Qualitative Research: An overview

Research is critical in biomedi-cine because it leads to new dis-coveries and can change peoples’ lives by improving health and wellbeing. However many health problems of today cannot be solved due to problems of interpretation and meaning; and a complex interplay of social factors. Qualitative research has its roots in social science and is more concerned with understanding why people behave as they do, their knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, fears, etc. It aims to help us to understand the world in which we live and why things are the way, they are. Qualitative re-search is especially effective in obtaining culturally specific in-formation about the values, opin-ions, behaviours, and social con-texts of particular populations. The characteristics of qualita-tive research are it seeks to ex-plore phenomenon, has an open ended question format, data is in textual form, and the study design is iterative, that is, data collection and research questions are adjusted according to what is learned.