Now that you have read a bit about Qualitative Research, summarize the main elements of this research method in a Blogger entry. Make sure that you reflect on the prompt as it relates to your experiences and/or aspirations.
Qualitative research is defined as:
- market research into the attitudes, concerns, and behavior of an organization's members in relation to the organization
- research that gives detailed descriptions and explanations of the phenomenon studied rather than providing and analyzing statistics (Bing search, 2015)
The main elements of this type of research are "understanding and interpreting social interactions and behavior, specially chosen small groups over randomly selected large groups, words over numbers, using the subjective over the objective, observations and interviews instead of facts and surveys, open-ended questions over controlled responses and a narrative report versus statistical results. (Hunt Library, 2015)
In my experience working with qualitative research this week I have found this type of research to be more personal and relatable. Qualitative research and analysis is what I work with more often at work and it is refreshing to work with a more subjective type of research. It's possible to dismiss qualitative research in favor of the facts and data of the quantitative research but just because qualitative research works more with the sociology of the topic doesn't mean that it isn't valid. The best part of doing research, to me, is talking to people about their thoughts on lessons learned and ideas about the topic.
When my team goes to the shop in reaction to a problem or an anomaly that needs understanding, we start by asking questions. We interview the people impacted and get their side of the story. This is very subjective but by listening to the people impacted, you get a sense for what the real problem is and when we get to the part where we are analyzing the data collected, we can use the information garnered from the interviews to know how to best solve the problem for the people impacted. For example, we have an inventory system that is fairly reliable. Every so often, we have a mis-pick and something wrong goes to the downstream customer. If we were providing little widgets, this wouldn't be a problem. We supply gigantic kits for the wings of massive airplanes and when we send something wrong to a downstream customer, it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to rectify. This is a problem that needs attention. I am fortunate enough to be part of the team that is trying to automate the checklists and bring visibility to these post-production inventory stores. We were working on the software and gadgets we were going to use to solve this problem and all was going well. One day, we went to the shop to watch the part picking process when one of us asked one of the loaders about what he was doing. From this, we learned that we had started further into the problem than we should have. We started bringing at least one representative into the planning meetings for their practical experience and we have redirected our plan and found a really cool solution. By using qualitative research, we not only came up with a more meaningful solution, but we created ownership in the process with the shop personnel which will make implementation a lot smoother.
My aspirations as a leader are to not forget the qualitative aspects of my job and provide meaningful solutions to conflicts. As an industrial engineer, I need to remember who the end user will be and make sure to interview them and listen to what they need. Facts and data are important to be sure...but getting the human element to the story will add depth, ownership and true direction to the process.
References:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=qualitative+research+definition&qs=AS&pq=qualitative+research&sk=AS6&sc=8-20&sp=8&cvid=
8e14fa36ff85479dbdb24b0909709318&FORM=QBRE&ghc=1
Hunt Library, 2015. http://guides.erau.edu/qualitative-quantitative
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