Blended Approach, Essay Example

While the five qualitative research approaches can be used as stand-alone approaches in research, there are some instances in which it may be better to combine the approaches. In particular, the main consideration to make in deciding whether or not to blend approaches is the research questions that the study seeks to answer. That is, in cases where the research questions that the study poses seem to be applicable to more than one qualitative research approach, it must be considered if using a blending of the applicable approaches would potentially yield a more credible study than using just one of the applicable approaches.

An example of such as a case is given as follows. A research that is concentrated on a specific community may call for an ethnographic approach. However, what if the researcher intends to focus in particular on developing a theory about why that community does a certain activity or is prone to a certain disease? It would be better in such a case to blend the ethnographic with grounded theory. That is, the researcher can immerse himself or herself in the community, conduct observations and interviews within the community and write journals about his or her experiences. However at the time of the analysis, the researcher would make use of the grounded theory approach in coding the data, coming up with themes and patterns, and connecting such patterns to form theories. Using only an ethnographic approach would make the researcher miss out on being able to focus on a particular aspect of the community. On the other hand, making use of only grounded theory would take away valuable researcher input in being able to live in and interact with members of the community. Thus, a blended approach can be recommended.