Useful Advice On How To Write A Qualitative Research Paper

The first thing to know about qualitative research papers is that that there really isn’t one method or approach but several that fall under a single umbrella. Each of the various social sciences will tend to have different types of conventions. But we’ve created some general but useful advice on the standard best practices for writing a qualitative research paper:

The Purpose of the Study

The first thing you should figure before starting is to simply come up with a few ideas about why you are doing the study in first place. It could be to respond to some pre-existing study or a kind of continuation of the study. These reasons will help you compose the purpose section which tells the reader why it’s important for him or her to read your work. Some instructors will also require you to submit a proposal for approval before getting started; you can use that content to help you develop ideas for this section as well.

Methodology and Methods

Each research paper must include a section that specifies all of the appropriate with regards to recruitment strategies, analytical strategies and sample size. This kind of assignment should be based on probability sampling either by measuring people, conversations, visual and written material, events, etc. The process of selecting these samples should be made clear to the reader as well as any limitations to study. Also include a few sentences stating whether the data were unusual in some significant way that might have affected the study.

The Analysis Section

Your analysis should be as transparent as possible. Provide details for how the study’s analysis was conducted from start to finish, all of the people involved in the analysis (if you had help), how each of the themes, categories, and concepts were generated from the data collected, and whether you used computer software at any point to conduct your analysis (as is of the case when a large amount of sample data is collected.

Presentation of Findings

Finally, you should provide a detailed presentation of your findings. When writing this be sure to completely and clearly contextualize the information so that the reader has an easier time interpreting and understanding what you are presenting. Be sure that your interpretation of the data is known but also that is separate and clear from the data itself. Any other academic should be afforded the opportunity to come up with a different interpretation if he or she feels you have misunderstood what the data means.