Qualitative Research Quotes

The lived experiences which could not find adequate scientific expression in the substance doctrine of rational psychology were now validated in light of new and better methods.

There is no substitute for face-to-face reporting and research.

If a student takes the whole series of my folklore courses including the graduate seminars, he or she should learn something about fieldwork, something about bibliography, something about how to carry out library research, and something about how to publish that research.

Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.

I think of myself as a writer who happens to be doing his writing as an anthropologist.

It always cracks me up when program directors or music directors or companies will say, 'Well, we did research, and we interviewed 25 people in our focus group, and this is what they said.' And I'm like, 'I've talked to 25 people in two hours! I talk to 50, 60, 70 people a night! Five or six days a week!'

All science is methodolgy with regard to the Absolute. Therefore, there need be no fear of the unequivocally methodological. It isa husk, but not more than everything except the One.

I see myself writing in the tradition of urban ethnography and in the tradition of the sociology of poverty.

The way to do fieldwork is never to come up for air until it is all over.

Science is based on reproducibility and manufactured objectivity. As strong as that makes its ability to generate claims about matter and energy, it also makes scientific knowledge inapplicable to the existential, visceral nature of human life, which is unique and subjective and unpredictable.

There are other sources of psychological knowledge, which become accessible at the very point where the experimental method fails us.

I come from a specific tradition of sociology, which is urban ethnography.

I've often been accused of making anthropology into literature, but anthropology is also field research. Writing is central to it.

Many 'hard' scientists regard the term 'social science' as an oxymoron. Science means hypotheses you can test, and prove or disprove. Social science is little more than observation putting on airs.

I don't have any focus groups on talent and programming. If I need five people in a mall to be paid $40 to tell me how to do my job, I shouldn't do my job.

There's science and there's science, is all I'm saying. Where humans are the subjects, it's mostly not science

Even one well-made observation will be enough in many cases, just as one well-constructed experiment often suffices for the establishment of a law.

We know: of course, with regard to the market and similar social structures, a great many facts which we cannot measure and on which indeed we have only some very imprecise and general information.

Sometimes an ethnographic inquiry will lead to new ways to use an existing technology or will generate new technologies.

I love to see what real human behavior looks like. I've always envisioned my job as just observing and noting that and, for the purposes of my work, just cutting out the boring parts.

I specialise in taking teams of designers, psychologists, usability experts, sociologists and ethnographers into the field. It's called 'corporate anthropology,' but personally I'm more comfortable with 'design research,' because I'm not an anthropologist by training.

The research is the most interesting part… That’s how I work. I go some place and I walk it and I talk to people until I find what I’ve come for. Or not. Fortunately, I tend to find what I’m after.

The best research you can do is to talk to people.

The company started in the early 90s or late 80s. We were a behavioural science company. We didn't pivot into data analytics till 2012. So, all the data that we collected pre-2012, which was done by the British company SBL group, was collected through quantitive and qualitative research on the ground.

Growing up in a specific area has a certain sociological and economic reason, so I'm interested in using myself as a case study to look as those things.