through live observation. In direct observation, you are making specific observations of a situation without influencing or participating in any way. [12] X Research source For example, perhaps you want to see how second career teachers go about their routines in and outside the classrooms and so you decide to observe them for a few days, being sure to get the requisite permission from the school, students and the teacher and taking careful notes along the way.
• Participant observation – Participant observation is the immersion of the researcher in the community or situation being studied. This form of data collection tends to be more time consuming, as you need to participate fully in the community in order to know whether your observations are valid. [13] X Research source
• Interviews – Qualitative interviewing is basically the process of gathering data by asking people questions. Interviewing can be very flexible - they can be on-on-one, but can also take place over the phone or Internet or in small groups called "focus groups". There are also different types of interviews. Structured interviews use pre-set questions, whereas unstructured interviews are more free-flowing conversations where the interviewer can probe and explore topics as they come up. Interviews are particularly useful if you want to know how people feel or react to something. For example, it would be very useful to sit down with second career teachers in either a structured or unstructured interview to gain information about how they represent and discuss their teaching careers.
• Surveys – Written questionnaires and open ended surveys about ideas, perceptions, and thoughts are other ways by which you can collect data for your qualitative research. For example, in your study of second career schoolteachers, perhaps you decide to do an anonymous survey of 100 teachers in the area because you're concerned that they may be less forthright in an interview situation than in a survey where their identity was anonymous.
• "Document analysis" – This involves examining written, visual, and audio documents that exist without any involvement of or instigation by the researcher. There are lots of different kinds of documents, including "official" documents produced by institutions and personal documents, like letters, memoirs, diaries and, in the 21st century, social media accounts and online blogs. For example, if studying education, institutions like public schools produce many different kinds of documents, including reports, flyers, handbooks, websites, curricula, etc. Maybe you can also see if any second career teachers have an online meet group or blog. Document analysis can often be useful to use in conjunction with another method, like interviewing.

• Coding – In coding, you assign a word, phrase, or number to each category. Start out with a pre-set list of codes that you derived from your prior knowledge of the subject. For example, "financial issues" or "community involvement" might be two codes you think of after having done your literature review of second career teachers. You then go through all of your data in a systematic way and "code" ideas, concepts and themes as they fit categories. You will also develop another set of codes that emerge from reading and analyzing the data. For example, you may see while coding your interviews, that "divorce" comes up frequently. You can add a code for this. Coding helps you organize your data and identify patterns and commonalities. [15] X Research source tobaccoeval.ucdavis.edu/analysis-reporting/.../CodingQualitativeData.pdf
• Descriptive Statistics – You can analyze your data using statistics. Descriptive statistics help describe, show or summarize the data to highlight patterns. For example, if you had 100 principal evaluations of teachers, you might be interested in the overall performance of those students. Descriptive statistics allow you to do that. Keep in mind, however, that descriptive statistics cannot be used to make conclusions and confirm/disprove hypotheses. [16] X Research source
• Narrative analysis – Narrative analysis focuses on speech and content, such as grammar, word usage, metaphors, story themes, meanings of situations, the social, cultural and political context of the narrative. [17] X Research source
• Hermeneutic Analysis – Hermeneutic analysis focuses on the meaning of a written or oral text. Essentially, you are trying to make sense of the object of study and bring to light some sort of underlying coherence. [18] X Research source
• Content analysis / Semiotic analysis – Content or semiotic analysis looks at texts or series of texts and looks for themes and meanings by looking at frequencies of words. Put differently, you try to identify structures and patterned regularities in the verbal or written text and then make inferences on the basis of these regularities. [19] X Research source For example, maybe you find the same words or phrases, like "second chance" or "make a difference," coming up in different interviews with second career teachers and decide to explore what this frequency might signify.

Community Q&A

• Qualitative research is often regarded as a precursor to quantitative research, which is a more logical and data-led approach which statistical, mathematical and/or computational techniques. Qualitative research is often used to generate possible leads and formulate a workable hypothesis that is then tested with quantitative methods. [20] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Try to remember the difference between qualitative and quantitative as each will give different data. Thanks Helpful 4 Not Helpful 0

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• ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470395/
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/conducting_research/writing_a_literature_review.html
• ↑ https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/31/3/498/2384737?login=false
• ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4275140/
• ↑ http://www.qual.auckland.ac.nz/
• ↑ http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/qualapp.php
• ↑ http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/qualdata.php
• ↑ tobaccoeval.ucdavis.edu/analysis-reporting/.../CodingQualitativeData.pdf
• ↑ https://statistics.laerd.com/statistical-guides/descriptive-inferential-statistics.php
• ↑ https://explorable.com/qualitative-research-design

About This Article

To do qualitative research, start by deciding on a clear, specific question that you want to answer. Then, do a literature review to see what other experts are saying about the topic, and evaluate how you will best be able to answer your question. Choose an appropriate qualitative research method, such as action research, ethnology, phenomenology, grounded theory, or case study research. Collect and analyze data according to your chosen method, determine the answer to your question. For tips on performing a literature review and picking a method for collecting data, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Critically Thinking About Qualitative Versus Quantitative Research

What should we do regarding our research questions and methodology.

Posted January 26, 2022 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

• Neither a quantitative nor a qualitative methodology is the right way to approach every scientific question.
• Rather, the nature of the question determines which methodology is best suited to address it.
• Often, researchers benefit from a mixed approach that incorporates both quantitative and qualitative methodologies.

As a researcher who has used a wide variety of methodologies, I understand the importance of acknowledging that we, as researchers, do not pick the methodology; rather, the research question dictates it. So, you can only imagine how annoyed I get when I hear of undergraduates designing their research projects based on preconceived notions, like "quantitative is more straightforward," or "qualitative is easier." Apart from the fact that neither of these assertions is actually the case, these young researchers are blatantly missing one of the foundational steps of good research: If you are interested in researching a particular area, you must get to know the area (i.e., through reading) and then develop a question based on that reading.

The nature of the question will dictate the most appropriate methodological approach.

I’ve debated with researchers in the past who are "exclusively" qualitative or "exclusively" quantitative. Depending on the rationale for their exclusivity, I might question a little deeper, learn something, and move on, or I might debate further. Sometimes, I throw some contentious statements out to see what the responses are like. For example, "Qualitative research, in isolation, is nothing but glorified journalism . " This one might not be new to you. Yes, qualitative is flawed, but so, too, is quantitative.

Let's try this one: "Numbers don’t lie, just the researchers who interpret them." If researchers are going to have a pop at qual for subjectivity, why don’t they recognize the same issues in quant? The numbers in a results section may be objectively correct, but their meaningfulness is only made clear through the interpretation of the human reporting them. This is not a criticism but is an important observation for those who believe in the absolute objectivity of quantitative reporting. The subjectivity associated with this interpretation may miss something crucial in the interpretation of the numbers because, hey, we’re only human.

With that, I love quantitative research, but I’m not unreasonable about it. Let’s say we’ve evaluated a three-arm RCT—the new therapeutic intervention is significantly efficacious, with a large effect, for enhancing "x" in people living with "y." One might conclude that this intervention works and that we must conduct further research on it to further support its efficacy—this is, of course, a fine suggestion, consistent with good research practice and epistemological understanding.

However, blindly recommending the intervention based on the interpretation of numbers alone might be suspect—think of all the variables that could be involved in a 4-, 8-, 12-, or 52-week intervention with human participants. It would be foolish to believe that all variables were considered—so, here is a fantastic example of where a qualitative methodology might be useful. At the end of the intervention, a researcher might decide to interview a random 20 percent of the cohort who participated in the intervention group about their experience and the program’s strengths and weaknesses. The findings from this qualitative element might help further explain the effects, aid the initial interpretation, and bring to life new ideas and concepts that had been missing from the initial interpretation. In this respect, infusing a qualitative approach at the end of quantitative analysis has shown its benefits—a mixed approach to intervention evaluation is very useful.

What about before that? Well, let’s say I want to develop another intervention to enhance "z," but there’s little research on it, and that which has been conducted isn’t of the highest quality; furthermore, we don’t know about people’s experiences with "z" or even other variables associated with it.

To design an intervention around "z" would be ‘jumping the gun’ at best (and a waste of funds). It seems that an exploration of some sort is necessary. This is where qualitative again shines—giving us an opportunity to explore what "z" is from the perspective of a relevant cohort(s).

Of course, we cannot generalize the findings; we cannot draw a definitive conclusion as to what "z" is. But what the findings facilitate is providing a foundation from which to work; for example, we still cannot say that "z" is this, that, or the other, but it appears that it might be associated with "a," "b" and "c." Thus, future research should investigate the nature of "z" as a particular concept, in relation to "a," "b" and "c." Again, a qualitative methodology shows its worth. In the previous examples, a qualitative method was used because the research questions warranted it.

Through considering the potentially controversial statements about qual and quant above, we are pushed into examining the strengths and weaknesses of research methodologies (regardless of our exclusivity with a particular approach). This is useful if we’re going to think critically about finding answers to our research questions. But simply considering these does not let poor research practice off the hook.

For example, credible qualitative researchers acknowledge that generalizability is not the point of their research; however, that doesn’t stop some less-than-credible researchers from presenting their "findings" as generalizable as possible, without actually using the word. Such practices should be frowned upon—so should making a career out of strictly using qualitative methodology in an attempt to find answers core to the human condition. All these researchers are really doing is spending a career exploring, yet never really finding anything (despite arguing to the contrary, albeit avoiding the word "generalize").

The solution to this problem, again, is to truly listen to what your research question is telling you. Eventually, it’s going to recommend a quantitative approach. Likewise, a "numbers person" will be recommended a qualitative approach from time to time—flip around the example above, and there’s a similar criticism. Again, embrace a mixed approach.

What's the point of this argument?

I conduct both research methodologies. Which do I prefer? Simple—whichever one helps me most appropriately answer my research question.

Do I have problems with qualitative methodologies? Absolutely—but I have issues with quantitative methods as well. Having these issues is good—it means that you recognize the limitations of your tools, which increases the chances of you "fixing," "sharpening" or "changing out" your tools when necessary.

So, the next time someone speaks with you about labeling researchers as one type or another, ask them why they think that way, ask them which they think you are, and then reflect on the responses alongside your own views of methodology and epistemology. It might just help you become a better researcher.

Christopher Dwyer, Ph.D., is a lecturer at the Technological University of the Shannon in Athlone, Ireland.

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What can qualitative psychology contribute to psychological knowledge?

Affiliation.

• 1 City, University of London.
• PMID: 31008623
• DOI: 10.1037/met0000218

This article reflects on what qualitative research in psychology can contribute to the accumulation of psychological knowledge. It provides an overview of qualitative research in psychology and discusses its potential value to quantitative researchers. It also reviews the differences and similarities between qualitative and quantitative research and explains how qualitative research can be differentiated from other forms of knowing that are concerned with human experience. The article explains what makes qualitative research "research" and how to determine if something is qualitative research or another kind of meaning-making activity. It starts by defining and characterizing qualitative psychology and by identifying qualitative psychology's aims and objectives, and then goes on to examine qualitative psychology's relationship with the pursuit of knowledge and to position it within the wider field of psychological inquiry. The article identifies ways in which qualitative research contributes to psychological knowledge (including thick description, critique, and theory development) and concludes by affirming its place in a psychological research community that seeks to improve our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

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Chapter 7: Nonexperimental Research

Qualitative research, learning objectives.

• List several ways in which qualitative research differs from quantitative research in psychology.
• Describe the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative research in psychology compared with quantitative research.
• Give examples of qualitative research in psychology.

What Is Qualitative Research?

This textbook is primarily about  quantitative research . Quantitative researchers typically start with a focused research question or hypothesis, collect a small amount of data from each of a large number of individuals, describe the resulting data using statistical techniques, and draw general conclusions about some large population. Although this method is by far the most common approach to conducting empirical research in psychology, there is an important alternative called qualitative research. Qualitative research originated in the disciplines of anthropology and sociology but is now used to study many psychological topics as well. Qualitative researchers generally begin with a less focused research question, collect large amounts of relatively “unfiltered” data from a relatively small number of individuals, and describe their data using nonstatistical techniques. They are usually less concerned with drawing general conclusions about human behaviour than with understanding in detail the  experience  of their research participants.

Consider, for example, a study by researcher Per Lindqvist and his colleagues, who wanted to learn how the families of teenage suicide victims cope with their loss (Lindqvist, Johansson, & Karlsson, 2008) [1] . They did not have a specific research question or hypothesis, such as, What percentage of family members join suicide support groups? Instead, they wanted to understand the variety of reactions that families had, with a focus on what it is like from  their  perspectives. To address this question, they interviewed the families of 10 teenage suicide victims in their homes in rural Sweden. The interviews were relatively unstructured, beginning with a general request for the families to talk about the victim and ending with an invitation to talk about anything else that they wanted to tell the interviewer. One of the most important themes that emerged from these interviews was that even as life returned to “normal,” the families continued to struggle with the question of why their loved one committed suicide. This struggle appeared to be especially difficult for families in which the suicide was most unexpected.

The Purpose of Qualitative Research

Again, this textbook is primarily about quantitative research in psychology. The strength of quantitative research is its ability to provide precise answers to specific research questions and to draw general conclusions about human behaviour. This method is how we know that people have a strong tendency to obey authority figures, for example, or that female undergraduate students are not substantially more talkative than male undergraduate students. But while quantitative research is good at providing precise answers to specific research questions, it is not nearly as good at  generating  novel and interesting research questions. Likewise, while quantitative research is good at drawing general conclusions about human behaviour, it is not nearly as good at providing detailed descriptions of the behaviour of particular groups in particular situations. And it is not very good at all at communicating what it is actually like to be a member of a particular group in a particular situation.

But the relative weaknesses of quantitative research are the relative strengths of qualitative research. Qualitative research can help researchers to generate new and interesting research questions and hypotheses. The research of Lindqvist and colleagues, for example, suggests that there may be a general relationship between how unexpected a suicide is and how consumed the family is with trying to understand why the teen committed suicide. This relationship can now be explored using quantitative research. But it is unclear whether this question would have arisen at all without the researchers sitting down with the families and listening to what they themselves wanted to say about their experience. Qualitative research can also provide rich and detailed descriptions of human behaviour in the real-world contexts in which it occurs. Among qualitative researchers, this depth is often referred to as “thick description” (Geertz, 1973) [2] . Similarly, qualitative research can convey a sense of what it is actually like to be a member of a particular group or in a particular situation—what qualitative researchers often refer to as the “lived experience” of the research participants. Lindqvist and colleagues, for example, describe how all the families spontaneously offered to show the interviewer the victim’s bedroom or the place where the suicide occurred—revealing the importance of these physical locations to the families. It seems unlikely that a quantitative study would have discovered this detail.

Data Collection and Analysis in Qualitative Research

As with correlational research, data collection approaches in qualitative research are quite varied and can involve naturalistic observation, archival data, artwork, and many other things. But one of the most common approaches, especially for psychological research, is to conduct  interviews . Interviews in qualitative research can be unstructured—consisting of a small number of general questions or prompts that allow participants to talk about what is of interest to them–or structured, where there is a strict script that the interviewer does not deviate from. Most interviews are in between the two and are called semi-structured interviews, where the researcher has a few consistent questions and can follow up by asking more detailed questions about the topics that do come up. Such interviews can be lengthy and detailed, but they are usually conducted with a relatively small sample. The unstructured interview was the approach used by Lindqvist and colleagues in their research on the families of suicide survivors because the researchers were aware that how much was disclosed about such a sensitive topic should be led by the families not by the researchers. Small groups of people who participate together in interviews focused on a particular topic or issue are often referred to as  focus groups . The interaction among participants in a focus group can sometimes bring out more information than can be learned in a one-on-one interview. The use of focus groups has become a standard technique in business and industry among those who want to understand consumer tastes and preferences. The content of all focus group interviews is usually recorded and transcribed to facilitate later analyses. However, we know from social psychology that group dynamics are often at play in any group, including focus groups, and it is useful to be aware of those possibilities.

Another approach to data collection in qualitative research is participant observation. In  participant observation , researchers become active participants in the group or situation they are studying. The data they collect can include interviews (usually unstructured), their own notes based on their observations and interactions, documents, photographs, and other artifacts. The basic rationale for participant observation is that there may be important information that is only accessible to, or can be interpreted only by, someone who is an active participant in the group or situation. An example of participant observation comes from a study by sociologist Amy Wilkins (published in  Social Psychology Quarterly ) on a university-based religious organization that emphasized how happy its members were (Wilkins, 2008) [3] . Wilkins spent 12 months attending and participating in the group’s meetings and social events, and she interviewed several group members. In her study, Wilkins identified several ways in which the group “enforced” happiness—for example, by continually talking about happiness, discouraging the expression of negative emotions, and using happiness as a way to distinguish themselves from other groups.

Data Analysis in Quantitative Research

Although quantitative and qualitative research generally differ along several important dimensions (e.g., the specificity of the research question, the type of data collected), it is the method of data  analysis  that distinguishes them more clearly than anything else. To illustrate this idea, imagine a team of researchers that conducts a series of unstructured interviews with recovering alcoholics to learn about the role of their religious faith in their recovery. Although this project sounds like qualitative research, imagine further that once they collect the data, they code the data in terms of how often each participant mentions God (or a “higher power”), and they then use descriptive and inferential statistics to find out whether those who mention God more often are more successful in abstaining from alcohol. Now it sounds like quantitative research. In other words, the quantitative-qualitative distinction depends more on what researchers  do  with the data they have collected than with why or how they collected the data.

But what does qualitative data analysis look like? Just as there are many ways to collect data in qualitative research, there are many ways to analyze data. Here we focus on one general approach called  grounded theory  (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) [4] . This approach was developed within the field of sociology in the 1960s and has gradually gained popularity in psychology. Remember that in quantitative research, it is typical for the researcher to start with a theory, derive a hypothesis from that theory, and then collect data to test that specific hypothesis. In qualitative research using grounded theory, researchers start with the data and develop a theory or an interpretation that is “grounded in” those data. They do this analysis in stages. First, they identify ideas that are repeated throughout the data. Then they organize these ideas into a smaller number of broader themes. Finally, they write a  theoretical narrative —an interpretation—of the data in terms of the themes that they have identified. This theoretical narrative focuses on the subjective experience of the participants and is usually supported by many direct quotations from the participants themselves.

As an example, consider a study by researchers Laura Abrams and Laura Curran, who used the grounded theory approach to study the experience of postpartum depression symptoms among low-income mothers (Abrams & Curran, 2009) [5] . Their data were the result of unstructured interviews with 19 participants.  Table 7.1  shows the five broad themes the researchers identified and the more specific repeating ideas that made up each of those themes. In their research report, they provide numerous quotations from their participants, such as this one from “Destiny:”

Well, just recently my apartment was broken into and the fact that his Medicaid for some reason was cancelled so a lot of things was happening within the last two weeks all at one time. So that in itself I don’t want to say almost drove me mad but it put me in a funk.…Like I really was depressed. (p. 357)

Their theoretical narrative focused on the participants’ experience of their symptoms not as an abstract “affective disorder” but as closely tied to the daily struggle of raising children alone under often difficult circumstances.

The Quantitative-Qualitative “Debate”

Given their differences, it may come as no surprise that quantitative and qualitative research in psychology and related fields do not coexist in complete harmony. Some quantitative researchers criticize qualitative methods on the grounds that they lack objectivity, are difficult to evaluate in terms of reliability and validity, and do not allow generalization to people or situations other than those actually studied. At the same time, some qualitative researchers criticize quantitative methods on the grounds that they overlook the richness of human behaviour and experience and instead answer simple questions about easily quantifiable variables.

In general, however, qualitative researchers are well aware of the issues of objectivity, reliability, validity, and generalizability. In fact, they have developed a number of frameworks for addressing these issues (which are beyond the scope of our discussion). And in general, quantitative researchers are well aware of the issue of oversimplification. They do not believe that all human behaviour and experience can be adequately described in terms of a small number of variables and the statistical relationships among them. Instead, they use simplification as a strategy for uncovering general principles of human behaviour.

Many researchers from both the quantitative and qualitative camps now agree that the two approaches can and should be combined into what has come to be called  mixed-methods research  (Todd, Nerlich, McKeown, & Clarke, 2004) [6] . (In fact, the studies by Lindqvist and colleagues and by Abrams and Curran both combined quantitative and qualitative approaches.) One approach to combining quantitative and qualitative research is to use qualitative research for hypothesis generation and quantitative research for hypothesis testing. Again, while a qualitative study might suggest that families who experience an unexpected suicide have more difficulty resolving the question of why, a well-designed quantitative study could test a hypothesis by measuring these specific variables for a large sample. A second approach to combining quantitative and qualitative research is referred to as  triangulation . The idea is to use both quantitative and qualitative methods simultaneously to study the same general questions and to compare the results. If the results of the quantitative and qualitative methods converge on the same general conclusion, they reinforce and enrich each other. If the results diverge, then they suggest an interesting new question: Why do the results diverge and how can they be reconciled?

Using qualitative research can often help clarify quantitative results in triangulation. Trenor, Yu, Waight, Zerda, and Sha (2008) [7] investigated the experience of female engineering students at university. In the first phase, female engineering students were asked to complete a survey, where they rated a number of their perceptions, including their sense of belonging.  Their results were compared by the student ethnicities, and statistically, the various ethnic groups showed no differences in their ratings of sense of belonging.  One might look at that result and conclude that ethnicity does not have anything to do with sense of belonging.  However, in the second phase, the authors also conducted interviews with the students, and in those interviews, many minority students reported how the diversity of cultures at the university enhanced their sense of belonging. Without the qualitative component, we might have drawn the wrong conclusion about the quantitative results.

This example shows how qualitative and quantitative research work together to help us understand human behaviour. Some researchers have characterized quantitative research as best for identifying behaviours or the phenomenon whereas qualitative research is best for understanding meaning or identifying the mechanism. However, Bryman (2012) [8] argues for breaking down the divide between these arbitrarily different ways of investigating the same questions.

Key Takeaways

• Qualitative research is an important alternative to quantitative research in psychology. It generally involves asking broader research questions, collecting more detailed data (e.g., interviews), and using nonstatistical analyses.
• Many researchers conceptualize quantitative and qualitative research as complementary and advocate combining them. For example, qualitative research can be used to generate hypotheses and quantitative research to test them.
• Discussion: What are some ways in which a qualitative study of girls who play youth baseball would be likely to differ from a quantitative study on the same topic? What kind of different data would be generated by interviewing girls one-on-one rather than conducting focus groups?
• Lindqvist, P., Johansson, L., & Karlsson, U. (2008). In the aftermath of teenage suicide: A qualitative study of the psychosocial consequences for the surviving family members. BMC Psychiatry, 8 , 26. Retrieved from http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-244X/8/26 ↵
• Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures . New York, NY: Basic Books. ↵
• Wilkins, A. (2008). “Happier than Non-Christians”: Collective emotions and symbolic boundaries among evangelical Christians. Social Psychology Quarterly, 71 , 281–301. ↵
• Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research . Chicago, IL: Aldine. ↵
• Abrams, L. S., & Curran, L. (2009). “And you’re telling me not to stress?” A grounded theory study of postpartum depression symptoms among low-income mothers. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 33 , 351–362. ↵
• Todd, Z., Nerlich, B., McKeown, S., & Clarke, D. D. (2004) Mixing methods in psychology: The integration of qualitative and quantitative methods in theory and practice . London, UK: Psychology Press. ↵
• Trenor, J.M., Yu, S.L., Waight, C.L., Zerda. K.S & Sha T.-L. (2008). The relations of ethnicity to female engineering students’ educational experiences and college and career plans in an ethnically diverse learning environment. Journal of Engineering Education, 97 (4), 449-465. ↵
• Bryman, A. (2012). Social Research Methods , 4th ed. Oxford: OUP. ↵
• Research Methods in Psychology. Authored by : Paul C. Price, Rajiv S. Jhangiani, and I-Chant A. Chiang. Provided by : BCCampus. Located at : https://opentextbc.ca/researchmethods/ . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

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Internet-delivered emotion regulation therapy for adolescents engaging in non-suicidal self-injury and their parents: A qualitative, online focus group study

Corresponding Author

Sofie Heidenheim Christensen

• [email protected]
• orcid.org/0000-0001-8258-4537

Child and Adolescent Mental Health Center, Copenhagen University Hospital – Mental Health Services CPH, Copenhagen, Denmark

Department of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Correspondence

Sofie Heidenheim Christensen, Research Unit, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Center, Copenhagen University Hospital – Mental Health Services CPH, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Email: [email protected]

Contribution: Conceptualization, ​Investigation, Writing - original draft, Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Writing - review & editing, Formal analysis

Michella Heinrichsen

Contribution: Visualization, Writing - review & editing, Data curation, Project administration

Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

Contribution: Writing - review & editing, Conceptualization

Lotte Rubæk

Self-Injury Team, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, Copenhagen, Denmark

Contribution: Writing - review & editing, Conceptualization, Validation, Project administration

Katherine Krage Byrialsen

Contribution: Data curation, Writing - review & editing, Project administration

Olivia Ojala

Centre for Psychiatry Research, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, & Stockholm Health Care Services, Stockholm, Sweden

Clara Hellner

Anne Katrine Pagsberg

Contribution: Writing - review & editing

Johan Bjureberg

Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

Britt Morthorst

Contribution: Conceptualization, ​Investigation, Writing - original draft, Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Writing - review & editing, Formal analysis, Project administration, Resources

We explore adolescents' and their parents' experiences of internet-based emotion regulation therapy for non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI).

A qualitative study nested within a controlled feasibility trial.

Online, semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted with outpatient adolescents with NSSI aged 13–17 years ( n  = 9) and their parents ( n  = 8) who had received therapist-guided Internet-delivered Emotion Regulation Individual Therapy for Adolescents (IERITA). Transcripts were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.

Three main themes were generated: (1) Fatigue – barriers to and during treatment, comprised of two sub-themes ‘Arriving to services exhausted, needing motivation, and leaving feeling abandoned’ and ‘the burden of IERITA and the consequences of fatigue’, (2) inter- and intrapersonal insights as facilitators of change and (3) Online, written contact with the therapist is beneficial and contributes with less pressure, comprised of three sub-themes ‘the therapist behind the screen is essential’, ‘less pressure sitting alone: the physical absence of a therapist’ and ‘engaging on your own terms, in your own tempo’. Themes were consistent among adolescents and parents.

Fatigue due to therapeutic engagement and previous help-seeking processes created barriers for engagement. Emotion regulation therapy was experienced as beneficial leading to inter- and intra-personal insights, facilitating change of maladaptive patterns. Therapists were regarded as indispensable, and the internet-based format did not hinder therapeutic alliance. The written format allowed for reflection and alleviated the pressure of relating to the therapist. Further research should explore experiences of other online treatment formats (e.g. synchronous or video-based) with regard to benefits, fatigue and therapist interaction.

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), for example, cutting or burning oneself, is becoming increasingly prevalent in young people (Plener et al.,  2015 ) with an estimated lifetime prevalence of 22.9% in non-clinical samples of adolescents (Gillies et al.,  2018 ; Swannell et al.,  2014 ). The prevalence increases when investigating young psychiatric populations with estimates up to 75% among patients with borderline personality disorders and interpersonal problems (Andrewes et al.,  2019 ). Previous self-harm, including NSSI, is the most significant risk factor for suicidal behaviour (Muehlenkamp & Brausch,  2012 ; Victor & Klonsky,  2014 ) and dying by suicide (Ribeiro et al.,  2016 ; Whitlock et al.,  2013 ). It is well documented that youth engaging in NSSI have poor prognoses and a higher risk of adverse outcomes, such as need for mental health treatment and poorer educational performance (Bjureberg et al.,  2019 ; Mars, Heron, Crane, Hawton, Kidger, et al.,  2014 ; Mars, Heron, Crane, Hawton, Lewis, et al.,  2014 ).

Evidence-based treatment for NSSI specifically is sparse within mental care and is most often handled within specialties, for example, eating or psychotic disorders, hence not specifically addressed or treated (Kiekens & Claes,  2020 ), despite the inherent risk and poor prognosis (Bjureberg et al.,  2019 ; Mars, Heron, Crane, Hawton, Kidger, et al.,  2014 ; Mars, Heron, Crane, Hawton, Lewis, et al.,  2014 ). There is evidence in favour of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy for Adolescents (DBT-A), however DBT-A is an intensive, resource-demanding treatment usually not offered at early stages of NSSI (Kothgassner et al.,  2021 ).

To meet the need for early, short-term, effective and easily accessible treatment, digital interventions have been suggested (Arshad et al.,  2020 ). Recent meta-analyses of the effectiveness of apps and digital interventions to prevent self-harm do not provide sufficient empirical evidence to provide treatment recommendations, however these tools are evaluated as safe and appealing to young populations (Arshad et al.,  2020 ; Stefanopoulou et al.,  2020 ).

An internet-delivered intervention specifically for adolescents with NSSI has been developed by Bjureberg et al. ( 2017 , 2018 ), named Internet-delivered Emotion Regulation Individual Therapy for Adolescents (IERITA). IERITA is developed from emotion regulation group therapy based on elements of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) (Bjureberg et al.,  2017 ) and teaches emotion regulation skills. Improvement in emotion regulation ability is the treatment target and mediator in IERITA (Bjureberg et al.,  2023 ). There is consistent reporting that NSSI temporarily reduces negative emotions such as anxiety, anger, loneliness, guilt and shame (Klonsky,  2007 , 2009 ; Nock et al.,  2009 ) with estimates of 66–81% of NSSI engaging youth stating emotion regulation as their motive for this behaviour (Taylor et al.,  2018 ). Emotion regulation has been investigated as a moderator and predictor of treatment outcome in IERITA, however with non-significant results (Ojala et al.,  2024 ). The adolescent can access a new online module every week for 11 weeks (parents receive a new module every second week) supported by written dialogue with an individual IERITA therapist (Morthorst et al.,  2022 ).

IERITA was tested in pilot and feasibility studies warranting safety and large scale investigations of the internet-delivered format (Bjureberg et al.,  2017 , 2018 ; Morthorst et al.,  2022 ). The Danish feasibility trial was a two-armed design comparing 11 weeks of IERITA added to treatment as usual (TAU) versus TAU showing a 53% (95% CI 39.9–66.8) eligibility-to-randomisation rate, 87% (95% CI 58.4–97.7) completion rate and most importantly 90% (95% CI 72.3–97.4) follow-up rate at 12 weeks follow-up (Morthorst et al.,  2022 ). A recent large-scale trial investigating the effect of IERITA in addition to TAU compared to TAU ( n  = 166) found a significantly larger reduction in NSSI episodes for IERITA compared to controls (82% vs. 47%) (Bjureberg et al.,  2023 ). IERITA has also been shown to be cost-effective (Bjureberg et al.,  2024 ).

As digital interventions are still a developing field, how these interventions are experienced by users is an area of research similarly in need of advancement, and this is especially so for adolescents (Valentine et al.,  2022 ). Insights into experiences of internet-based treatment specifically for NSSI are limited. A subsample of participants (nine adolescents and 11 parents) from the Swedish IERITA feasibility study were interviewed about their experience of IERITA (Simonsson et al.,  2021 ). The results indicated that IERITA is an acceptable method of acquiring news skills and understanding of NSSI, though also perceived stressful to adhere to for some. A mixed-method study of a mood supporting app for children and adolescents, the BlueIce app as add-on to face-to-face treatment, was experienced as easy to use, facilitating new strategies as well as catalysing difficult conversations. However, lack of motivation with both app engagement and reluctance to stop self-injuring were emerging themes (Grist et al.,  2018 ). In a German study investigating needs and potential design implications for digital apps, the included adolescents expressed interest in smartphone interventions in management of NSSI, however, the participants had no direct experience of such interventions to draw on. This meant that the suggestions for future interventions were purely proposals (Cus et al.,  2021 ).

The aim of the present study was thus to further explore adolescents' and parents' experiences of receiving IERITA (e.g. the internet delivery of the treatment and the focus on emotion regulation skills), to add to the still sparse evidence base and to contribute knowledge to the future provision of e-mental health programmes in child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). The study is part of a sequence of studies, from a quantitative feasibility trial to a qualitative study, followed by initiation of the large-scale TEENS (Treatment Effect of ERITA for Non-suicidal Self-injury) Multi-site trial, which the findings of the study have informed, to create a complementary study complex, as recommended by Sørensen et al. ( 2023 ).

This study applied a qualitative design. We conducted semi-structured, online focus groups with adolescents and parents who had received IERITA. We followed the consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (Appendix  S1 : COREQ) (Tong et al.,  2007 ).

Participants and recruitment

During winter 2021 to spring 2022 adolescents and parents receiving IERITA in a nested qualitative study within the TEENS Feasibility trial were recruited through convenience sampling. Participants were adolescents, fulfilling the inclusion criteria of at least one NSSI episode in the past month and five episodes the last year, outpatient within CAMHS in the Capital Region of Denmark, or an IERITA participating parent of one such adolescent. In this study NSSI was defined as ‘deliberate self-inflicted destruction of body tissue without suicidal intent and for purposes not socially sanctioned’ (Hooley et al.,  2020 ). Eligible participants were contacted by phone by the research team and invited to participate if dates and times were convenient for them. IERITA engagement was presented by adolescents ranging from actively following all modules including exercises, to almost no recognition of IERITA content and terms and close to no logins to the platform.

Participants were all provided oral and written study information, and informed consent was obtained from both adolescents and custody holders, and explicit from the participating parent prior to inclusion. During the focus group sessions additional consent to video record was obtained.

We conducted five online focus groups, three with adolescents ( n  = 9) and two with parents ( n  = 8) in total covering 15 IERITA adolescent participants since two parent–child dyads participated. We have described the psychopathological profile of the entire adolescent sample including for the adolescents represented by their parents in the focus group interviews, since their NSSI behaviour and strain to the family was also the question of interest and the reason for the IERITA engagement among parents. Hence, in Table  1 , demographics are presented for the 15 adolescents represented either by themselves or by a parent. Information on parent marital status is also provided.

The adolescents were aged 14–17 years, all identified as female, and the majority attended middle-school (Table  1 ). Current diagnostic status was based on clinical assessment obtained from medical records. The most prevalent diagnoses were personality disorders and autism spectrum disorders. Comorbid mental disorders were frequent (Table  1 ).

The IERITA intervention

IERITA is an 11-module intervention for adolescents based on principles from CBT, DBT and ACT, teaching emotion regulation skills and strategies (Bjureberg et al.,  2017 ). The modules consist of texts to read, exercises to engage in, and videos and audios to watch and listen to. A new module is opened every week and is estimated to take approx. 60 min. to complete (with great variation due to, e.g. potential dyslexia, exercises and module content). The intervention is closely guided by an individual IERITA therapist through on-going, written dialogue. The therapists respond to messages from the participants several times a week, but not in a pre-set structure or immediately when receiving a message, hence through asynchronous support. IERITA also entails a six-module parent programme with new modules opening every second week. The IERITA therapist provides support for both the adolescent and the parents, undisclosed to the counterpart (Morthorst et al.,  2022 ).

All IERITA therapists were experienced clinicians within CAMHS with therapeutic experience of the target group. They were all trained in the intervention, IERITA, by the Swedish developers and supervised by experts in the field of NSSI.

Due to the COVID-19 lock-down, and to mirror the internet-based aspect of the intervention, we conducted online focus groups during winter 2021 to spring 2022. Focus groups in our study were chosen both because they are time efficient in terms of interviewing several people together, rather than in separate interviews, and are particularly suitable to facilitate interaction between participants that stimulates participants' answers regarding opinion or experience beyond the habitual (Balch & Mertens,  1999 ; Katz-Buonincontro,  2022 ; Macun & Posel,  1998 ). Focus groups can also mitigate power differentials between researchers and participants, in case of for instance age differences between adult researchers and young participants, by creating a supportive forum for participants (Macun & Posel,  1998 ). The inclusion of sensitive themes as topics in focus groups has been debated, and researchers have contested the argument of sensitive topics as unfit for focus groups, finding that precisely the interaction between participants holds a potential for mutual comfort (Woodyatt et al.,  2016 ). We chose real-time, virtual focus groups where adolescents or parents participated simultaneously, as synchronous, audio-visual focus groups have been shown to produce data richness comparable to face-to-face groups (Abrams et al.,  2015 ). Comparisons of quality of data generated through in-person and online focus groups on a sensitive topic (e.g. intimate partner violence) similarly found online focus groups to have equal potential for generating data of high quality to that of in-person focus groups (Woodyatt et al.,  2016 ). Three focus groups with adolescent participants and two with participating parents were held separately with three to five participants per group. For all three adolescent interviews, four participants were invited, with only three attending each interview. Non-attendees were not further investigated. Though recommendations for focus group sizes differ, there is largely consensus that online focus groups should be smaller, approximately three to six participants (Katz-Buonincontro,  2022 ; Poynter,  2010 ). None of the participants or the interviewers had previously met. The focus groups took place in the late afternoons, after traditional work or school hours and had a duration of 1.5–2 h. Participants participated in only one focus group each. Participants received a link to a secure Teams meeting room in a personal digital mailbox. All interviews were video recorded using Microsoft® Teams. As preparation for the interviews, we distributed envelopes containing post-its, writing materials, images to facilitate and support statements and reflections, as well as snacks, as would have been offered if the participants had participated in vivo . Interviews were facilitated by two female researchers, an independent anthropologist (Christensen) with experience facilitating focus groups and semi-structured interviews, and a PI and associate professor (Morthorst et al.,  2022 ) with experience conducting clinical interviews. The researchers took turns being the observer or facilitator of different interviews. At the beginning of the focus groups, additional oral consent was obtained to record the session as video and audio. All focus groups began with an introduction of the two researchers sharing names and brief personal features such as motherhood and age of children plus professional experience within the field of NSSI.

We used semi-structured interview guides including open-ended questions exploring the participants' experiences of (1) the internet-based format, (2) general experience of the therapy and (3) emotion regulation as a core target in the IERITA intervention. During the introduction, we underlined that the focus was experiences of receiving IERITA, not the personal history of NSSI or child's NSSI. Interview sessions began with an introduction with all participants and researchers visible on the screen. Open-ended questions were supplemented by exercises (see Table  2 ) to initiate discussion. Exercises are commonly used in focus groups to encourage discussion, facilitate interaction between participants and to set participants at ease (Fielding et al.,  2017 ; Kitzinger,  1995 ). Exercises and moments to reflect individually were prioritised to ensure that viewpoints of all participants are captured, thereby avoiding that some participants omit sharing their considerations due to, for example, feeling shy (Krueger,  1998 ), as well as to facilitate dynamic discussions among participants, and finally due to the potentially sensitive nature of the topic of NSSI treatment. The observer made field notes during all interviews. New focus group sessions were conducted until the two researchers assessed that information power was reached, with consideration to the double perspective of both adolescents and parents (Guest et al.,  2006 ), the relatively narrow study aim and the sample specificity obtained through convenience sampling as suggested by Malterud et al. ( 2016 ) in assessment of information power. Information power was considered at two-time points (a) during familiarisation process (b) re-coding phases (Castleberry & Nolen,  2018 ).

Transcription and analysis

Reflexive thematic analysis was applied through five hierarchical steps: All interviews were transcribed and closely read (compiling), transcripts were then inductively coded, re-read and re-coded constructing themes (disassembling and reassembling), followed by interpretation of themes, including thematic mapping, and conclusion (Castleberry & Nolen,  2018 ; Clarke & Braun,  2018 ), all performed by the two researchers conducting the interviews using NVivo 11 (QSR) (Dhakal,  2022 ). Reflexive thematic analysis was chosen as it allows for analysis focused on broad thematic patterning, and with flexibility for participant discussions to guide analysis in unexpected directions (Braun & Clarke,  2006 ), in line with focus group discussions that allow for the group to focus on experiences not predicted by the facilitators. The researchers performing the analysis were the primary investigator (PI) (Morthorst et al.,  2022 ) in the feasibility trial and an independent anthropologist (Christensen), the latter without any prior connection to or specific insights into the intervention, allowing for focus group facilitation and coding with limited preconceived expectations of findings regarding the experiences of participants. The coding-re-coding process was conducted jointly, in a process where differences in meaningful units and codes were continuously explored and discussed, leading to reflexive re-coding and development of initial themes and subsequent thematic refinement. The collaborative coding created a fruitful interaction between the independent researcher's narrow focus on the generated data, contextualised by her research with other patient groups in CAMHS, and the PI's broader scope containing in-depth insights into the IERITA intervention and target group, which led to new discoveries within the material. Neither transcripts nor codes or analysis were returned to participants for correction or feedback; instead, to give the participants the possibility to give feedback, the moderator ended each focus group by summarising the discussion to ensure alignment. Pseudonyms are used to protect participant confidentiality.

Ethical considerations

The feasibility study was reported to the Regional Ethical Committee which waived the need for approval (H-19042904). Under Danish law, interview-based health research is exempt from ethical approval by the Committee (Videnskabsetik.Dk/Ansoegning-Til-Etisk-Komite/Overblik-over-Anmeldelsespligten,  n.d. ). Permission was granted from the Danish Data protection agency (reference id.: P-2020-113, Pactius). The data security of collected data and intervention platform was handled and granted by the Center for IT, Medico, and Technology within hospital services. Since all interviews were conducted online, there was no inconvenience related to travel logistics or expenses. Specific focus on NSSI behaviour in groups of adolescents is advised against due to the risk of social contagion, hence refrained from in the interviews. At the start of all focus groups, the researchers verbally introduced group agreements on confidentiality, as recommended by Katz-Buonincontro ( 2022 ). At the end of each interview, participants were asked about their well-being, and invited to contact the PI if subsequent discomfort was experienced, as recommended by Pope ( 2020 ).

From the analysis of the focus groups, three main themes were generated: (1) Fatigue – barriers to and during treatment, (2) Inter- and intrapersonal insights as facilitators of change and (3) Online, written contact with the therapist is beneficial and contributes with less pressure (Table  3 ).

Fatigue – Barriers to and during treatment

This theme was generated from emic codes on especially scepticism, motivation for participation and therapy as homework. It encapsulates participants' experiences of exhaustion and fatigue and the consequences for their therapy processes, before, during and at the end of intervention.

Arriving exhausted, needing motivation and leaving feeling alone

• Line (parent):
• I probably approached this with a certain scepticism because you've been through rather a lot, before you land in that project [IERITA], and you think: ‘How will this be any better than all the other things you have been through and all the other psychologists and professionals you have talked to?’
• When I first heard about it [IERITA] I thought… I was just really sceptical […] I think because I like felt that I have tried so many things already. And I couldn't see how this would be any different . […] what could you say that was different from… what I had already heard .
• Laura (parent):
• We [her and the daughter] talked about it [IERITA ending] : ‘How on earth are we going to make it?’. We also wrote to the therapist ‘I'm not sure we can make it without you’ [laughs] . And she was like ‘Sure, it's going to be fine’, but what else could she say?! [laughs] . But… actually, I think it was a bit tough, you have these 12 weeks concentrated, and then it's over. If you could phase it out somehow, that would be nice .

The burden of IERITA and the consequences of fatigue

• Mia (adolescent):
• It's a bit difficult being in 2.g [high school] and having assignments and school, a job, and friends, and then also having to do this [IERITA] plus other treatment offers. Maybe it would have worked if I didn't have anything else to do but… in the end it got a bit stressed, and I didn't feel that I got as much out of it because I didn't have time for all of it .
• Helle (adolescent):
• sometimes, when you perhaps read too much, you just read it like a text, not something you can really use […] sometimes, when it got a bit too much for me, I just wanted to read it quickly, but not really understand how this could affect me .
• My daughter was just not motivated for it to be an online process. […] Besides I'm a single parent and have been alone helping her through this process, so it has been hard to compel this… […] I mean, it simply felt like the worst kind of homework to her […] it also felt a bit stressful to me because there were of course things I wrote that she [the therapist] asked about etc. and that's good, that's her job, but it could feel all stressful to me .
• Parent Jacob:
• Be forgiving, because it is difficult to get it all done and there is a lot. Like Tobias [another participating parent] says, it is a lot, both in amount and in the heart .

The notions of accepting that the intervention was demanding and staying with it despite fatigue mirrors acceptance and validation, which are central elements of the IERITA programme.

Intra- and interpersonal insights as facilitators of change

• Tobias (parent):
• I mean, there was a lot of focus on this thing about emotions […] it was those underlying things which were in focus, and I thought that was very good .
• I'm starting to understand a whole lot of things in my everyday life. Why I do certain things. […] Now I can almost express what actually happens… instead of not really knowing how to explain it. […] there are actual terms for it. […] I wanted to avoid having these feelings, by self-injuring. Um, and by knowing that it is an evasion [IERITA term] […] and that it's better perhaps just doing a diversion [IERITA term] .
• When I had words for it, it was easier to grasp in my brain, figuring out which strategy I should use. Because I had a name and an explanation of what I was really doing .
• The thing about having a dialogue with my parents. That my parents could see if I got into a bad situation. Then my mother could say: ‘okay, what kind of ERITA tool are you going to use now?’
• Nadja (parent):
• So about breaking the vicious circle through activities […] to say [to myself] ‘it's okay that I say ‘now I just need half an hour as well’ […] It is actually valuable, to gain a language, to tell my daughter that ‘right now, this [NSSI behaviour] is so all encompassing, and I can feel that I am getting totally confused myself. I want to take care of you, but I also must take care of myself’ .
• Tobias (parent)
• It's unbearable as a parent being unable to reach her [daughter] . So, you fall into this solution-mode. Whereas in this program, you practiced stepping back. When we chose that approach, she came back and started automatically sharing more and more .

The examples highlight how gaining a language was experienced as a catalyst for inter- and intrapersonal insights into behavioural patterns and emotions, the articulation thereof and ultimately for change. In Figure  1 we illustrate the interconnections between these experiences, with the new language leading to new insights and then either directly to experiences of change, or with the new insights being communicated utilising the gained, shared language, which then becomes not only the catalyst for change, but also the mode through which change is actualised.

Online, written contact with the therapist is beneficial and contributes with less pressure

In the participants' descriptions of the IERITA therapeutic process, the novel experience of internet-based therapy emerged as a major theme. All adolescent participants and their parents had experienced one or more psychotherapeutic treatment interventions previously and highlighted contrasts and similarities between the face-to-face and internet-based formats, particularly the consequence in terms of therapeutic alliance, a lessened interaction-pressure, the tempo giving room for reflection, and the flexibility of online-delivered therapy.

The therapist behind the screen is essential

• Gitte (adolescent):
• [the most beneficial format was] writing with a therapist. I don't know if you could, like, do it without. […] if you feel unsure about some things, or need it explained. Then, it's very nice to know that there is someone who can explain it .
• I also [like Gitte] chose the therapist. That thing about having a person who sometimes would write you back […] that you didn't feel like you were just… doing exercises like in school. There was actually something behind .
• that freedom I had for a while, where the responsibility wasn't mine […] being able to lean into something, where someone minimum once a week was helping us .
• It's funny, because it's just during this talk that I realized that it [IERITA] was in writing [laughs]. […] I mean, it felt like ‘we have been sitting right here. You [the therapist] were right there’. I have never seen her, but I have pictures of her in my mind. It's really crazy that you can have a completely bodily, emotional experience through language, that there is someone standing there, taking care of you .

For Laura, the internet-based format did not even register until brought up in the focus group. The written correspondence alone offered her an embodied, emotional experience of support. The experience of having support ‘behind’ the programme was thus both central and achievable. Though participants were online assessed at baseline by their IERITA therapist, some reflected that writing with an individual you hadn't met was ‘a bit weird’ and made them initially nervous. They also speculated that alliance could perhaps have been established earlier if they had had a physical meeting with their therapist prior to the online dialogue.

Less pressure sitting alone – The physical absence of a therapist

• I felt set free by not having a person I had to relate to physically. […] it [internet therapy] has been free of having to deal with how the person responds to what is very difficult for me .
• I have a tendency to hold back more when it is face-to-face. I struggle to say things which are easier for me to write down. […] It is easier opening up a bit .
• Anja (adolescent):
• I don't have to sit all the time and look them [therapist] in the eye and be pressured to tell them all kinds of stuff. And if I have a really bad day, I'm not forced to talk to that person. That's why it feels less like a forced relationship .
• Jacob (parent):
• I don't know how many conversations with psychologists and psychiatrists I have attended with her [daughter] and thought ‘I hope they are good enough to see through this’, because I could just hear her project exactly what she expected the listener wanted to hear. Smiling and well-spoken, and I just know it has nothing to do with the reality, but that's what she does, and that was a part of her problem […] when that was peeled off, all that was left were the thoughts .
• [my daughter] is exactly the same [as Jacob's] . I mean, she stands there looking so friendly, and then she goes and ‘cut, cut, cut’ because she feels so awful. And that thing, that no one saw her, it didn't matter if she smiled. She could just focus on whatever she had to think about .
• Ronja (adolescent):
• it's cool that you can like, write, because sometimes I think it's really difficult to say it out loud. […] It sounds wrong coming out of my mouth or perhaps it's embarrassing. It's just a bit easier to write .
• In the beginning, I thought a lot about whether I like… wrote something wrong. […] I thought a lot about what they wanted me to write […] if there was a right way to write it .

Gitte's experiences mirror the parental frustration of their child's focus on the recipient eclipsing their focus on the therapy in itself. In her case, the written form did not immediately yield the benefit of lessened interaction-pressure, perhaps due to the delay in alliance mentioned above.

Engaging on your own terms, in your own tempo

• you can do things […] through writing that can be difficult to do face-to-face […] there was some kind of lingering in that that made it so you actually wrote it all out .
• Nadja (adolescent):
• I was surprised by how nice it was to reflect in writing. […] writing down my thoughts, deleting and writing them again, you could say I got more into the core of it […] through that process, I found out what was important and what wasn't .
• I think it's nice that I can do it at home […] if there are days when I can't get up or do anything […] even if I have a bad day, I can still do some of it .

Even though the fatigue at times caused participants to rush through the programme, the flexibility and especially the process of writing enabled participants to choose when and on what to spend time and energy. The internet-based, written format thus created room for the participants to engage with both the therapist and the programme on their own terms and in their own tempo in ways that weekly, time-limited, face-to-face appointments did not.

This qualitative study investigating adolescents' and parents' experiences of receiving IERITA, contributes to insights regarding both NSSI treatment and internet-delivered interventions. Three main themes were generated covering (1) the impact of exhaustion and fatigue due to preceding help-seeking processes and demands of the intervention, (2) inter- and intrapersonal insights as facilitators of change and (3) the impacts of internet-based intervention on the therapeutic process. These findings highlight (1) that the intervention, and especially the impact thereof, does not exist in a vacuum, but is continually influenced by preceding and concurrent circumstances of the participants, (2) that the potential for change is at least partly catalysed by emotion regulation language acquisition and (3) that the contact with an immaterial therapist, mediated through written language, holds the potential for greater agency, especially in terms of disclosure.

The results indicate how previous experiences of not receiving sufficient help creates scepticism that influences the participants' engagement with the IERITA intervention. In Denmark, there has recently been an increased focus on the process prior to children and adolescents receiving psychiatric treatment. For instance, Hansen et al. ( 2021 ) showed that parents seeking help for their child's mental health encounter numerous barriers such as unavailability of services and professionals refusing to initiate interventions or to provide referral to services, and a report on experiences of parents with children in assessment or treatment in Danish CAMHS describes the system as labyrinthian and slow with many dead ends (Hansen & Poulsen,  2021 ). The preceding processes were experienced as the reason for exhaustion and scepticism, which in turn must be considered as part of the circumstances for motivation and engagement in IERITA.

Similarly to Simonsson et al. ( 2021 ), who found that emotion regulation training was experienced as supportive, we found that the IERITA therapy shifting focus from self-injuring behaviour towards the understanding of difficulties in emotion regulation is indeed experienced as relevant and helpful. The benefits include a focus on underlying issues that parents articulated as previously lacking in treatment approaches, an issue which has been raised in critiques of CBT as being too mechanistic and lacking a holistic focus (Gaudiano,  2008 ). Moreover, the analysis has shown how a language regarding especially emotion regulation facilitated insights into detrimental action patterns of both adolescents and parents. These insights in turn were able to catalyse changes of action patterns mentioned above. Haydicky et al. ( 2017 ) found behaviour regulation as catalysed by action pattern recognition, when investigating mechanisms of therapeutic action in parent–child mindfulness training for adolescents with ADHD. The training provided a shared vernacular that enabled parent–child dialogue, which in turn was instrumental in improving interpersonal relationships. The BlueIce app (in conjunction with face-to-face therapy) for adolescents engaging in self-harm was likewise found to be helpful in terms of facilitating conversations about feelings (Grist et al.,  2018 ).

Considering the multitude of internet-based therapeutical interventions without therapist guidance (Berger,  2017 ) the participants' insistence on the indispensability of the therapist is of particular interest. The idea that online treatment cannot stand alone was likewise emphasised by Cus et al. ( 2021 ) in a sub-theme titled Apps Cannot Replace People, and is in line with both a systematic review by Palmqvist et al. ( 2007 ) showing a strong association between therapist input and outcome, and with the findings of a meta-synthesis of guided computer- and book-based self-help, where all included studies consistently highlighted the helpfulness of guidance (Yim & Schmidt,  2019 ). Therapeutic alliance is known to play a role in treatment effect, though the precise importance is still indeterminate. A bonding and caring relationship with mutual trust and respect has previously been emphasised (Ardito & Rabellino,  2011 ). Aspects which were all similarly highlighted by IERITA participants. Therapeutic alliance is seldom a primary outcome of interest in psychotherapy trials, limiting the knowledge of importance thereof (Henson et al.,  2019 ). However, previous feasibility studies of the ERITA programme, both face-to-face and internet-delivered, proved strong therapeutic alliance and treatment adherence (Bjureberg et al.,  2017 , 2018 ). We found that, for some participants, alliance with a therapist through written communication took some time to establish, which mirrors studies of the relevance of a therapeutic alliance as a dynamic process (Ardito & Rabellino,  2011 ). This is furthermore in line with the conclusion of a narrative review by Berger ( 2017 ) stating that, from a client perspective, therapeutic alliance can be formed in guided internet-based CBT, though the timing may differ, but importantly, alliance was not hindered by a lack of face-to-face-meetings, as has otherwise been hypothesised. In a meta-synthesis of studies with adult populations Flückiger et al. ( 2018 ) argued that alliance in internet-based therapy is of less importance compared to in-person therapy, contradictory to our findings of consistent appreciation of the therapist guidance and support.

We found that the absence of face-to-face interaction may lead to lessened emotional burden and greater agency in terms of disclosure. This was similarly an aspect of the written correspondence, lending participants time for reflection, and a space where they focused less on the reactions of the therapist. Simpson ( 2009 ) similarly found that internet-based treatment can lead to disinhibition and openness, though her findings focused on patients with avoidant personalities, and King et al. ( 2006 ) conclude that internet-based counselling is experienced as providing a private and safe environment when related to sensitive topics with emotional pressure, compared to face-to-face options in adolescents.

Interestingly, these experiences are not easily attributed to the internet-based or the written format exclusively. It may be that an online therapeutic programme where participants make small recordings of themselves instead of writing, or an intervention where participants write passages which are then shared with a therapist face-to-face, might equally offer some of these benefits.

Strengths and limitations

This qualitative study embedded in a quantitative feasibility trial was conducted exclusively online including the focus group interviews during COVID-19 lockdown, which is a proof of a consistent online concept. The study investigated a novel intervention format not previously provided within CAMHS in Denmark, but considered an innovative future strategy within mental health services. The nested design meant the study has informed adjustments and adaptations of the TEENS Multi-site trial, which is now in process, achieving a complementary synergy between quantitative and qualitative research strategies as recommended by Sørensen et al. ( 2023 ). Conducting the focus groups online meant that participants who might otherwise be difficult to include could add their perspectives on the intervention and thereby directly impact the development of future treatment in CAMHS. The adolescents themselves commented on the accessibility of online meeting compared to physical meetings, and though this was not mentioned by parents, the report Family Life under Cross Pressure highlights how parents with children in child and adolescent psychiatry are overwhelmed by the logistics of assessments and treatment, and are difficult to recruit for research (Hansen & Poulsen,  2021 ). Despite the online nature of the focus group causing participants to have more limited contact with one another, the atmosphere was characterised by laughter and mutual support. A clear synergy emerged between the participants, who clearly both cared for and inspired each other during the conversations – a primary goal of the focus group method. NSSI can be a sensitive topic not easily shared or disclosed with strangers. However, the mirroring potential of focus groups emerged during all interviews, for instance among parents sharing their frustration and fears, and adolescents confirming each other's experiences of struggling with the material. Though encouraged, no participants contacted the PI following an interview due to discomfort from participation; indicative of no adverse reactions following the interviews.

Representativity was good with respect to a wide range of IERITA engagement and participation, by families covering the entire capital region, Denmark, and differing co-morbid profiles among the adolescents. Some participants had been fully engaged in the programme including homework assignments, while others had hardly been active and expressed unfamiliarity with the IERITA content. Convenience sampling could potentially have created selection bias towards more satisfied IERITA participants.

In this qualitative study nested in the TEENS feasibility trial all participants were exposed to IERITA with no comparison group hence no quantitative measures of NSSI progression or responder calculations were performed. A further study limitation is the lack of male and non-binary adolescent participants as well as a lack of demographic information on the parents. However, it is a consistent finding that NSSI is more frequent in females than males, even more so in clinical samples, mirroring our participants (Bresin & Schoenleber,  2015 ). Additionally, information bias cannot be excluded due to group interviews for some participants potentially hindering disclosure. Furthermore, we cannot ignore that certain families, even more burdened by mental illness and cross-sectional service use, may not have had the capacity to even engage in online focus group, thus skewering our findings towards a relatively less burdened group of adolescents and parents.

This study provides nuanced insights into the experience of emotion regulation internet-based therapy for NSSI among adolescents and their parents. The constructed themes underline the ambivalence of initiating treatment in the context of long, prior help-seeking processes, but also emphasise the importance of the therapist guidance in internet-based therapy. The internet-based emotion regulation therapy shifting from a narrow focus on self-injuring behaviour towards a broader understanding of difficulties in emotion regulation is indeed experienced as relevant and helpful. However, the internet-based therapy is also experienced as demanding to engage in, even though it allows for more flexibility and less pressure from interacting directly with a therapist. Further research should focus on the experience of other online treatment formats (e.g. synchronous, or video-based) with regard to experienced benefits, fatigue, and therapist interaction. The experiences of IERITA support further implementation and development of internet-based therapy within CAMHS.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Sofie Heidenheim Christensen: Conceptualization; investigation; writing – original draft; methodology; validation; visualization; writing – review and editing; formal analysis. Michella Heinrichsen: Visualization; writing – review and editing; data curation; project administration. Bo Møhl: Writing – review and editing; conceptualization. Lotte Rubæk: Writing – review and editing; conceptualization; validation; project administration. Katherine Krage Byrialsen: Data curation; writing – review and editing; project administration. Olivia Ojala: Writing – review and editing; conceptualization. Clara Hellner: Writing – review and editing; conceptualization. Anne Katrine Pagsberg: Writing – review and editing. Johan Bjureberg: Writing – review and editing; conceptualization. Britt Morthorst: Conceptualization; investigation; writing – original draft; methodology; validation; visualization; writing – review and editing; formal analysis; project administration; resources.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We wish to thank all participating adolescents and their families for taking the time and sharing their perspectives with us. We thank the self-injury team for performing assessments and providing IERITA. Additional thanks to Cecilie Skjøt Kristiansen for transcription of interviews.

FUNDING INFORMATION

Post doc grant, The Capital Region Denmark fund, file number: 19065370 /D-6283554.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

All authors report no potential conflict of interest.

Open Research

Data availability statement.

The data supporting the findings of this study can be made available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author. Data such as full, un-pseudonymised transcripts may not be made publicly available due to privacy considerations.

Supporting Information

Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.

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