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Article contents

Qualitative design research methods.

• Michael Domínguez Michael Domínguez San Diego State University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.170
• Published online: 19 December 2017

Emerging in the learning sciences field in the early 1990s, qualitative design-based research (DBR) is a relatively new methodological approach to social science and education research. As its name implies, DBR is focused on the design of educational innovations, and the testing of these innovations in the complex and interconnected venue of naturalistic settings. As such, DBR is an explicitly interventionist approach to conducting research, situating the researcher as a part of the complex ecology in which learning and educational innovation takes place.

With this in mind, DBR is distinct from more traditional methodologies, including laboratory experiments, ethnographic research, and large-scale implementation. Rather, the goal of DBR is not to prove the merits of any particular intervention, or to reflect passively on a context in which learning occurs, but to examine the practical application of theories of learning themselves in specific, situated contexts. By designing purposeful, naturalistic, and sustainable educational ecologies, researchers can test, extend, or modify their theories and innovations based on their pragmatic viability. This process offers the prospect of generating theory-developing, contextualized knowledge claims that can complement the claims produced by other forms of research.

Because of this interventionist, naturalistic stance, DBR has also been the subject of ongoing debate concerning the rigor of its methodology. In many ways, these debates obscure the varied ways DBR has been practiced, the varied types of questions being asked, and the theoretical breadth of researchers who practice DBR. With this in mind, DBR research may involve a diverse range of methods as researchers from a variety of intellectual traditions within the learning sciences and education research design pragmatic innovations based on their theories of learning, and document these complex ecologies using the methodologies and tools most applicable to their questions, focuses, and academic communities.

DBR has gained increasing interest in recent years. While it remains a popular methodology for developmental and cognitive learning scientists seeking to explore theory in naturalistic settings, it has also grown in importance to cultural psychology and cultural studies researchers as a methodological approach that aligns in important ways with the participatory commitments of liberatory research. As such, internal tension within the DBR field has also emerged. Yet, though approaches vary, and have distinct genealogies and commitments, DBR might be seen as the broad methodological genre in which Change Laboratory, design-based implementation research (DBIR), social design-based experiments (SDBE), participatory design research (PDR), and research-practice partnerships might be categorized. These critically oriented iterations of DBR have important implications for educational research and educational innovation in historically marginalized settings and the Global South.

• design-based research
• learning sciences
• social-design experiment
• qualitative research
• research methods

Educational research, perhaps more than many other disciplines, is a situated field of study. Learning happens around us every day, at all times, in both formal and informal settings. Our worlds are replete with complex, dynamic, diverse communities, contexts, and institutions, many of which are actively seeking guidance and support in the endless quest for educational innovation. Educational researchers—as a source of potential expertise—are necessarily implicated in this complexity, linked to the communities and institutions through their very presence in spaces of learning, poised to contribute with possible solutions, yet often positioned as separate from the activities they observe, creating dilemmas of responsibility and engagement.

So what are educational scholars and researchers to do? These tensions invite a unique methodological challenge for the contextually invested researcher, begging them to not just produce knowledge about learning, but to participate in the ecology, collaborating on innovations in the complex contexts in which learning is taking place. In short, for many educational researchers, our backgrounds as educators, our connections to community partners, and our sociopolitical commitments to the process of educational innovation push us to ensure that our work is generative, and that our theories and ideas—our expertise—about learning and education are made pragmatic, actionable, and sustainable. We want to test what we know outside of laboratories, designing, supporting, and guiding educational innovation to see if our theories of learning are accurate, and useful to the challenges faced in schools and communities where learning is messy, collaborative, and contested. Through such a process, we learn, and can modify our theories to better serve the real needs of communities. It is from this impulse that qualitative design-based research (DBR) emerged as a new methodological paradigm for education research.

Qualitative design-based research will be examined, documenting its origins, the major tenets of the genre, implementation considerations, and methodological issues, as well as variance within the paradigm. As a relatively new methodology, much tension remains in what constitutes DBR, and what design should mean, and for whom. These tensions and questions, as well as broad perspectives and emergent iterations of the methodology, will be discussed, and considerations for researchers looking toward the future of this paradigm will be considered.

The Origins of Design-Based Research

Qualitative design-based research (DBR) first emerged in the learning sciences field among a group of scholars in the early 1990s, with the first articulation of DBR as a distinct methodological construct appearing in the work of Ann Brown ( 1992 ) and Allan Collins ( 1992 ). For learning scientists in the 1970s and 1980s, the traditional methodologies of laboratory experiments, ethnographies, and large-scale educational interventions were the only methods available. During these decades, a growing community of learning science and educational researchers (e.g., Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1989 ; Brown, Campione, Webber, & McGilley, 1992 ; Cobb & Steffe, 1983 ; Cole, 1995 ; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1991 ; Schoenfeld, 1982 , 1985 ; Scribner & Cole, 1978 ) interested in educational innovation and classroom interventions in situated contexts began to find the prevailing methodologies insufficient for the types of learning they wished to document, the roles they wished to play in research, and the kinds of knowledge claims they wished to explore. The laboratory, or laboratory-like settings, where research on learning was at the time happening, was divorced from the complexity of real life, and necessarily limiting. Alternatively, most ethnographic research, while more attuned to capturing these complexities and dynamics, regularly assumed a passive stance 1 and avoided interceding in the learning process, or allowing researchers to see what possibility for innovation existed from enacting nascent learning theories. Finally, large-scale interventions could test innovations in practice but lost sight of the nuance of development and implementation in local contexts (Brown, 1992 ; Collins, Joseph, & Bielaczyc, 2004 ).

Dissatisfied with these options, and recognizing that in order to study and understand learning in the messiness of socially, culturally, and historically situated settings, new methods were required, Brown ( 1992 ) proposed an alternative: Why not involve ourselves in the messiness of the process, taking an active, grounded role in disseminating our theories and expertise by becoming designers and implementers of educational innovations? Rather than observing from afar, DBR researchers could trace their own iterative processes of design, implementation, tinkering, redesign, and evaluation, as it unfolded in shared work with teachers, students, learners, and other partners in lived contexts. This premise, initially articulated as “design experiments” (Brown, 1992 ), would be variously discussed over the next decade as “design research,” (Edelson, 2002 ) “developmental research,” (Gravemeijer, 1994 ), and “design-based research,” (Design-Based Research Collective, 2003 ), all of which reflect the original, interventionist, design-oriented concept. The latter term, “design-based research” (DBR), is used here, recognizing this as the prevailing terminology used to refer to this research approach at present. 2

Regardless of the evolving moniker, the prospects of such a methodology were extremely attractive to researchers. Learning scientists acutely aware of various aspects of situated context, and interested in studying the applied outcomes of learning theories—a task of inquiry into situated learning for which canonical methods were rather insufficient—found DBR a welcome development (Bell, 2004 ). As Barab and Squire ( 2004 ) explain: “learning scientists . . . found that they must develop technological tools, curriculum, and especially theories that help them systematically understand and predict how learning occurs” (p. 2), and DBR methodologies allowed them to do this in proactive, hands-on ways. Thus, rather than emerging as a strict alternative to more traditional methodologies, DBR was proposed to fill a niche that other methodologies were ill-equipped to cover.

Effectively, while its development is indeed linked to an inherent critique of previous research paradigms, neither Brown nor Collins saw DBR in opposition to other forms of research. Rather, by providing a bridge from the laboratory to the real world, where learning theories and proposed innovations could interact and be implemented in the complexity of lived socio-ecological contexts (Hoadley, 2004 ), new possibilities emerged. Learning researchers might “trace the evolution of learning in complex, messy classrooms and schools, test and build theories of teaching and learning, and produce instructional tools that survive the challenges of everyday practice” (Shavelson, Phillips, Towne, & Feuer, 2003 , p. 25). Thus, DBR could complement the findings of laboratory, ethnographic, and large-scale studies, answering important questions about the implementation, sustainability, limitations, and usefulness of theories, interventions, and learning when introduced as innovative designs into situated contexts of learning. Moreover, while studies involving these traditional methodologies often concluded by pointing toward implications—insights subsequent studies would need to take up—DBR allowed researchers to address implications iteratively and directly. No subsequent research was necessary, as emerging implications could be reflexively explored in the context of the initial design, offering considerable insight into how research is translated into theory and practice.

Since its emergence in 1992 , DBR as a methodological approach to educational and learning research has quickly grown and evolved, used by researchers from a variety of intellectual traditions in the learning sciences, including developmental and cognitive psychology (e.g., Brown & Campione, 1996 , 1998 ; diSessa & Minstrell, 1998 ), cultural psychology (e.g., Cole, 1996 , 2007 ; Newman, Griffin, & Cole, 1989 ; Gutiérrez, Bien, Selland, & Pierce, 2011 ), cultural anthropology (e.g., Barab, Kinster, Moore, Cunningham, & the ILF Design Team, 2001 ; Polman, 2000 ; Stevens, 2000 ; Suchman, 1995 ), and cultural-historical activity theory (e.g., Engeström, 2011 ; Espinoza, 2009 ; Espinoza & Vossoughi, 2014 ; Gutiérrez, 2008 ; Sannino, 2011 ). Given this plurality of epistemological and theoretical fields that employ DBR, it might best be understood as a broad methodology of educational research, realized in many different, contested, heterogeneous, and distinct iterations, and engaging a variety of qualitative tools and methods (Bell, 2004 ). Despite tensions among these iterations, and substantial and important variances in the ways they employ design-as-research in community settings, there are several common, methodological threads that unite the broad array of research that might be classified as DBR under a shared, though pluralistic, paradigmatic umbrella.

The Tenets of Design-Based Research

Why design-based research.

As we turn to the core tenets of the design-based research (DBR) paradigm, it is worth considering an obvious question: Why use DBR as a methodology for educational research? To answer this, it is helpful to reflect on the original intentions for DBR, particularly, that it is not simply the study of a particular, isolated intervention. Rather, DBR methodologies were conceived of as the complete, iterative process of designing, modifying, and assessing the impact of an educational innovation in a contextual, situated learning environment (Barab & Kirshner, 2001 ; Brown, 1992 ; Cole & Engeström, 2007 ). The design process itself—inclusive of the theory of learning employed, the relationships among participants, contextual factors and constraints, the pedagogical approach, any particular intervention, as well as any changes made to various aspects of this broad design as it proceeds—is what is under study.

Considering this, DBR offers a compelling framework for the researcher interested in having an active and collaborative hand in designing for educational innovation, and interested in creating knowledge about how particular theories of learning, pedagogical or learning practices, or social arrangements function in a context of learning. It is a methodology that can put the researcher in the position of engineer , actively experimenting with aspects of learning and sociopolitical ecologies to arrive at new knowledge and productive outcomes, as Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, and Schauble ( 2003 ) explain:

Prototypically, design experiments entail both “engineering” particular forms of learning and systematically studying those forms of learning within the context defined by the means of supporting them. This designed context is subject to test and revision, and the successive iterations that result play a role similar to that of systematic variation in experiment. (p. 9)

This being said, how directive the engineering role the researcher takes on varies considerably among iterations of DBR. Indeed, recent approaches have argued strongly for researchers to take on more egalitarian positionalities with respect to the community partners with whom they work (e.g., Zavala, 2016 ), acting as collaborative designers, rather than authoritative engineers.

Method and Methodology in Design-Based Research

Now, having established why we might use DBR, a recurring question that has faced the DBR paradigm is whether DBR is a methodology at all. Given the variety of intellectual and ontological traditions that employ it, and thus the pluralism of methods used in DBR to enact the “engineering” role (whatever shape that may take) that the researcher assumes, it has been argued that DBR is not, in actuality a methodology at all (Kelly, 2004 ). The proliferation and diversity of approaches, methods, and types of analysis purporting to be DBR have been described as a lack of coherence that shows there is no “argumentative grammar” or methodology present in DBR (Kelly, 2004 ).

Now, the conclusions one will eventually draw in this debate will depend on one’s orientations and commitments, but it is useful to note that these demands for “coherence” emerge from previous paradigms in which methodology was largely marked by a shared, coherent toolkit for data collection and data analysis. These previous paradigmatic rules make for an odd fit when considering DBR. Yet, even if we proceed—within the qualitative tradition from which DBR emerges—defining methodology as an approach to research that is shaped by the ontological and epistemological commitments of the particular researcher, and methods as the tools for research, data collection, and analysis that are chosen by the researcher with respect to said commitments (Gutiérrez, Engeström, & Sannino, 2016 ), then a compelling case for DBR as a methodology can be made (Bell, 2004 ).

Effectively, despite the considerable variation in how DBR has been and is employed, and tensions within the DBR field, we might point to considerable, shared epistemic common ground among DBR researchers, all of whom are invested in an approach to research that involves engaging actively and iteratively in the design and exploration of learning theory in situated, natural contexts. This common epistemic ground, even in the face of pluralistic ideologies and choices of methods, invites in a new type of methodological coherence, marked by “intersubjectivity without agreement” (Matusov, 1996 ), that links DBR from traditional developmental and cognitive psychology models of DBR (e.g., Brown, 1992 ; Brown & Campione, 1998 ; Collins, 1992 ), to more recent critical and sociocultural manifestations (e.g., Bang & Vossoughi, 2016 ; Engeström, 2011 ; Gutiérrez, 2016 ), and everything in between.

Put in other terms, even as DBR researchers may choose heterogeneous methods for data collection, data analysis, and reporting results complementary to the ideological and sociopolitical commitments of the particular researcher and the types of research questions that are under examination (Bell, 2004 ), a shared epistemic commitment gives the methodology shape. Indeed, the common commitment toward design innovation emerges clearly across examples of DBR methodological studies ranging in method from ethnographic analyses (Salvador, Bell, & Anderson, 1999 ) to studies of critical discourse within a design (Kärkkäinen, 1999 ), to focused examinations of metacognition of individual learners (White & Frederiksen, 1998 ), and beyond. Rather than indicating a lack of methodology, or methodological weakness, the use of varying qualitative methods for framing data collection and retrospective analyses within DBR, and the tensions within the epistemic common ground itself, simply reflects the scope of its utility. Learning in context is complex, contested, and messy, and the plurality of methods present across DBR allow researchers to dynamically respond to context as needed, employing the tools that fit best to consider the questions that are present, or may arise.

All this being the case, it is useful to look toward the coherent elements—the “argumentative grammar” of DBR, if you will—that can be identified across the varied iterations of DBR. Understanding these shared features, in the context and terms of the methodology itself, help us to appreciate what is involved in developing robust and thorough DBR research, and how DBR seeks to make strong, meaningful claims around the types of research questions it takes up.

Coherent Features of Design-Based Research

Several scholars have provided comprehensive overviews and listings of what they see as the cross-cutting features of DBR, both in the context of more traditional models of DBR (e.g., Cobb et al., 2003 ; Design-Based Research Collective, 2003 ), and in regards to newer iterations (e.g., Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016 ; Bang & Vossoughi, 2016 ). Rather than try to offer an overview of each of these increasingly pluralistic classifications, the intent here is to attend to three broad elements that are shared across articulations of DBR and reflect the essential elements that constitute the methodological approach DBR offers to educational researchers.

Design research is concerned with the development, testing, and evolution of learning theory in situated contexts

This first element is perhaps most central to what DBR of all types is, anchored in what Brown ( 1992 ) was initially most interested in: testing the pragmatic validity of theories of learning by designing interventions that engaged with, or proposed, entire, naturalistic, ecologies of learning. Put another way, while DBR studies may have various units of analysis, focuses, and variables, and may organize learning in many different ways, it is the theoretically informed design for educational innovation that is most centrally under evaluation. DBR actively and centrally exists as a paradigm that is engaged in the development of theory, not just the evaluation of aspects of its usage (Bell, 2004 ; Design-Based Research Collective, 2003 ; Lesh & Kelly, 2000 ; van den Akker, 1999 ).

Effectively, where DBR is taking place, theory as a lived possibility is under examination. Specifically, in most DBR, this means a focus on “intermediate-level” theories of learning, rather than “grand” ones. In essence, DBR does not contend directly with “grand” learning theories (such as developmental or sociocultural theory writ large) (diSessa, 1991 ). Rather, DBR seeks to offer constructive insights by directly engaging with particular learning processes that flow from these theories on a “grounded,” “intermediate” level. This is not, however, to say DBR is limited in what knowledge it can produce; rather, tinkering in this “intermediate” realm can produce knowledge that informs the “grand” theory (Gravemeijer, 1994 ). For example, while cognitive and motivational psychology provide “grand” theoretical frames, interest-driven learning (IDL) is an “intermediate” theory that flows from these and can be explored in DBR to both inform the development of IDL designs in practice and inform cognitive and motivational psychology more broadly (Joseph, 2004 ).

Crucially, however, DBR entails putting the theory in question under intense scrutiny, or, “into harm’s way” (Cobb et al., 2003 ). This is an especially core element to DBR, and one that distinguishes it from the proliferation of educational-reform or educational-entrepreneurship efforts that similarly take up the discourse of “design” and “innovation.” Not only is the reflexive, often participatory element of DBR absent from such efforts—that is, questioning and modifying the design to suit the learning needs of the context and partners—but the theory driving these efforts is never in question, and in many cases, may be actively obscured. Indeed, it is more common to see educational-entrepreneur design innovations seek to modify a context—such as the way charter schools engage in selective pupil recruitment and intensive disciplinary practices (e.g., Carnoy et al., 2005 ; Ravitch, 2010 ; Saltman, 2007 )—rather than modify their design itself, and thus allow for humility in their theory. Such “innovations” and “design” efforts are distinct from DBR, which must, in the spirit of scientific inquiry, be willing to see the learning theory flail and struggle, be modified, and evolve.

This growth and evolution of theory and knowledge is of course central to DBR as a rigorous research paradigm; moving it beyond simply the design of local educational programs, interventions, or innovations. As Barab and Squire ( 2004 ) explain:

Design-based research requires more than simply showing a particular design works but demands that the researcher (move beyond a particular design exemplar to) generate evidence-based claims about learning that address contemporary theoretical issues and further the theoretical knowledge of the field. (pp. 5–6)

DBR as a research paradigm offers a design process through which theories of learning can be tested; they can be modified, and by allowing them to operate with humility in situated conditions, new insights and knowledge, even new theories, may emerge that might inform the field, as well as the efforts and directions of other types of research inquiry. These productive, theory-developing outcomes, or “ontological innovations” (diSessa & Cobb, 2004 ), represent the culmination of an effective program of DBR—the production of new ways to understand, conceptualize, and enact learning as a lived, contextual process.

Design research works to understand learning processes, and the design that supports them in situated contexts

As a research methodology that operates by tinkering with “grounded” learning theories, DBR is itself grounded, and seeks to develop its knowledge claims and designs in naturalistic, situated contexts (Brown, 1992 ). This is, again, a distinguishing element of DBR—setting it apart from laboratory research efforts involving design and interventions in closed, controlled environments. Rather than attempting to focus on singular variables, and isolate these from others, DBR is concerned with the multitude of variables that naturally occur across entire learning ecologies, and present themselves in distinct ways across multiple planes of possible examination (Rogoff, 1995 ; Collins, Joseph, & Bielaczyc, 2004 ). Certainly, specific variables may be identified as dependent, focal units of analysis, but identifying (while not controlling for) the variables beyond these, and analyzing their impact on the design and learning outcomes, is an equally important process in DBR (Collins et al., 2004 ; Barab & Kirshner, 2001 ). In practice, this of course varies across iterations in its depth and breadth. Traditional models of developmental or cognitive DBR may look to account for the complexity and nuance of a setting’s social, developmental, institutional, and intellectual characteristics (e.g., Brown, 1992 ; Cobb et al., 2003 ), while more recent, critical iterations will give increased attention to how historicity, power, intersubjectivity, and culture, among other things, influence and shape a setting, and the learning that occurs within it (e.g., Gutiérrez, 2016 ; Vakil, de Royston, Nasir, & Kirshner, 2016 ).

Beyond these variations, what counts as “design” in DBR varies widely, and so too will what counts as a naturalistic setting. It has been well documented that learning occurs all the time, every day, and in every space imaginable, both formal and informal (Leander, Phillips, & Taylor, 2010 ), and in ways that span strictly defined setting boundaries (Engeström, Engeström, & Kärkkäinen, 1995 ). DBR may take place in any number of contexts, based on the types of questions asked, and the learning theories and processes that a researcher may be interested in exploring. DBR may involve one-to-one tutoring and learning settings, single classrooms, community spaces, entire institutions, or even holistically designed ecologies (Design-Based Research Collective, 2003 ; Engeström, 2008 ; Virkkunen & Newnham, 2013 ). In all these cases, even the most completely designed experimental ecology, the setting remains naturalistic and situated because DBR actively embraces the uncontrollable variables that participants bring with them to the learning process for and from their situated worlds, lives, and experiences—no effort is made to control for these complicated influences of life, simply to understand how they operate in a given ecology as innovation is attempted. Thus, the extent of the design reflects a broader range of qualitative and theoretical study, rather than an attempt to control or isolate some particular learning process from outside influence.

While there is much variety in what design may entail, where DBR takes place, what types of learning ecologies are under examination, and what methods are used, situated ecologies are always the setting of this work. In this way, conscious of naturalistic variables, and the influences that culture, historicity, participation, and context have on learning, researchers can use DBR to build on prior research, and extend knowledge around the learning that occurs in the complexity of situated contexts and lived practices (Collins et al., 2004 ).

Design based research is iterative; it changes, grows, and evolves to meet the needs and emergent questions of the context, and this tinkering process is part of the research

The final shared element undergirding models of DBR is that it is an iterative, active, and interventionist process, interested in and focused on producing educational innovation by actually and actively putting design innovations into practice (Brown, 1992 , Collins, 1992 ; Gutiérrez, 2008 ). Given this interventionist, active stance, tinkering with the design and the theory of learning informing the design is as much a part of the research process as the outcome of the intervention or innovation itself—we learn what impacts learning as much, if not more, than we learn what was learned. In this sense, DBR involves a focus on analyzing the theory-driven design itself, and its implementation as an object of study (Edelson, 2002 ; Penuel, Fishman, Cheng, & Sabelli, 2011 ), and is ultimately interested in the improvement of the design—of how it unfolds, how it shifts, how it is modified, and made to function productively for participants in their contexts and given their needs (Kirshner & Polman, 2013 ).

While DBR is iterative and contextual as a foundational methodological principle, what this means varies across conceptions of DBR. For instance, in more traditional models, Brown and Campione ( 1996 ) pointed out the dangers of “lethal mutation” in which a design, introduced into a context, may become so warped by the influence, pressures, incomplete implementation, or misunderstanding of participants in the local context, that it no longer reflects or tests the theory under study. In short, a theory-driven intervention may be put in place, and then subsumed to such a degree by participants based on their understanding and needs, that it remains the original innovative design in name alone. The assertion here is that in these cases, the research ceases to be DBR in the sense that the design is no longer central, actively shaping learning. We cannot, they argue, analyze a design—and the theory it was meant to reflect—as an object of study when it has been “mutated,” and it is merely a banner under which participants are enacting their idiosyncratic, pragmatic needs.

While the ways in which settings and individuals might disrupt designs intended to produce robust learning is certainly a tension to be cautious of in DBR, it is also worth noting that in many critical approaches to DBR, such mutations—whether “lethal” to the original design or not—are seen as compelling and important moments. Here, where collaboration and community input is more central to the design process, iterative is understood differently. Thus, a “mutation” becomes a point where reflexivity, tension, and contradiction might open the door for change, for new designs, for reconsiderations of researcher and collaborative partner positionalities, or for ethnographic exploration into how a context takes up, shapes, and ultimately engages innovations in a particular sociocultural setting. In short, accounting for and documenting changes in design is a vital part of the DBR process, allowing researchers to respond to context in a variety of ways, always striving for their theories and designs to act with humility, and in the interest of usefulness .

With this in mind, the iterative nature of DBR means that the relationships researchers have with other design partners (educators and learners) in the ecology are incredibly important, and vital to consider (Bang et al., 2016 ; Engeström, 2007 ; Engeström, Sannino, & Virkkunen, 2014 ). Different iterations of DBR might occur in ways in which the researcher is more or less intimately involved in the design and implementation process, both in terms of actual presence and intellectual ownership of the design. Regarding the former, in some cases, a researcher may hand a design off to others to implement, periodically studying and modifying it, while in other contexts or designs, the researcher may be actively involved, tinkering in every detail of the implementation and enactment of the design. With regard to the latter, DBR might similarly range from a somewhat prescribed model, in which the researcher is responsible for the original design, and any modifications that may occur based on their analyses, without significant input from participants (e.g., Collins et al., 2004 ), to incredibly participatory models, in which all parties (researchers, educators, learners) are part of each step of the design-creation, modification, and research process (e.g., Bang, Faber, Gurneau, Marin, & Soto, 2016 ; Kirshner, 2015 ).

Considering the wide range of ideological approaches and models for DBR, we might acknowledge that DBR can be gainfully conducted through many iterations of “openness” to the design process. However, the strength of the research—focused on analyzing the design itself as a unit of study reflective of learning theory—will be bolstered by thoughtfully accounting for how involved the researcher will be, and how open to participation the modification process is. These answers should match the types of questions, and conceptual or ideological framing, with which researchers approach DBR, allowing them to tinker with the process of learning as they build on prior research to extend knowledge and test theory (Barab & Kirshner, 2001 ), while thoughtfully documenting these changes in the design as they go.

Implementation and Research Design

As with the overarching principles of design-based research (DBR), even amid the pluralism of conceptual frameworks of DBR researchers, it is possible, and useful, to trace the shared contours in how DBR research design is implemented. Though texts provide particular road maps for undertaking various iterations of DBR consistent with the specific goals, types of questions, and ideological orientations of these scholarly communities (e.g., Cole & Engeström, 2007 ; Collins, Joseph, & Bielaczyc, 2004 ; Fishman, Penuel, Allen, Cheng, & Sabelli, 2013 ; Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016 ; Virkkunen & Newnham, 2013 ), certain elements, realized differently, can be found across all of these models, and may be encapsulated in five broad methodological phases.

Considering the Design Focus

DBR begins by considering what the focus of the design, the situated context, and the units of analysis for research will be. Prospective DBR researchers will need to consider broader research in regard to the “grand” theory of learning with which they work to determine what theoretical questions they have, or identify “intermediate” aspects of the theories that might be studied and strengthened by a design process in situated contexts, and what planes of analysis (Rogoff, 1995 ) will be most suitable for examination. This process allows for the identification of the critical theoretical elements of a design, and articulation of initial research questions.

Given the conceptual framework, theoretical and research questions, and sociopolitical interests at play, researchers may undertake this, and subsequent steps in the process, on their own, or in close collaboration with the communities and individuals in the situated contexts in which the design will unfold. As such, across iterations of DBR, and with respect to the ways DBR researchers choose to engage with communities, the origin of the design will vary, and might begin in some cases with theoretical questions, or arise in others as a problem of practice (Coburn & Penuel, 2016 ), though as has been noted, in either case, theory and practice are necessarily linked in the research.

Creating and Implementing a Designed Innovation

From the consideration and identification of the critical elements, planned units of analysis, and research questions that will drive a design, researchers can then actively create (either on their own or in conjunction with potential design partners) a designed intervention reflecting these critical elements, and the overarching theory.

Here, the DBR researcher should consider what partners exist in the process and what ownership exists around these partnerships, determine exactly what the pragmatic features of the intervention/design will be and who will be responsible for them, and consider when checkpoints for modification and evaluation will be undertaken, and by whom. Additionally, researchers should at this stage consider questions of timeline and of recruiting participants, as well as what research materials will be needed to adequately document the design, its implementation, and its outcomes, and how and where collected data will be stored.

Once a design (the planned, theory-informed innovative intervention) has been produced, the DBR researcher and partners can begin the implementation process, putting the design into place and beginning data collection and documentation.

Assessing the Impact of the Design on the Learning Ecology

Chronologically, the next two methodological steps happen recursively in the iterative process of DBR. The researcher must assess the impact of the design, and then, make modifications as necessary, before continuing to assess the impact of these modifications. In short, these next two steps are a cycle that continues across the life and length of the research design.

Once a design has been created and implemented, the researcher begins to observe and document the learning, the ecology, and the design itself. Guided by and in conversation with the theory and critical elements, the researcher should periodically engage in ongoing data analysis, assessing the success of the design, and of learning, paying equal attention to the design itself, and how its implementation is working in the situated ecology.

Within the realm of qualitative research, measuring or assessing variables of learning and assessing the design may look vastly different, require vastly different data-collection and data-analysis tools, and involve vastly different research methods among different researchers.

Modifying the Design

Modification, based on ongoing assessment of the design, is what makes DBR iterative, helping the researcher extend the field’s knowledge about the theory, design, learning, and the context under examination.

Modification of the design can take many forms, from complete changes in approach or curriculum, to introducing an additional tool or mediating artifact into a learning ecology. Moreover, how modification unfolds involves careful reflection from the researcher and any co-designing participants, deciding whether modification will be an ongoing, reflexive, tinkering process, or if it will occur only at predefined checkpoints, after formal evaluation and assessment. Questions of ownership, issues of resource availability, technical support, feasibility, and communication are all central to the work of design modification, and answers will vary given the research questions, design parameters, and researchers’ epistemic commitments.

Each moment of modification indicates a new phase in a DBR project, and a new round of assessing—through data analysis—the impact of the design on the learning ecology, either to guide continued or further modification, report the results of the design, or in some cases, both.

Reporting the Results of the Design

The final step in DBR methodology is to report on the results of the designed intervention, how it contributed to understandings of theory, and how it impacted the local learning ecology or context. The format, genre, and final data analysis methods used in reporting data and research results will vary across iterations of DBR. However, it is largely understood that to avoid methodological confusion, DBR researchers should clearly situate themselves in the DBR paradigm by clearly describing and detailing the design itself; articulating the theory, central elements, and units of analysis under scrutiny, what modifications occurred and what precipitated these changes, and what local effects were observed; and exploring any potential contributions to learning theory, while accounting for the context and their interventionist role and positionality in the design. As such, careful documentation of pragmatic and design decisions for retrospective data analysis, as well as research findings, should be done at each stage of this implementation process.

Methodological Issues in the Design-Based Research Paradigm

Because of its pluralistic nature, its interventionist, nontraditional stance, and the fact that it remains in its conceptual infancy, design-based research (DBR) is replete with ongoing methodological questions and challenges, both from external and internal sources. While there are many more that may exist, addressed will be several of the most pressing the prospective DBR researcher may encounter, or want to consider in understanding the paradigm and beginning a research design.

Challenges to Rigor and Validity

Perhaps the place to begin this reflection on tensions in the DBR paradigm is the recurrent and ongoing challenge to the rigor and validity of DBR, which has asked: Is DBR research at all? Given the interventionist and activist way in which DBR invites the researcher to participate, and the shift in orientation from long-accepted research paradigms, such critiques are hardly surprising, and fall in line with broader challenges to the rigor and objectivity of qualitative social science research in general. Historically, such complaints about DBR are linked to decades of critique of any research that does not adhere to the post-positivist approach set out as the U.S. Department of Education began to prioritize laboratory and large-scale randomized control-trial experimentation as the “gold standard” of research design (e.g., Mosteller & Boruch, 2002 ).

From the outset, DBR, as an interventionist, local, situated, non-laboratory methodology, was bound to run afoul of such conservative trends. While some researchers involved in (particularly traditional developmental and cognitive) DBR have found broader acceptance within these constraints, the rigor of DBR remains contested. It has been suggested that DBR is under-theorized and over-methologized, a haphazard way for researchers to do activist work without engaging in the development of robust knowledge claims about learning (Dede, 2004 ), and an approach lacking in coherence that sheltered interventionist projects of little impact to developing learning theory and allowed researchers to make subjective, pet claims through selective analysis of large bodies of collected data (Kelly, 2003 , 2004 ).

These critiques, however, impose an external set of criteria on DBR, desiring it to fit into the molds of rigor and coherence as defined by canonical methodologies. Bell ( 2004 ) and Bang and Vossoughi ( 2016 ) have made compelling cases for the wide variety of methods and approaches present in DBR not as a fracturing, but as a generative proliferation of different iterations that can offer powerful insights around the different types of questions that exist about learning in the infinitely diverse settings in which it occurs. Essentially, researchers have argued that within the DBR paradigm, and indeed within educational research more generally, the practical impact of research on learning, context, and practices should be a necessary component of rigor (Gutiérrez & Penuel, 2014 ), and the pluralism of methods and approaches available in DBR ensures that the practical impacts and needs of the varied contexts in which the research takes place will always drive the design and research tools.

These moves are emblematic of the way in which DBR is innovating and pushing on paradigms of rigor in educational research altogether, reflecting how DBR fills a complementary niche with respect to other methodologies and attends to elements and challenges of learning in lived, real environments that other types of research have consistently and historically missed. Beyond this, Brown ( 1992 ) was conscious of the concerns around data collection, validity, rigor, and objectivity from the outset, identifying this dilemma—the likelihood of having an incredible amount of data collected in a design only a small fraction of which can be reported and shared, thus leading potentially to selective data analysis and use—as the Bartlett Effect (Brown, 1992 ). Since that time, DBR researchers have been aware of this challenge, actively seeking ways to mitigate this threat to validity by making data sets broadly available, documenting their design, tinkering, and modification processes, clearly situating and describing disconfirming evidence and their own position in the research, and otherwise presenting the broad scope of human and learning activity that occurs within designs in large learning ecologies as comprehensively as possible.

Ultimately, however, these responses are likely to always be insufficient as evidence of rigor to some, for the root dilemma is around what “counts” as education science. While researchers interested and engaged in DBR ought rightly to continue to push themselves to ensure the methodological rigor of their work and chosen methods, it is also worth noting that DBR should seek to hold itself to its own criteria of assessment. This reflects broader trends in qualitative educational research that push back on narrow constructions of what “counts” as science, recognizing the ways in which new methodologies and approaches to research can help us examine aspects of learning, culture, and equity that have continued to be blind spots for traditional education research; invite new voices and perspectives into the process of achieving rigor and validity (Erickson & Gutiérrez, 2002 ); bolster objectivity by bringing it into conversation with the positionality of the researcher (Harding, 1993 ); and perhaps most important, engage in axiological innovation (Bang, Faber, Gurneau, Marin, & Soto, 2016 ), or the exploration of and design for what is, “good right, true, and beautiful . . . in cultural ecologies” (p. 2).

Questions of Generalizability and Usefulness

The generalizability of research results in DBR has been an ongoing and contentious issue in the development of the paradigm. Indeed, by the standards of canonical methods (e.g., laboratory experimentation, ethnography), these local, situated interventions should lack generalizability. While there is reason to discuss and question the merit of generalizability as a goal of qualitative research at all, researchers in the DBR paradigm have long been conscious of this issue. Understanding the question of generalizability around DBR, and how the paradigm has responded to it, can be done in two ways.

First, by distinguishing questions specific to a particular design from the generalizability of the theory. Cole’s (Cole & Underwood, 2013 ) 5th Dimension work, and the nationwide network of linked, theoretically similar sites, operating nationwide with vastly different designs, is a powerful example of this approach to generalizability. Rather than focus on a single, unitary, potentially generalizable design, the project is more interested in variability and sustainability of designs across local contexts (e.g., Cole, 1995 ; Gutiérrez, Bien, Selland, & Pierce, 2011 ; Jurow, Tracy, Hotchkiss, & Kirshner, 2012 ). Through attention to sustainable, locally effective innovations, conscious of the wide variation in culture and context that accompanies any and all learning processes, 5th Dimension sites each derive their idiosyncratic structures from sociocultural theory, sharing some elements, but varying others, while seeking their own “ontological innovations” based on the affordances of their contexts. This pattern reflects a key element of much of the DBR paradigm: that questions of generalizability in DBR may be about the generalizability of the theory of learning, and the variability of learning and design in distinct contexts, rather than the particular design itself.

A second means of addressing generalizability in DBR has been to embrace the pragmatic impacts of designing innovations. This response stems from Messick ( 1992 ) and Schoenfeld’s ( 1992 ) arguments early on in the development of DBR that the consequentialness and validity of DBR efforts as potentially generalizable research depend on the “ usefulness ” of the theories and designs that emerge. Effectively, because DBR is the examination of situated theory, a design must be able to show pragmatic impact—it must succeed at showing the theory to be useful . If there is evidence of usefulness to both the context in which it takes place, and the field of educational research more broadly, then the DBR researcher can stake some broader knowledge claims that might be generalizable. As a result, the DBR paradigm tends to “treat changes in [local] contexts as necessary evidence for the viability of a theory” (Barab & Squire, 2004 , p. 6). This of course does not mean that DBR is only interested in successful efforts. A design that fails or struggles can provide important information and knowledge to the field. Ultimately, though, DBR tends to privilege work that proves the usefulness of designs, whose pragmatic or theoretical findings can then be generalized within the learning science and education research fields.

With this said, the question of usefulness is not always straightforward, and is hardly unitary. While many DBR efforts—particularly those situated in developmental and cognitive learning science traditions—are interested in the generalizability of their useful educational designs (Barab & Squire, 2004 ; Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, & Schauble, 2003 ; Joseph, 2004 ; Steffe & Thompson, 2000 ), not all are. Critical DBR researchers have noted that if usefulness remains situated in the extant sociopolitical and sociocultural power-structures—dominant conceptual and popular definitions of what useful educational outcomes are—the result will be a bar for research merit that inexorably bends toward the positivist spectrum (Booker & Goldman, 2016 ; Dominguez, 2015 ; Zavala, 2016 ). This could potentially, and likely, result in excluding the non-normative interventions and innovations that are vital for historically marginalized communities, but which might have vastly different-looking outcomes, that are nonetheless useful in the sociopolitical context they occur in. Alternative framings to this idea of usefulness push on and extend the intention, and seek to involve the perspectives and agency of situated community partners and their practices in what “counts” as generative and rigorous research outcomes (Gutiérrez & Penuel, 2014 ). An example in this regard is the idea of consequential knowledge (Hall & Jurow, 2015 ; Jurow & Shea, 2015 ), which suggests outcomes that are consequential will be taken up by participants in and across their networks, and over-time—thus a goal of consequential knowledge certainly meets the standard of being useful , but it also implicates the needs and agency of communities in determining the success and merit of a design or research endeavor in important ways that strict usefulness may miss.

Thus, the bar of usefulness that characterizes the DBR paradigm should not be approached without critical reflection. Certainly designs that accomplish little for local contexts should be subject to intense questioning and critique, but considering the sociopolitical and systemic factors that might influence what “counts” as useful in local contexts and education science more generally, should be kept firmly in mind when designing, choosing methods, and evaluating impacts (Zavala, 2016 ). Researchers should think deeply about their goals, whether they are reaching for generalizability at all, and in what ways they are constructing contextual definitions of success, and be clear about these ideologically influenced answers in their work, such that generalizability and the usefulness of designs can be adjudicated based on and in conversation with the intentions and conceptual framework of the research and researcher.

Ethical Concerns of Sustainability, Participation, and Telos

While there are many external challenges to rigor and validity of DBR, another set of tensions comes from within the DBR paradigm itself. Rather than concerns about rigor or validity, these internal critiques are not unrelated to the earlier question of the contested definition of usefulness , and more accurately reflect questions of research ethics and grow from ideological concerns with how an intentional, interventionist stance is taken up in research as it interacts with situated communities.

Given that the nature of DBR is to design and implement some form of educational innovation, the DBR researcher will in some way be engaging with an individual or community, becoming part of a situated learning ecology, complete with a sociopolitical and cultural history. As with any research that involves providing an intervention or support, the question of what happens when the research ends is as much an ethical as a methodological one. Concerns then arise given how traditional models of DBR seem intensely focused on creating and implementing a “complete” cycle of design, but giving little attention to what happens to the community and context afterward (Engeström, 2011 ). In contrast to this privileging of “completeness,” sociocultural and critical approaches to DBR have suggested that if research is actually happening in naturalistic, situated contexts that authentically recognize and allow social and cultural dimensions to function (i.e., avoid laboratory-type controls to mitigate independent variables), there can never be such a thing as “complete,” for the design will, and should, live on as part of the ecology of the space (Cole, 2007 ; Engeström, 2000 ). Essentially, these internal critiques push DBR to consider sustainability, and sustainable scale, as equally important concerns to the completeness of an innovation. Not only are ethical questions involved, but accounting for the unbounded and ongoing nature of learning as a social and cultural activity can help strengthen the viability of knowledge claims made, and what degree of generalizability is reasonably justified.

Related to this question of sustainability are internal concerns regarding the nature and ethics of participation in DBR, whether partners in a design are being adequately invited to engage in the design and modification processes that will unfold in their situated contexts and lived communities (Bang et al., 2016 ; Engeström, 2011 ). DBR has actively sought to examine multiple planes of analysis in learning that might be occurring in a learning ecology but has rarely attended to the subject-subject dynamics (Bang et al., 2016 ), or “relational equity” (DiGiacomo & Gutiérrez, 2015 ) that exists between researchers and participants as a point of focus. Participatory design research (PDR) (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016 ) models have recently emerged as a way to better attend to these important dimensions of collective participation (Engeström, 2007 ), power (Vakil et al., 2016 ), positionality (Kirshner, 2015 ), and relational agency (Edwards, 2007 , 2009 ; Sannino & Engeström, 2016 ) as they unfold in DBR.

Both of these ethical questions—around sustainability and participation—reflect challenges to what we might call the telos —or direction—that DBR takes to innovation and research. These are questions related to whose voices are privileged, in what ways, for what purposes, and toward what ends. While DBR, like many other forms of educational research, has involved work with historically marginalized communities, it has, like many other forms of educational research, not always done so in humanizing ways. Put another way, there are ethical and political questions surrounding whether the designs, goals, and standards of usefulness we apply to DBR efforts should be purposefully activist, and have explicitly liberatory ends. To this point, critical and decolonial perspectives have pushed on the DBR paradigm, suggesting that DBR should situate itself as being a space of liberatory innovation and potential, in which communities and participants can become designers and innovators of their own futures (Gutiérrez, 2005 ). This perspective is reflected in the social design experiment (SDE) approach to DBR (Gutiérrez, 2005 , 2008 ; Gutierréz & Vossoughi, 2010 ; Gutiérrez, 2016 ; Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016 ), which begins in participatory fashion, engaging a community in identifying its own challenges and desires, and reflecting on the historicity of learning practices, before proleptic design efforts are undertaken that ensure that research is done with , not on , communities of color (Arzubiaga, Artiles, King, & Harris-Murri, 2008 ), and intentionally focused on liberatory goals.

Global Perspectives and Unique Iterations

While design-based research (DBR) has been a methodology principally associated with educational research in the United States, its development is hardly limited to the U.S. context. Rather, while DBR emerged in U.S. settings, similar methods of situated, interventionist research focused on design and innovation were emerging in parallel in European contexts (e.g., Gravemeijer, 1994 ), most significantly in the work of Vygotskian scholars both in Europe and the United States (Cole, 1995 ; Cole & Engeström, 1993 , 2007 ; Engeström, 1987 ).

Particularly, where DBR began in the epistemic and ontological terrain of developmental and cognitive psychology, this vein of design-based research work began deeply grounded in cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). This ontological and epistemic grounding meant that the approach to design that was taken was more intensively conscious of context, historicity, hybridity, and relational factors, and framed around understanding learning as a complex, collective activity system that, through design, could be modified and transformed (Cole & Engeström, 2007 ). The models of DBR that emerged in this context abroad were the formative intervention (Engeström, 2011 ; Engeström, Sannino, & Virkkunen, 2014 ), which relies heavily on Vygotskian double-stimulation to approach learning in nonlinear, unbounded ways, accounting for the role of learner, educator, and researcher in a collective process, shifting and evolving and tinkering with the design as the context needs and demands; and the Change Laboratory (Engeström, 2008 ; Virkkunen & Newnham, 2013 ), which similarly relies on the principle of double stimulation, while presenting holistic way to approach transforming—or changing—entire learning activity systems in fundamental ways through designs that encourage collective “expansive learning” (Engeström, 2001 ), through which participants can produce wholly new activity systems as the object of learning itself.

Elsewhere in the United States, still parallel to the developmental- or cognitive-oriented DBR work that was occurring, American researchers employing CHAT began to leverage the tools and aims of expansive learning in conversation with the tensions and complexity of the U.S. context (Cole, 1995 ; Gutiérrez, 2005 ; Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003 ). Like the CHAT design research of the European context, there was a focus on activity systems, historicity, nonlinear and unbounded learning, and collective learning processes and outcomes. Rather than a simple replication, however, these researchers put further attention on questions of equity, diversity, and justice in this work, as Gutiérrez, Engeström, and Sannino ( 2016 ) note:

The American contribution to a cultural historical activity theoretic perspective has been its attention to diversity, including how we theorize, examine, and represent individuals and their communities. (p. 276)

Effectively, CHAT scholars in parts of the United States brought critical and decolonial perspectives to bear on their design-focused research, focusing explicitly on the complex cultural, racial, and ethnic terrain in which they worked, and ensuring that diversity, equity, justice, and non-dominant perspectives would become central principles to the types of design research conducted. The result was the emergence of the aforementioned social design experiments (e.g., Gutiérrez, 2005 , 2016 ), and participatory design research (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016 ) models, which attend intentionally to historicity and relational equity, tailor their methods to the liberation of historically marginalized communities, aim intentionally for liberatory outcomes as key elements of their design processes, and seek to produce outcomes in which communities of learners become designers of new community futures (Gutiérrez, 2016 ). While these approaches emerged in the United States, their origins reflect ontological and ideological perspectives quite distinct from more traditional learning science models of DBR, and dominant U.S. ontologies in general. Indeed, these iterations of DBR are linked genealogically to the ontologies, ideologies, and concerns of peoples in the Global South, offering some promise for the method in those regions, though DBR has yet to broadly take hold among researchers beyond the United States and Europe.

There is, of course, much more nuance to these models, and each of these models (formative interventions, Change Laboratories, social design experiments, and participatory design research) might itself merit independent exploration and review well beyond the scope here. Indeed, there is some question as to whether all adherents of these CHAT design-based methodologies, with their unique genealogies and histories, would even consider themselves under the umbrella of DBR. Yet, despite significant ontological divergences, these iterations share many of the same foundational tenets of the traditional models (though realized differently), and it is reasonable to argue that they do indeed share the same, broad methodological paradigm (DBR), or at the very least, are so intimately related that any discussion of DBR, particularly one with a global view, should consider the contributions CHAT iterations have made to the DBR methodology in the course of their somewhat distinct, but parallel, development.

Possibilities and Potentials for Design-Based Research

Since its emergence in 1992 , the DBR methodology for educational research has continued to grow in popularity, ubiquity, and significance. Its use has begun to expand beyond the confines of the learning sciences, taken up by researchers in a variety of disciplines, and across a breadth of theoretical and intellectual traditions. While still not as widely recognized as more traditional and well-established research methodologies, DBR as a methodology for rigorous research is unquestionably here to stay.

With this in mind, the field ought to still be cautious of the ways in which the discourse of design is used. Not all design is DBR, and preserving the integrity, rigor, and research ethics of the paradigm (on its own terms) will continue to require thoughtful reflection as its pluralistic parameters come into clearer focus. Yet the proliferation of methods in the DBR paradigm should be seen as a positive. There are far too many theories of learning and ideological perspectives that have meaningful contributions to make to our knowledge of the world, communities, and learning to limit ourselves to a unitary approach to DBR, or set of methods. The paradigm has shown itself to have some core methodological principles, but there is no reason not to expect these to grow, expand, and evolve over time.

In an increasingly globalized, culturally diverse, and dynamic world, there is tremendous potential for innovation couched in this proliferation of DBR. Particularly in historically marginalized communities and across the Global South, we will need to know how learning theories can be lived out in productive ways in communities that have been understudied, and under-engaged. The DBR paradigm generally, and critical and CHAT iterations particularly, can fill an important need for participatory, theory-developing research in these contexts that simultaneously creates lived impacts. Participatory design research (PDR), social design experiments (SDE), and Change Laboratory models of DBR should be of particular interest and attention moving forward, as current trends toward culturally sustaining pedagogies and learning will need to be explored in depth and in close collaboration with communities, as participatory design partners, in the press toward liberatory educational innovations.

Bibliography

The following special issues of journals are encouraged starting points for engaging more deeply with current and past trends in design-based research.

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1. The reader should note the emergence of critical ethnography (e.g., Carspecken, 1996 ; Fine, 1994 ), and other more participatory models of ethnography that deviated from this traditional paradigm during this same time period. These new forms of ethnography comprised part of the genealogy of the more critical approaches to DBR, described later in this article.

2. The reader will also note that the adjective “qualitative” largely drops away from the acronym “DBR.” This is largely because, as described, DBR, as an exploration of naturalistic ecologies with multitudes of variables, and social and learning dynamics, necessarily demands a move beyond what can be captured by quantitative measurement alone. The qualitative nature of the research is thus implied and embedded as part of what makes DBR a unique and distinct methodology.

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What is qualitative research?

"Qualitative research is a type of research that explores and provides deeper insights into real-world problems. [1]  Instead of collecting numerical data points or intervene or introduce treatments just like in quantitative research, qualitative research helps generate hypotheses as well as further investigate and understand quantitative data."

"Qualitative research at its core, ask open-ended questions whose answers are not easily put into numbers such as ‘how’ and ‘why’. [2]  Due to the open-ended nature of the research questions at hand, qualitative research design is often not linear in the same way quantitative design is. [2]  One of the strengths of qualitative research is its ability to explain processes and patterns of human behavior that can be difficult to quantify. [3]  Phenomena such as experiences, attitudes, and behaviors can be difficult to accurately capture quantitatively, whereas a qualitative approach allows participants themselves to explain how, why, or what they were thinking, feeling, and experiencing at a certain time or during an event of interest."

• Qualitative Study - Steven Tenny; Grace D. Brannan; Janelle M. Brannan; Nancy C. Sharts-Hopko. This article details what qualitative research is, and some of the methodologies used.

Examples of Qualitative Research

• Quantitative vs Qualitative Chart Chart showing examples of quantitative vs. qualitative research.

EBooks on Qualitative Research Methodology

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• What are qualitative research designs?

Qualitative research designs are research methods that collect and analyze non-numerical data. The research uncovers why or how a particular behavior or occurrence takes place. The information is usually subjective and in a written format instead of numerical.

Researchers may use interviews, focus groups , case studies , journaling, and open-ended questions to gather in-depth information. Qualitative research designs can determine users' concepts, develop a hypothesis , or add context to data from a quantitative study.

• Characteristics of qualitative research design

Most often, qualitative data answers how or why something occurs. Certain characteristics are usually present in all qualitative research designs to ensure accurate data. 

The most common characteristics of qualitative research design include the following:

Natural environment

It’s best to collect qualitative research as close to the subject’s original environment as possible to encourage natural behavior and accurate insights.

Empathy is key

Qualitative researchers collect the best data when they’re in sync with their users’ concerns and motivations. They can play into natural human psychology by combining open-ended questioning and subtle cues.

They may mimic body language, adopt the users’ terminology, and use pauses or trailing sentences to encourage their participants to fill in the blanks. The more empathic the interviewer, the purer the data.

Participant selection

Qualitative research depends on the meaning obtained from participants instead of the meaning conveyed in similar research or studies. To increase research accuracy, you choose participants randomly from carefully chosen groups of potential participants.

Different research methods or multiple data sources

To gain in-depth knowledge, qualitative research designs often rely on multiple research methods within the same group. 

Emergent design

Qualitative research constantly evolves, meaning the initial study plan might change after you collect data. This evolution might result in changes in research methods or the introduction of a new research problem.

Inductive reasoning

Since qualitative research seeks in-depth meaning, you need complex reasoning to get the right results. Qualitative researchers build categories, patterns, and themes from separate data sets to form a complete conclusion.

Interpretive data

Once you collect the data, you need to read between the lines rather than just noting what your participant said. Qualitative research is unique as we can attach actions to feedback. 

If a user says they love the look of your design but haven’t completed any tasks, it’s up to you to interpret this as a failed test, even with their positive sentiments.  

Holistic account

To paint a large picture of an issue and potential solutions, a qualitative researcher works to develop a complex description of the research problem. You can avoid a narrow cause-and-effect perspective by describing the problem’s wider perspectives. 

• When to use qualitative research design

Qualitative research aims to get a detailed understanding of a particular topic. To accomplish this, you’ll typically use small focus groups to gather in-depth data from varied perspectives. 

This approach is only effective for some types of study. For instance, a qualitative approach wouldn’t work for a study that seeks to understand a statistically relevant finding.

When determining if a qualitative research design is appropriate, remember the goal of qualitative research is understanding the “ why .” 

Qualitative research design gathers in-depth information that stands on its own. It can also answer the “why” of a quantitative study or be a precursor to forming a hypothesis. 

You can use qualitative research in these situations:

Developing a hypothesis for testing in a quantitative study

Identifying customer needs

Developing a new feature

Adding context to the results of a quantitative study

Understanding the motivations, values, and pain points that guide behavior

Difference between qualitative and quantitative research design

Qualitative and quantitative research designs gather data, but that's where the similarities end. Consider the difference between quality and quantity. Both are useful in different ways.

Qualitative research gathers in-depth information to answer how or why . It uses subjective data from detailed interviews, observations, and open-ended questions. Most often, qualitative data is thoughts, experiences, and concepts.

In contrast, quantitative research designs gather large amounts of objective data that you can quantify mathematically. You typically express quantitative data in numbers or graphs, and you use it to test or confirm hypotheses.

Qualitative research designs generally have the same goals. However, there are various ways to achieve these goals. Researchers may use one or more of these approaches in qualitative research.

Historical study

This is where you use extensive information about people and events in the past to draw conclusions about the present and future.

Phenomenology

Phenomenology investigates a phenomenon, activity, or event using data from participants' perspectives. Often, researchers use a combination of methods.

Grounded theory

Grounded theory uses interviews and existing data to build a theory inductively.

Ethnography

Researchers immerse themselves in the target participant's environments to understand goals, cultures, challenges, and themes with ethnography .

A case study is where you use multiple data sources to examine a person, group, community, or institution. Participants must share a connection to the research question you’re studying.

• Advantages and disadvantages of qualitative research

All qualitative research design types share the common goal of obtaining in-depth information. Achieving this goal generally requires extensive data collection methods that can be time-consuming. As such, qualitative research has advantages and disadvantages. 

Natural settings

Since you can collect data closer to an authentic environment, it offers more accurate results.  

The ability to paint a picture with data

Quantitative studies don't always reveal the full picture. With multiple data collection methods, you can expose the motivations and reasons behind data.

Flexibility

Analysis processes aren't set in stone, so you can adapt the process as ideas or patterns emerge.

Generation of new ideas

Using open-ended responses can uncover new opportunities or solutions that weren't part of your original research plan.

Small sample sizes

You can generate meaningful results with small groups.

Disadvantages

Potentially unreliable.

A natural setting can be a double-edged sword. The inability to attach findings to anything statistically relevant can make data more difficult to quantify. 

Subjectivity

Since the researcher plays a vital role in collecting and interpreting data, qualitative research is subject to the researcher's skills. For example, they may miss a cue that changes some of the context of the quotes they collected.

Labor-intensive

You generally collect qualitative data through manual processes like extensive interviews, open-ended questions, and case studies.

Qualitative research designs allow researchers to provide an in-depth analysis of why specific behavior or events occur. It can offer fresh insights, generate new ideas, or add context to statistics from quantitative studies. Depending on your needs, qualitative data might be a great way to gain the information your organization needs to move forward.

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12 min read Qualitative research gives you the ‘why’ behind what’s happening in your business, and brings a human dimension to quantitative data. Here’s what goes into creating a great qualitative research program.

Recap: qualitative research vs. quantitative research

If quantitative research is a drone capturing aerial footage, qualitative research is a portrait photographer studying a local neighborhood.

• Qualitative research involves non-numerical data, most often related to social or personal topics. It may investigate people’s opinions, thoughts, feelings and preferences. Qualitative research often relies on a researcher’s first-hand interactions with research participants through techniques like focus groups and interviews. It tends to be deep and detailed, rather than broad and far-reaching.
• Quantitative research , on the other hand, deals with quantities, proportions and other countable data. Examples of quantitative research might be finding out the number of people in a city or the amount of income earned by a business in a year. In contrast, quantitative research methods are more likely to be large-scale and generalized, even abstract. It doesn’t tend to require direct contact between researchers and the populations they are studying.

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What makes a great qualitative research study?

Qualitative research focuses on seeing, listening and understanding – as a researcher on behalf of a business, your goal is to capture not only the particulars of what is happening, but the deeper ‘why’ of consumer behaviors and opinions.

Accurate observation and recording are critical to the success of qualitative research, but without the right foundations laid in terms of your methods, you may end up with qualitative data that are of limited use.

Designing a great qualitative research program means paying as much attention to the design of your study and the choice of methods as actually performing data collection. Presenting your results well matters too. People remember stories, not figures, so qualitative data is a great way to bring your insights to life.

Although qualitative and quantitative studies differ in important ways, it’s worth remembering that your business question may benefit from both qualitative and quantitative research . For example, you might use qualitative research to uncover the attitudes and behaviors of your target audience, then use quantitative analysis to find out how widespread these phenomena are in your research population . Conversely, you might use qualitative analysis to provide the ‘why’ behind your quantitative data.

Online or offline?

Many traditional qualitative research methods involve direct contact between researcher and participant, but thanks to advances in technology, online methods are both effective and widespread. The emergence of COVID-19 in 2020 prompted a shift in the direction of online qualitative methods.

Establishing your research goals in qualitative research

As with any program of research, the first step is to define your aims. You and everyone working with you must have a clear, shared understanding of what your qualitative research program is trying to achieve.

Defining the research question

A research question sums up the overall goal of your qualitative research project. It identifies the information you’re trying to find through your research.

Examples of possible questions:

• ‘What is the effect of inflation on the purchasing behavior of young people in America?’
• ‘How does access to social media affect the emotional development of children?’
• ‘How does climate change affect rural communities in South Sudan?’

Larger studies may have more than one research question. However, as the purpose is to narrow down the scope of your research into one explicitly defined area, don’t add extra research questions unless they’re required for a very complex research process.

Sampling and recruitment

To do qualitative research well, you need to know who you’re studying, and you need a reliable way to identify them. Going back to your research questions, think about who the population of interest is for your study. Who will your participants be as you carry out data collection? Will you use a conventional probability sampling method to find a random representative sample of the research population? Or is it more appropriate to use alternative methods, such as snowball sampling or quota sampling?

Qualitative approaches typically use smaller numbers of participants than quantitative research methods, studying smaller numbers of people in-depth rather than seeking out a broad consensus. That means your selection of participants becomes very important.

Note that while outliers in a research population can create anomalies in quantitative research, in qualitative research it is important to include them, as you’re looking to get a broad range of perspectives and opinions into your study.

Approaches to qualitative research

There are five core approaches to qualitative research:

1. Grounded theory

This is an exploratory approach where the researcher’s hypothesis emerges from their qualitative data as they collect it. Using inductive reasoning – where a theory is developed by generalizing from a range of observations – researchers adapt their understanding of their research topic as they go along. Although grounded theory requires open-ended thinking, it’s quite structured. Researchers use a system of codes to link observations to overarching theories, eventually extrapolating these theories to even higher levels that result in deeper insights.

2. Ethnographic research

This approach involves studying people in the context of their normal environment. It may involve face-to-face interaction or indirect observations.

3. Action research

In action research, also called participatory action research (PAR), participants and researchers with a shared purpose are involved in a change process in a specific context and situation. The researcher learns about what kind of change is required through their own experiences and the reflections of the participants. This kind of qualitative research is more common in fields like healthcare and education.

4. Phenomenological research

Phenomenological research is the study of phenomena – events or states, often noteworthy or unusual ones, through the people who live through them. Phenomenological research focuses on people’s lived experiences and how their lives have influenced their beliefs and behaviors – in particular their response to the phenomena being studied. It deals with groups of people in shared contexts, such as women in the military, minorities in the workplace, asylum seekers in the education system and so on.

5. Narrative research

Also known as narrative enquiry, narrative research is a qualitative method that examines the way people tell their own stories. In particular, it looks at how people ascribe meaning to their experiences and how this influences their views and life choices. As well as interpersonal research using techniques like interviews and focus groups , narrative research can gather data from journals, autobiographies or letters.

Qualitative research methods

There are a broad range of qualitative research approaches, with new qualitative methods that take advantage of advances in communication technology. The COVID-19 pandemic has expedited the shift to online research, not only for asynchronous data collection such as document-based study, but in live interactive formats like video interviews and moderated Zoom groups.

However, some of the best-known types of qualitative study have stood the test of time regardless of world events. Here are some of the most popular ways to carry out qualitative research.

Maybe the classic among data collection methods, in depth interviews allow the researcher to connect personally with the participants and gather data in a one-on-one session. As well as listening to the participant, the researcher can gain insights by observing body language, tone of voice and facial expression to gather information in greater detail. Open ended questions are used to encourage participants to express their perspectives and feelings in their own words.

Focus groups

Like qualitative interviews, focus groups provide in depth insights through personal communication and direct observations. They often take place in natural settings with the researcher acting as moderator for a small group discussion. Focus groups are a type of qualitative study best known for their market research application, but they can be used by qualitative researchers in a wide range of fields, such as health sciences, social research and social sciences.

Observational studies

This kind of qualitative study involves data collection without direct interaction between participant and researcher. Instead, qualitative data is drawn from direct observation of people, often in their natural settings. This gives the qualitative researchers less specific information on their thoughts and feelings, but may offer a better understanding of behaviors and relationships in specific contexts, such as a busy office, a clinic or a classroom.

Discussion boards

Online discussion boards allow researchers to study conversations on the topics they are interested in, as well as asking questions themselves. One benefit is that the wealth of discussion boards online offers data on almost every topic imaginable, since this format is one of the internet’s oldest, significantly pre-dating social media. Discussion board data can even be analyzed at scale with the use of text mining.

Qualitative data analysis

Once the data collection phase is over, you’re ready to move on to the next stage of the research process – data analysis. Qualitative data analysis involves finding the patterns and trends in the data collected during your study. However, unlike a quantitative study with numerical data, it doesn’t come in a consistent format. That means your research team will need to spend a significant chunk of your project time on a careful analysis of the results, particularly if you’re working without specialist data analysis software.

1. Standardize your qualitative data

Unlike the data collection itself, this can be a systematic process where your field notes, literature review, participant observations and video recordings are transcribed so that everything is standardized in a written format that you can easily navigate and analyze. Software can be extremely valuable in turning handwritten notes, and even voice and video files, into text automatically.

2. Code and categorize

You can assign codes in qualitative data analysis to highlight where a particular topic is mentioned in your data so that it’s easier to find. Categorization can also be useful, especially if you’re working with a number of other people who need to work on the findings. Using data analysis tools with semantic analysis and natural language processing can speed things up enormously, as this work is done for you automatically.

3. Find patterns and trends

With all of your data collected and categorized, it’s time to look at it as a whole and examine any patterns or trends that seem to emerge. Again, software that has the capacity to identify trends and relationships, even in natural language data, can be a valuable addition to your analysis process, especially as it will offer an impartial perspective to help you avoid any blind spots or bias arising from personal thoughts and feelings about the research topic.

4. Revisit your hypothesis

Finally, you can return to your research question with new knowledge. Are you closer to an answer? Was the question the right one, and would you ask the same one now given what you’ve learned? This may be a jumping-off point for further research into your findings, or the start of a whole new qualitative inquiry.

5. Report your findings

The quality of your reporting can make all the difference in terms of how effective your research data will be. When presenting your findings to stakeholders, use engaging formats and clear language to summarize your discoveries and to link them to business goals. Video highlight reels are a powerful way to bring insights to life, and can be used to bring the customer’s experience direct to stakeholders through personal stories and testimonials.

Related resources

Primary vs secondary research 14 min read, business research methods 12 min read, qualitative research interviews 11 min read, market intelligence 10 min read, marketing insights 11 min read, ethnographic research 11 min read, qualitative vs quantitative research 13 min read, request demo.

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Challenges in conducting qualitative research in health: A conceptual paper

Hamidreza khankeh.

1 Department of Health in Disaster and Emergencies and Nursing, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation, Tehran, Iran and Department of Clinical Sciences and Education, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

Maryam Ranjbar

2 Department of Psychology in Institute of Humanities and Social Studies, and Social Determinants of Health Research Center in University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation, Tehran, Iran

Davoud Khorasani-Zavareh

3 Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Uremia University of Medical Sciences, Uremia, Iran and Department of Clinical Science and Education, Södersjukhuset, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Ali Zargham-Boroujeni

4 Nursing and Midwifery Care Research Center, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran

Eva Johansson

5 Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Background:

Qualitative research focuses on social world and provides the tools to study health phenomena from the perspective of those experiencing them. Identifying the problem, forming the question, and selecting an appropriate methodology and design are some of the initial challenges that researchers encounter in the early stages of any research project. These problems are particularly common for novices.

Materials and Methods:

This article describes the practical challenges of using qualitative inquiry in the field of health and the challenges of performing an interpretive research based on professional experience as a qualitative researcher and on available literature.

One of the main topics discussed is the nature of qualitative research, its inherent challenges, and how to overcome them. Some of those highlighted here include: identification of the research problem, formation of the research question/aim, and selecting an appropriate methodology and research design, which are the main concerns of qualitative researchers and need to be handled properly. Insights from real-life experiences in conducting qualitative research in health reveal these issues.

Conclusions:

The paper provides personal comments on the experiences of a researcher in conducting pure qualitative research in the field of health. It offers insights into the practical difficulties encountered when performing qualitative studies and offers solutions and alternatives applied by these authors, which may be of use to others.

I NTRODUCTION

Health services and health policy research can be based on qualitative research methods, especially when they deal with a rapid change and develop a more fully integrated theory base and research agenda. However, the field must be with the best traditions and techniques of qualitative methods and should distinguish the essentiality of special training and experience in applying these methods.[ 1 ]

Qualitative research methodologies could help improve our understanding of health-related phenomena. Health knowledge must also include interpretive action to maintain scientific quality when research methods are applied. Qualitative and quantitative strategies should be seen as complementary rather than being thought of as incompatible. Although the procedures of interpreting texts are different from those of statistical analysis, due to their different type of data and questions to be answered, the underlying scientific principles are very much the same.[ 2 ]

While working for more than a decade as qualitative designer, Khankeh faced a lot of challenges in conducting qualitative research in the field of health which occupied the mind of other health researchers. Therefore, this article contributes to the discussion of challenges related to qualitative research in healthcare in the light of personal experiences of a researcher conducting purely qualitative health research.

A M AIN I SSUE FOR THE Q UALITATIVE R ESEARCHER

Qualitative research methods involve systematic collection, organizing, and interpretation of material in textual form derived from talk or observations. They are useful to explore the meanings of social phenomena as experienced by individuals in their natural context. The health community still looks at qualitative research with skepticism and accuses it for the subjective nature and absence of facts. Scientific standards, criteria and checklists do exist and the adequacy of guidelines has been vigorously debated within this cross-disciplinary field.[ 2 ]

Clinical knowledge consists of interpretive action and interaction – factors that involve communication, shared opinions, and experiences. The current quantitative research methods indicate a confined access to clinical knowledge, since they insert only the questions and phenomena that can be controlled, measured, and are countable where it is necessary to investigate, share and contest the tacit knowledge of an experienced practitioner. Qualitative research focuses on the people's social world, and not their disease. It is concerned with increased understanding of the meaning of certain conditions for health professionals and patients, and how their relationships are built in a particular social context.[ 3 ] These kinds of research allow exploration of the social events as experienced by individuals in their natural context. Qualitative inquiry could contribute to a broader understanding of health science [ 4 ] considering the substantial congruence between the core elements of health practice and the principles underpinning qualitative research. The globalization progress augments the necessity of qualitative research.[ 5 ]

Corbin (2008) reported that in the past 10 years, the interest in qualitative methods in general and grounded theory in particular has burgeoned according to a review of the literature and dissertation abstracts.[ 6 ]

A researcher engaged in qualitative research will be confronted with a number of challenges. Identifying the research problem and forming the research question are some of the initial challenges that researchers encounter in the early stages of a qualitative research project. Researchers and students sometimes fail to understand that adopting a qualitative approach is only the first stage in the process of selecting an appropriate research methodology.[ 7 ]

Once the initial research question has been identified, the crucial decision to be made is on the selection of an appropriate method, such as content analysis, ethnography, or grounded theory, and selecting the research design as well. Subsequent arrangements would be on the proper methods of data collection, participants, and the research setting, according to the methodology and the research question.[ 8 ] Qualitative researchers should also handle other important concerns such as data analysis, ethical issues, and rigor methods of results.

In this paper, we are going to discuss important practical challenges of qualitative inquiry in health and the challenges faced by researchers using interpretive research methodologies.

U NDERSTANDING THE R EAL N ATURE OF Q UALITATIVE R ESEARCH AND ITS C HALLENGES

It is important to provide an honest and concise appreciation of the essential characteristics of the qualitative research before discussing the challenges of the interpretive research approach to studies in health.

Virtues of qualitative research

Qualitative research does not promise a clear or direct and orderly method of tackling research problems in health studies. It does not provide researchers with a set of rules to be followed or give them a comforting sense of security and safety backup against possible mistakes on the road to knowledge. This research method depends on the “power of words and images,” but does not offer the assimilated meanings such as numbers and equations; it is rather “an attentive search of meaning and understanding” and an attempt for profound comprehension and awareness of the problems and phenomena. The essentially “diagnostic and exploratory nature” of qualitative research is invaluable in developing conceptualizations in health as an evolving discipline. It tenders the possible tap into the sea of complex interactions in health that can be as follows.

Researchers launch the quest for new theories in health which should acknowledge that “qualitative research is an approach rather than a particular set of techniques, and its appropriateness derives from the nature of the social phenomena to be explored.”[ 9 ] In qualitative research, knowledge derives from the context-specific perspective on the experienced phenomena, interpretations, and explanation of social experiences.

Why qualitative research in the health professions?

Researcher should justify the reason for which he or she selected qualitative research. Qualitative researchers pursue a holistic and exclusive perspective. The approach is helpful in understanding human experiences, which is important for health professionals who focus on caring, communication, and interaction.[ 10 ] Many potential researchers intend to find the answer to the questions about a problem or a major issue in clinical practice or quantitative research can not verify them.

In fact, they choose qualitative research for some significant reasons:

• The emotions, perceptions, and actions of people who suffer from a medical condition can be understood by qualitative research
• The meanings of health professions will only be uncovered through observing the interactions of professionals with clients and interviewing about their experience. This is also applicable to the students destined for the healthcare field
• Qualitative research is individualized; hence, researchers consider the participants as whole human beings, not as a bunch of physical compartments
• Observation and asking people are the only ways to understand the causes of particular behaviors. Therefore, this type of research can develop health or education policies; policies for altering health behavior can only be effective if the behavior's basis is clearly understood.[ 10 , 11 ]

Before adhering to a distinct research methodology, researchers have to exactly understand the nature and character of their inquiries and the knowledge they choose to create. The majority of health researchers face many loopholes in justification. However, all defects and challenges of qualitative research should be realized rather than discarded as a compelling way to knowledge structure. New endeavors in excellent academic achievement and building new tradition of qualitative research in health can be facilitated through acknowledging traps and clarifying the real practical challenges.[ 9 ]

Finally, qualitative research provides investigators with the tools to study the health phenomena from the perspective of those experiencing them. This approach is especially applied in situ ations that have not been previously studied, where major gaps exists in research field, and when there is a need for a new perspective to be identified for the arena of health care intervention.[ 6 ]

Based on corbin and strauss (2008), “ Committed qualitative researchers lean toward qualitative work because they are drawn to the fluid, evolving, and dynamic nature of this approach in contrast to the more rigid and structured format of quantitative methods. Qualitative researchers enjoy serendipity and discovery. It is the endless possibilities to learn more about people that qualitative researchers resonate to. It is not distance that qualitative researchers want between themselves and their participants, but the opportunity to connect with them at a human level (Epistemology). Qualitative researchers have a natural curiosity that leads them to study worlds that interest them and that they otherwise might not have access to. Furthermore, qualitative researchers enjoy playing with words, making order out of seeming disorder, and thinking in terms of complex relationships. For them, doing qualitative research is a challenge that brings the whole self into the process .”

Choosing an approach for health research

Researchers select approaches and methodology based on some scientific logics, not on being easy or interesting. The nature and type of the research question or problem; the researcher's epistemological stance, capabilities, knowledge, skills, and training; and the resources available for the research project are the criteria upon which adopting methodology and procedures depend.[ 6 , 10 ]

Inconsistency between research question and methodology, insufficient methodological knowledge, and lack of attention on philosophical underpinning of qualitative methodology can be mentioned as some important challenges here.

There are several different ways of qualitative research and researchers will have to select between various approaches. The qualitative research is based on the theoretical and philosophical assumptions that researchers try to understand. Then, the research methodology and process should be chosen to be consistent with these basic assumptions and the research question as well.[ 10 ]

Some researchers believe that there is no need to study the methodology and methods before beginning the research. Many researchers neglect to gain this knowledge because they are not aware of the qualitative inquiry complexities which make them go wrong. For instance, lack of information about interview, qualitative data analysis, or sampling is very common.[ 10 ]

My experience shows that lack of knowledge, experience, and skills in a research team to do qualitative research can hinder the formation of original knowledge and improvement in understanding the phenomenon under study. The result of such a study will not be new and interesting, and even the study process will be very mechanical without good interpretation or enough exploration. Sometimes there is an inconsistency between research question, research methodology, and basic philosophical assumptions, and the researchers fail to justify their methods of choice in line with the research question and the ontological and epidemiological assumptions.

Finally, the researcher's intentions, the aims of the research question/inquiry, and the chosen approach are regarded as the most important reasons to select a qualitative research method consistent with them and their underpinning philosophical assumptions as well.[ 6 , 10 ]

Research question and aim

Qualitative research is exciting because it asks questions about people's everyday lives and experiences. A qualitative researcher will have the chance of discovering the “significant truths” in the lives of people. That is a wonderful privilege, but you need to get those questions right if you dig into people's lives and ask about their real experiences. An adequate and explicit research question, or a set of interrelated questions, builds the basis for a good research. But excellent research questions are not easy to write at all. A good research requires a good research question as well because it allows us to identify what we really want to know. However, at the beginning of a project, researchers may be uncertain about what exactly they intend to know, so vague questions can lead to an unfocused project.

Common problems coming up with a research question include:

• Deciding about the research area among a range of issues that are heeded in your field of interest
• Not capable of pointing toward any interesting area or topic sufficient to focus a major piece of work on
• Knowing about the area you want to concentrate on (e.g. emergency), but not a certain topic
• Knowing what area and topic is specifically difficult to articulate a clear question.

Just make sure that you give serious consideration to the chosen area as the basis of your research and that a qualitative project is relevant and possible

Having identified a research area, your next step will be to identify a topic within that interesting area. Research questions should be derived from the literature. The research question can come from the list of “suggestions for future work” at the end of a paper you have found interesting. Moreover, you can search for some verifiable gaps through literature review, or based on your personal or professional experience and expert opinion , which should be studied. Therefore, all the previous studies that have already been conducted in the area are considered as important. In this way, you do not run the risk of asking a research question that has already been addressed and/or answered. Based on my experience, novice researchers have some problems finding the right topics in their field of interest because they do not perform a broad literature review to find the gaps and problems suitable to be investigated. Sometimes their field of interest is different from that of their supervisors or there are no experts to help them in this regard.

Although the topic may retain your interest and you may be committed to undertake such a study, it is important to recognize that some topics of personal relevance may also be deeply significant and difficult to research. Finally you need to make sure that your topic of interest is the one that you can actually study within the project constraints such as time and fund.[ 12 ]

Once you have identified your interesting topic for research (according to a broad literature review, personal and professional experience, and/or expert opinion), you can begin to create a research question.

Forming the research question is one of the initial challenges that researchers encounter in the early stages of a research project. Therefore, it acquires significance by the very fact that it provides brief, but nevertheless, important information on the research topic that allows the reader to decide if the topic is relevant, researchable, and a remarkable issue. Furthermore, the research question in qualitative studies has an additional significance as it determines the manner of conducting the study.

The qualitative research question delineates the procedures that are executed in the study and provides a map to the readers by which they can trail the researcher's intentions and actions in the study. Therefore, special attention is needed on how a qualitative research question will specifically be structured, organized, and formed in the way to quote the necessary information and elements that allow the readers to assess and evaluate the study.

The formation of a qualitative research question acquires a basic conducting role for the study and a fundamental function to develop an audit trail that can empower the readers to judge the value, rigor, and validity of the whole research project. Hence, researchers should not only pay special attention toward developing a significant and relevant question, but also formulate it properly. The qualitative research question must be provided in such a way as to impart, reflect, and conjoin the theoretical and abstract assumptions with the practical and pragmatic means of attaining them.

In plain words, a good qualitative research question implicates particular phrasing, whereas the order of words should make the topic of interest amenable to the qualitative quest.

The researcher has to concentrate on how the content of the research topic is understood when phrasing the qualitative research questions, adhering to the topic with the philosophical/theoretical suggestions and to the structure of the study which requires compounding specific principal elements.

The content of a good qualitative research question takes the form of a declarative rather than an interrogative statement

Also, the content provides a brief focus on the issue to be investigated, but does not define the exact relationship of the variables to make these relationships flexible in emanating from the study according to the qualitative research theory. The qualitative research question incepts necessarily with an active verb like understanding, exploring, interpreting, constructing, explaining, describing, etc., to reflect the paradigm/philosophy underpinning the qualitative study. Consequently, specific nouns that represent the aims of qualitative studies, such as experiences, feelings, views, perspectives, knowledge, etc., should be applied. Finally, the methodology or method should appear in the qualitative research question coherent with them. Meanwhile, the structure of a good qualitative research question will address five of the following six: who, when, where, what, how, and why, and the entire research question should devise the sixth element.[ 13 ]

For instance, “Exploring the experiences of self-immolated women regarding their motives for attempting suicide: A qualitative content analysis study in Kermanshah Iran”

Make sure that your research question is consistent with the approach you are adopting. It is like an easy trap if you decide about the research question before considering the proper way by which you are intending to make assumptions and analyze your data.

My experiences show that novice researchers formulate their research question without considering the approach of their study in a proper way and usually their research questions are very broad, unclear, and vague. Since the intention of their studies is not completely clear at the beginning, they cannot decide about the research approach; also, they have to change their research question and take different directions in the course of study or they will end up without adequate results that can help readers or consumers improve their understanding or solve the problem.

Although a researcher initiates a study with a general question and topic, the interesting aspect of qualitative research is that the questions, which are more specific and can help in further data collection and analysis, arise during the course of the study. Thus, a qualitative research question can be broadly, rather than narrowly, focused in the beginning. Researcher can try to refine and make it more focused later. This is why qualitative research is usually cyclic rather than linear. Qualitative research is cyclic, which means that the research question in this approach immerses gradually into the topic. It means that when you come to know more and more about your topic, your ideas develop about what to focus, either through reading, thinking about what you have read, or in early stages of data analysis. Finally, it is literature review, general reading, and discussion with an expert supervisor that can help you find the right topic. If the background knowledge is poor at the beginning of the study, broad but clear research question can be reasonable. Research question may become more focused or develop in a different direction according to more reading and/or preliminary data analysis. A clear and focused research question is articulated and used to conduct further analysis and any future literature reviews necessary for the final write-up.

However, it is very important to take time to choose a research question, because it can be a very challenging exercise. Actually, the ultimate success of the project depends on selecting a clear and convenient question. The question should be appropriate for the qualitative research and for the specific approach you choose which must be grounded in research. It must ask precisely what you want to find out and be articulated and clear. Knowing this will help you plan your project.[ 12 ]

Choosing the right methodology and research design

Crucial decisions need to be made about an appropriate methodology, such as ethnography or grounded theory, after identifying the initial research question. The main concern of novice researchers is to find the reason and appropriate design to do the research, and proper methodology to answer the question. Researchers ought to figure out about the planning of qualitative research and how to choose the methodology.

Researchers sometimes fail to understand that in the process of selecting an adequate research methodology, adopting a qualitative approach is only the first stage. Students, and sometimes researchers, choose qualitative research because they think it is easier to use than the other methodologies. But this reasoning is fumble since qualitative research is a complex methodology where data collection and analysis can be mostly challenging. Sometimes lack of planning and inadequate attention paid to the properness of the selected approach considering the purpose of research will be problematic.

For new qualitative researchers, it often seems that the researcher should totally concentrate on the dual process of data collection and data analysis. It is very important to consider thorough planning in all stages of the research process, from developing the question to the final write-up of the findings for publication.[ 6 ]

The research design and methodology must be adequate to address the selected topics and the research question. Researchers have to identify, describe, and justify the methodology they chose, besides the strategies and procedures involved. So, it is pivotal to find the proper method for the research question. It should be noticed that some of the details of a qualitative research project cannot be ascertained in advance and may be specified as they arise during the research process.[ 10 ] An important problem for novice researchers is the little acknowledgement of different approaches that address different kinds and levels of questions and take a different stance on the kind of phenomena which is focused upon. More discussion and debates are necessary before selecting and justifying an approach.

The need for consistency and coherence becomes more obvious when we consider the risk of something called “method-slurring.” This is the problem of blurring distinctions between qualitative approaches. Each approach has to demonstrate its consistency to its foundations and will reflect them in data collection, analysis, and knowledge claim.

It may be important to acknowledge the distinctive features by specific approaches such as phenomenology or grounded theory at some levels such as the type of question they are suited to answer, data collection methods they are consistent with, and also the kinds of analysis and presentation of the results that fit within the approach – such as “goodness of fit” or logical staged linking – and can be referred to as “consistency.”

If such consistency occurs, then the whole thing “hangs together” as coherent; that is, the kind of knowledge generated in the results or presentation section doing what is said it would do following the aims of the project. In order to consider these criteria of consistency and coherence in greater detail, we need to look at the distinctive differences between qualitative approaches in the following: the aims of the research approach, its roots in different disciplines and ideologies, the knowledge claims linked to it, and to a lesser extent, the data collection and analysis specific to each approach.[ 11 ]

My experience shows that novice researchers have some problems to justify their methodology of choice and sometimes they experience some degree of methodological slurring. They do not have any clear understanding of the research process in terms of data gathering strategies, data analysis method, and even appropriate sampling plan, which should be indentified based on philosophical and methodological principles.

Finally, besides the above-mentioned problems, regarding research design, there are two common problems encountered especially by students who want to do qualitative study; sometimes researchers and research team try to identify everything, even the sample size, in advance when they design their study because they have a strong background of quantitative research, and this is completely in contrast with the flexible nature and explorative approach of qualitative research. The other problem is the examination committee and the format of proposal of grant sites and funding agencies, which are based on the principles of quantitative study. This rigid format pushes the researchers to try to clarify everything in advance. So, flexibility is regarded as the most important credibility criterion in all kinds of qualitative research and it should be considered when designing the study and following its process.[ 1 ]

C ONCLUSIONS

Qualitative research focuses on social world and provides investigators with the tools to study health phenomena from the perspective of those experiencing them.

Identifying the research problem, forming the research question, and selecting an appropriate methodology and research design are some of the initial challenges that researchers encounter in the early stages of a qualitative research project.

Once the research problem and the initial research question are identified, the crucial decision has to be made in selecting the appropriate methodology. Subsequent arrangements would be on the proper methods of data collection, and choosing the participants and the research setting according to the methodology and the research question. It is highly recommended that the researchers exactly understand the nature and character of their inquiries and the knowledge they choose to create before adhering to a distinct research methodology based on scientific knowledge.

The essence and type of the research question or problem, the researcher's epistemological stance, capabilities, knowledge, skills and training, and the resources available for the research project are the criteria upon which the adopting methodology and procedures depend.

Inconsistency between research question and methodology, insufficient methodological knowledge, and lack of attention to the philosophical underpinning of qualitative methodology are some important challenges.

Lack of knowledge, experience, and skills to do qualitative research can hinder the formation of original knowledge and improvement in understanding the phenomenon under study. The result of such a study will not be new and interesting, and even the study process will be very mechanical without good interpretation or enough exploration. A good research requires a good research question as well because it allows us to identify what we really want to know. However, at the beginning of a project, researchers may be wavering about what they exactly intend to know; so, vague questions can lead to an unfocused project.

Broad literature review, personal and professional experience, and/or expert opinion can be regarded as the main sources to identify interesting research topics and research questions as well. Forming the research question is one of the initial challenges that researchers encounter in the early stages of a research project. Therefore, it acquires significance by the very fact that it provides brief, but nevertheless, important information on the research topic that allows the reader to decide if the topic is relevant, researchable, and a remarkable issue that can help the researcher to determine the manner of conducting the study.

Then crucial decisions need to be made about an appropriate methodology. The main concern of novice researchers is to find the reason and appropriate design to do the research and the proper methodology to answer the question. Researchers first ought to figure out the planning of qualitative research and how to choose the methodology.

It is very important to consider thorough planning in all stages of the research process, from developing the question to final write-up of the findings for publication. It is worth knowing that some of the details of a qualitative research project cannot be ascertained in advance and may be specified as they arise during the research process. For a novice researcher, more discussions and debates are necessary before selecting and justifying an approach.

Method-slurring is another common problem, which means the act of blurring distinctions between qualitative approaches. Each approach has to demonstrate its consistency to its foundations and will reflect them in data collection, analysis, and knowledge claim.

It is not rare to find that researchers and research team try to identify everything, even sample size, in advance when they design their qualitative study because of the strong background they have about the quantitative research. This is completely in contrast with the flexible nature and explorative approach of qualitative research; as these kinds of researches are completely explorative, the mentioned issues – such as sample size – should be clarified in the course of the study.

The other problem is the examination committee and the format of proposal in the grant sites and funding agencies, which is based on the principles of quantitative study. Therefore, flexibility is actually the most important credibility criterion in all qualitative researches that should be considered when a study is designed and the study process is followed.

As the final word, the researcher should make sure that he/she gives serious consideration to the chosen area as the basis of research and that a qualitative project is relevant and possible. Thus, forming the research question in a proper way and selecting appropriate methodology can guarantee original, interesting, and applied knowledge, which at least can increase our understanding about the meaning of certain conditions for professionals and patients and how their relationships are built in a particular social context.

Source of Support: Nil

Conflict of Interest: None declared.

R EFERENCES

An overview of research designs relevant to nursing: Part 1: Quantitative research designs

Affiliation.

• 1 College of Health and Human Services, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, United States of America. [email protected]
• PMID: 17653437
• DOI: 10.1590/s0104-11692007000300022

This three part series of articles provides a brief overview of relevant research designs in nursing. The first article in the series presents the most frequently used quantitative research designs. Strategies for non-experimental and experimental research designs used to generate and refine nursing knowledge are described. In addition, the importance of quantitative designs and the role they play in developing evidence-based practice are discussed. Nursing care needs to be determined by the results of sound research rather than by clinical preferences or tradition.

• Evaluation Studies as Topic
• Nursing Research / methods*