Hello,
I am interested in interviewing pre-adolescent children (ages 4-11/12) about their experiences partaking in an adjunctive treatment for complex developmental trauma.
Do you have any suggestions for resources that might aid me in this endeavor? (e.g., Examples of prior qualitative or mixed-methods research with this population; instructional texts; things to consider...)
Thank you.
Another avenue could be the research on children's experiences with death that go back some years.
Many researchers are confused between qualitative and quantitative research.It is very simple.When one is doing a qualitative research,one will do more of an exploratory research where data will be collected with personal interview(say experience for trauma in childern)and the analysed and summarised with a content analysis or what we call the qualitative data analysis with softwares like NVIVO or ATlas i.
When one is doing a descriptive or causal research one uses quantitative research where the survey technique is used and data is analysed with statistical tools.Now when do we mix these techniques.Sometimes we study an influence of various factors on a certain variable say stress,so we first do a qualitative research from samples and thru open ended questions list the major factors.Then we take another sample and test quantitatively if these factors(which came out as a result of the qualitative research) are prevalent in a certain population say Indians.This will be done thru quantitaive techniques by collecting data thru survey and analysing with the help of statistical techniques.
There is even a more basic definition to qualitative versus quantitative research. Qualitative research is primarily for the purpose of generating hypotheses, and deals with themes that derive from the questions or observations that constitute the methods used in qualitative research, such as phenomenology, ethnography, grounded theory and focus group methodology, to name a few. Qualitative research does not deal with hypothesis solving at all, and is not usually in the service of making generalizations about whole populations from the data. The exception might be if the results of the study support long understood phenomena. An example might be children responding in specific ways to questions about their experiences with something, such as death of a parent in ways that are consistent with their level of development.
Quantitative research deals with measurement, and is usually hypothesis solving rather than primarily for hypothesis generation. The only time you should see anything to do with number calculation in qualitative research is to define the demographic characteristics of the sample, or sometimes to enter a count on how many people in the sample responded in ways consistent with specific themes whereas quantitative research is all about measurement.
Both methods can include exploratory or descriptive methods. For example, a common quantitative scale would be a postpartum depression inventory such as the Edinburgh scale that evaluates the rates of depression in a postpartum group or groups of healthcare practices and compare those results with those reported in other studies with similar demographics. A qualitative study of a postpartum population would ask participants about their moods or daily habits after a baby is born, have them describe how they felt, and perhaps come up with research questions that might focus on risk factors related to birth experiences, infant temperament, practices in a specific healthcare environment that might contribute to maternal mood, or other factors that would require measurement in another study to support or not support hypotheses derived from the postpartum interviews.
Jaspreet Kaur Nancy Terres Michael Uebel
Thank you for your responses and resources, @michaeluebel! I am aware of the differences between qualitative and quantitative research though I do appreciate the information and examples provided here. My question has more to do with developmentally-sensitive considerations.
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