“Qualitative Research” Is Neither
“Qualitative research” is not research in any sense of the word, nor is it qualitative; it is, however, a way for dim bulbs who aren’t bright enough to grasp research methodology to get dissertations — and PHDs.
Names and details have been altered to protect the stupid.
John is doing a PhD in language education. After John takes his substance-free doctoral education courses and finishes his quals, he has to write a dissertation. For the last four years, he’s had his head filled with PC postmodernist nonsense, and “doesn’t believe in” instruction (it all just happens magically!), so he decides to write his dissertation on whole language theory (it just happens magically!)
Being incapable of adding two and two in his head, and being the sort of PhD student who gets a headache if he has to read a paper that uses the word, “arithmetic mean,” and being a good, obedient postmodernist, John decides that he will do “qualitative research,” by writing a “learning journal” or “ethnography” of one of his language student’s progress.
And the scary part is that his dissertation committee enthusiastically endorses it.
A word must be said here. Postmodernists are fond of using the term “ethnography” to describe their “research,” but it needs to be said that the whole point of an ethnography is to choose somebody who is representative of the culture, so that your ethnography will have something to do with the culture as a whole. This is never the case with “ethnographies” in “qualitative research.”
John needs to pick one of his students, and he ruminates over his roster. Sure, he could do Mary, but she’s so ordinary. Why not Carla? She’s ever so different from all the others, and she’s one of his best students, so much better than the others, and writing her ethnography would be ever so interesting! Carla it is!
So week after week, John meets with Carla to ask her all sorts of irrelevant questions about how she felt in class, and what she thought she learned and didn’t learn, and how she feels she could learn even more. John then writes it up, and his committee sign his dissertation — and six months later, John is working at a major university in a tenure-track position, and is hailed as some sort of up and coming star in whole language theory.
The reality is that John’s dissertation was worthless, because it has nothing whatsoever to say about anyone but Carla. No research with only one subject can be academically useful or interesting, unless the field is psychology — and then, it still tells us nothing about anyone but that one subject. It had nothing to say about whole language theory — just what Carla thought about it; yet, how Carla feels is, to this not very intelligent “researcher,” the same as an empirical test of whole language theory, because to John, whole language theory is a matter of faith, and requires no test or proof. John’s dissertation had no quality of any academic sort, and cannot be called research without curling one’s lip. Yet, this is just the sort of babble educators invoke when they say, “The research shows …” over and over again, despite the fact that what they’re doing is demonstrably not working.
I have had to put up with any number of Johns and their “qualitative research,” and had to sit there without curling my lip (because that wouldn’t be collegial) while they go on about how important their research is, and how stupid conservatives are. Because if you are an empiricist — that is, if you believe that in order to qualify as research, something must be based on real-world data — then you are an evil conservative, and you must be castigated at every opportunity. “Qualitative researchers” are utterly oblivious to data and reality. They don’t care. Their “research” is driven by a political agenda, and facts must never get in the way of that “higher truth,” just as is the case with anthropologists. If you ask for data to back up their assertion, you will (if you’re lucky) get a long lecture about how empiricism is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., etc., etc. (if you’re not so lucky, you’ll get a long lecture about how you’re trying to “disenfranchise” Carla and all her poor oppressed peers).
So the next time some educator says, “The research shows …” go ahead and curl your lip. Better yet, smack him upside the head if you can manage it. Somebody needs to.