1. Qualitative Research: For Life Scientists Rachel Orritt rorritt@lincoln.ac.uk

2. Paradigms Concepts What’s Possible Arguments Against Qualitative Research:

3. Paradigms Positivism Reality Constructivism

4. Things to get your head around Positivism Top Down (Deductive) Bottom-Up (Inductive) Researchers aren’t machines! http://composer99.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/national-posts-war-on-science-boogeymen.html

5. What’s Possible? Thematic Analysis Case Studies Grounded Theory Hypothesis Generation

6. Arguments Against Positivism You can’t generalise outside your data Time consuming Difficult to break into

7. Mixed Methods Positivism Constructivism ? += Positivism QuantitativeReality += Qualitative

8. Conclusions Positivism Qualitative methods are useful outside of arts, humanities and social sciences They can add another dimension to quantitative methods, especially if you are working on a project that has a practical application. There’s no such thing as overuse of a metaphor ( )

9. Please feel free to contact me: rorritt@lincoln.ac.uk www.rachelorritt.com