Qualitative Research

In the first chapter of Bonnie S. Brennan’s, book on qualitative research, she poses some questions that one should consider to understand their philosophy on research. I will answer some of these questions to the best of my ability.

• What does objectivity mean to you?
  • To me, objectivity means that something is a set in stone fact. There is no way debate about whether this idea, or concept is correct. Objectivity is hard to achieve and harder to define.
• What is neutrality
  • Neutrality is not taking a side. In terms of research, neutrality would be putting equal weight into discovering if your hypothesis is correct or incorrect. Neutrality is hard to achieve because we always have an outcome that we would like to happen. It is easy to let the hope for a specific outcome cloud our research and cause us to not do justice to the subject matter. Another part of neutrality is bias. While we are all bias, to be neutral, I believe you have to check your biases, and know how they might make you lean.
• Do you believe that truth is relative?
  • I think that truth is relative-ish. While I do not believe in capitol T truth, I also do not believe that everyone’s individual truths are true. So, I think that everyone has their own truth, and in some cases those truths are valid. In other cases, I find them invalid. For instance, how I respond emotionally to being yelled at, might be different than someone else. So, my truth would be that yelling is a scary thing, while their truth is that yelling is a motivational tool. I do not think that two people can look at the sky and say it is two completely different colors. There are some situations where truth is relative, and some situations where not all truths are created equal.
• Are there cause-and-effect relationships that can determine people’s behavior?
  • In some cases yes, in some cases no. When looking at how people act and react to certain things, it is not easy to put a blanket statement over what caused their behavior. While the cause-and-effect relationship does explain some behavior, there are times when it is impossible to know why someone acts a certain way.

These questions, while they seem irrelevant to research, do provide a framework for how you stand philosophically, which will effect your research. When doing research, knowing if you believe in a concrete truth, or neutrality can shape the ways that you go about researching, and how you explain the research to others.