A Practical Guide to Qualitative Research: A Teaching Manual

This teaching manual is a practical guide that intends to promote education in terms of qualitative research at educational institutions and individual levels. It provides teachers, tutors, lecturers and students with activities that can improve engagement with practical qualitative research activities. There are three main approaches of conducting research, namely: qualitative research, quantitative research and triangulation (mixed approach). Qualitative research approach is concerned with assessment of views, opinions, feelings, values, norms, attitudes, opinions and behaviours. Qualitative research involves collecting and analysing non-numerical data like texts, video and audio to understand the information collected.

The manual guides the intended audience (teachers, tutors, lecturers and students) to solve problems in an organized way. It guides a reader on how to identify research ideas, research topics and research titles. It also educates a reader on how to critically review existing literature on a study to reveal contributions, weaknesses and gaps. Furthermore, the reader is shown how to collect data (interviews, focus group discussion, observation and analysis of documents) and how to analyse data (content analysis, thematic analysis and quick impressionist view). Moreover, the reader is shown how the findings can be presented and discussed. Similarly, a researcher is shown ways of writing a final summary, conclusions and recommendations.