Language and Meaning: Data Collection in Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is inquiry aimed at describing and clarifying human experience as it appears in people's lives. Researchers using qualitative methods gather data that serve as evidence for their distilled descriptions. Qualitative data are gathered primarily in the form of spoken or written language rather than in the form of numbers. Possible data sources are interviews with participants, observations, documents, and artifacts. The data are usually transformed into written text for analytic use. Selection of interview participants requires purposive and iterative strategies. Production of interview data requires awareness of the complexity of self-reports and the relation between experience and languaged expression. To generate interview data of sufficient breadth and depth requires practiced skill and time. Production of useful data from other sources is addressed.