Qualitative Research: Interpretive Paradigm

Qualitative Research is a form of social inquiry that focuses on the way people interpret and make sense of their experience and world in which they live. In the words of Atkinson et al.(2001) it is an "Umbrella term", and a number of different approaches exist within the wider framework of this type research. The main aim of most of the approaches is to explore and understand the social reality from the point of view of the individuals in the social context in which they live.
The Qualitative methodology shares its philosophical foundation with the 'Interpretive Paradigm'. Thus 'Interpretive Paradigm' is the basic theoretical framework on which Qualitative Research is based. So, Qualitative approach requires 'empathetic understanding' i.e.
Its origin can be traced back to early 20th century philosopher such as Husserl, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Many of the ideas were later adopted by behavioural and social scientists such as Amedeo Giorgi(Psychologist, 1970) and Alfred Schutz(1967). Nowadays, the term is used more broadly to denote the study of individual's perceptions, feelings and lived experiences. Smith, Flowers, and Larkins(2009), define Phenomenology as:
"A Philosophical approach to the study of experience....(that) share a particular interest in thinking about of what experience of being human is like, in all of its various aspects, but especially in terms of the things that matters to us, and which constitute our lived world."
Qualitative Research is very much related to phenomenology in nature because like phenomenology, it attempts to understand individual's lived experience and the behaviour, emotions and social meanings that these experiences have of them, for example, open-ended questions and conversational inquiry typically used in qualitative research give a research participants to express their feeling about a social phenomenon without any constraint. Similarly, market researchers do not test products, but they test people's experiences of products to evaluate the quality of
Traditionally, in this kind of research, the researcher has to immerse himself completely within a study community for a long time. Here ethnographer interview people who are most knowledgeable about the culture. These people are called 'key informants.' Ethnographic research is naturalistic also, where the human and group behaviour is studied in natural environment that gives inside and deep view of human behaviour which is not possible with other types of research. Participant observation has always been an integral component of ethnographic inquiry besides interview