That Time I Met Qualitative Research

My undergraduate research was quantitative.  My master’s research was quantitative.  When I decided to pursue my PhD, I assumed that my research would be quantitative as well.  Well, you know what happens when you assume, right?

               To pursue your PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, you must take certain courses.  Some of them are statistics.  I took my two stats classes my first semester back.  My thought process was twofold:

1.      The classes go hand-in-hand, and as someone who hasn’t taken a stats class in a while, I would benefit from the reinforcement and

2.      Let’s just get them over with 😊

While I studied hard, utilized my professor’s office hours and got my A and B+, I also learned that quantitative research wasn’t my heart’s passion.  It was the numbers!  I could run them, sure.  I could understand the significance of them, and I could get excited.  What I didn’t enjoy was the idea of reducing a human being’s lived experience down to a single digit.  It just didn’t fit my personality.  It didn’t leave my research heart feeling fulfilled.

That came a few semesters later when I had the pleasure of taking a qualitative research class.  Please do understand that by this point, my advisor and I knew that qualitative research was the right path for my dissertation, and the groundwork had already been laid for my topic.  Taking the course just reinforced that I was following the right path:

1.      I got to ask the questions that I wanted to, and I got to listen to people talk about themselves.

2.      The questions create a narrative.  It’s a story.  A personal story.  And depending on what you’re trying to achieve through the research, it might be a personal story that has elements shared by many people.  Connections.

3.      I have a degree in English, and I spend the first few years of my professional life writing for a living, so this is me going back to those roots.

To me, what I love about qualitative research is also so much what I love about being an Occupational Therapist.  Sure, I come in with my questions, my evaluation, my list of items that I need to check off and that we need to do.  At the heart of my OT approach, though, is making connections with my patients.  If we aren’t coming together as a unit—OT and patient, or researcher and participant—truly, nothing is going to happen.  Success is null.  It’s all about the connection. 

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