Qualitative research is a naturalist and interpretive research method. The researcher observes natural subjects and natural occurrences, which he records by a number of various methods (such as recording an interview or noting down information from an observation) and then interprets using his own subject knowledge. Qualitative research aims to view and explore the phenomena in its natural settings. The researcher must interpret raw data from qualitative research by taking a small sample and creating observational methods that provide an in-depth description of the phenomena, and that provide an overview of the universal phenomena from the sample used in research.
Qualitative research uses holistic, flexible research methods that describe variations, explain the relationship between variations, describe individual experiences or describe group norms in the research phenomena. The researcher observes and notes exactly "what she sees" and creates well-rounded conclusions from her observation. When analyzing gathered information the researcher looks at what her observations show, describes what happened, and what the observations could mean. For example, interviewing health care users may provide negative responses to certain questions. The researcher would conclude that most responses to the health care service were negative responses. The researcher may suggest that the service is failing its users in certain ways and support her suggestions with examples (mainly quotations) from the interview.
Qualitative research is flexible in many ways. The researcher can design methods used in qualitative research to provide a certain degree of insight. For instance, the researcher may choose to use a non-structured interview technique to allow his interviewees to express freely their opinions about the research object. This procedure may provide more insight than closed-question interviews, which give the researcher "yes" or "no" answers but give no reasons as to why the interviewee answered that way. As the researcher explores the phenomena he can format methods according to his results. If a researcher observes a child treated unfairly in a classroom observation, for example, he may decide to include additional interviews with children or teachers, adjusting questions accordingly, to deal with this aspect of the study based on the classroom observation.
Qualitative research generally uses observational methods to collect data and information. These methods could be direct observation, including participant observation (directly participating in the phenomena) or non-participant observation (observing the phenomena objectively without involvement). Qualitative research generally uses open-question interviews formatted to encourage interviewees to provide more than a "yes" or "no" answer. The researcher can also structure interviews with detailed questions to encourage participants to provide a specific opinion about a specific subject; semi-structured, to direct participant to certain subject specifics; or unstructured, to allow participants to voice their opinions freely about the research subject will little input from the researcher.