Hi everyone,
I am doing qualitative research on residential REITs in South Africa (of which there are only 4 with big enough exposure) to understand the challenges and risks they are facing in the market. considering there is such a small population which will be making up the research will there be issues with any bias and how would that best be dealt with?
Many thanks
My guess is you were talking about the representativeness of your sample and generalizability of your data. This is more like for a quantitative study. In qualitative research, the issue of "bias" has to do with the positionality of the researcher and how he/she manages his/her background and prior understandings in doing research rather than with the number of participants. How many participants are enough depends on your research purpose and approach. For example, if you use phenomenology, you may need to recruit at least 5 or 6 participants. If you use narrative, a couple of participants is good enough. Additionally, if you interview 4 participants and are able to reach data saturation, you should be good to go.
If you are studying all the cases that exist for a phenomenon, then that is a census rather than a sample, and there is no issue of bias by definition.
If your primary approach is qualitative, then I would recommend Yin's methods for doing comparative case studies in, Case Study Research and Applications.
Generally, regardless of the population size, qualitative research is more prone to bias than the quantitative research. However, since you have a small population, you may not have a design bias. Referring to the book by Neergaard et al. 2007: Handbook of qualitative research (in particular, chapter 15) can help you in maintaining quality of your qualitative study.
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