With the recent advances of information technology and mobile connecting device, self-monitoring and management of chronic diseases via tele-health technology may seem beneficial to both the patient and healthcare provider.
Five qualitative studies are chosen to illustrate how various methodologies of qualitative research helped in advancing primary healthcare, from novel monitoring of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) via mobile-health technology, informed decision for colorectal cancer screening, triaging out-of-hours GP services, evaluating care pathways for community psychiatry and finally prioritization of healthcare initiatives for legislation purposes at national levels. In many ways, qualitative research contributes significantly, if not more so than quantitative research, to the field of primary care at various levels. Impact of Qualitative Research upon Primary Care However, the issue of subjectivity and contextual ramifications has fueled incessant controversies regarding yardsticks for quality and trustworthiness of qualitative research results for healthcare. While human emotions and perspectives from both subjects and researchers are considered undesirable biases confounding results in quantitative research, the same elements are considered essential and inevitable, if not treasurable, in qualitative research as they invariable add extra dimensions and colors to enrich the corpus of findings. Unlike quantitative research which deals primarily with numerical data and their statistical interpretations under a reductionist, logical and strictly objective paradigm, qualitative research handles nonnumerical information and their phenomenological interpretation, which inextricably tie in with human senses and subjectivity. Like quantitative research, the qualitative research aims to seek answers for questions of “how, where, when who and why” with a perspective to build a theory or refute an existing theory. The essence of qualitative research is to make sense of and recognize patterns among words in order to build up a meaningful picture without compromising its richness and dimensionality.
Nature of Qualitative Research versus Quantitative Research
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