Qualitative Central Research Question

Some of the major differences in qualitative research versus quantitative research are that (US department of Energy, 2018):

1. Qualitative methods include interviews, review of documents and focus groups whereas quantitative involve surveys, structured interviews and observations, and review of documents for numeric information

2. Qualitative research is an inductive process to formulate a theory or hypothesis whereas quantitative research is a deductive process to test hypothesis, constructs and concepts

3. Qualitative research is more subjective whereas quantitative research is more objective

4. Qualitative research is text based whereas quantitative research is number based

5. Qualitative research tends to have more in-depth information on few cases whereas quantitative tends to have less in-depth but more breadth across large number of cases

6. Qualitative research doesn’t require statistical testing whereas statistical analysis is mandated for quantitative research

With regards to research questions, qualitative study state research question instead of objectives or hypothesis in case of quantitative study (Creswell, 2014). The qualitative research question inquire the central phenomenon or study concept followed by sub-questions. The central research question highlight the general phenomenon and factors with broad perspective while sub-questions narrow down the focus of study. Example of phenomenology research question is: What is it like for a mother to live with a teenage child who is dying of cancer? Creswell (2014) laid out some common directions for a qualitative research question which include, that question should begin with how or what, focus on a single phenomenon or concept, exploratory verbs like describe the essence of experience in case of phenomenology etc.

A possible qualitative research question could be “What are the most common sources of noise affecting quality of big data faced by data scientists analyzing social media postings?” Niven (2012) mentioned that following three are main sources of noise in social media:

1. Half of Twitter accounts are either bots or ciphers.

2. Spam make up to 1.5% of Twitter posts and 3-4% of Facebook posts.

3. Duplication of content is big issue at social media platforms.

The central qualitative research question will gather information from social media data scientists through interviews to identify the main causes of noise in social media data streams followed by subsequent questions to narrow down the popular technique to overcome noise issue from social media streams.

Reference:

Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. 4th Ed. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications.

Niven, V. (2012) Eliminate the noise from your social media streams. Retrieved from http://www.needtagger.com/eliminate-the-noise-from-your-social-media-streams/

US Department of Energy, 2018. Differences between qualitative and quantitative research methods. Retrieved from https://www.orau.gov/cdcynergy/soc2web/content/phase05/phase05_step03_deeper_qualitative_and_quantitative.htm