The Qualitative Tradition

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The Qualitative Tradition
7.1
I would retain the qualitative approach to this program evaluation. I would hesitate to switch to a quantitative method, for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the efficacy of some of the services—crisis counseling comes to mind—can only be measured in a qualitative way. For example, if a depressed teen drops into the center and receives counseling that gives her a more positive feeling about life, the ‘data point’ of the change in her well-being can only be ascertained by the teen’s (necessarily qualitative) self-reporting of her situation. There is simply no hard data (i.e. factual data ‘out there’) that can measure this sort of outcome; the data has to be obtained from the service recipient herself. Even then,...

.....gets of religious messaging, and whether or not they believe that such messaging is an integral part of the therapy itself. In terms of social change, the findings from such a study could provide the data needed to assist in determining whether faith-based public therapeutic initiatives are perceived as such by patient stakeholders, or whether their success is ascribed to other factors.
References
Creswell, J.W. (2009). Research design. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE
Feiock, R.C., Steinacker, A., & Park, H.J. (2009). Institutional
collective action and economic development joint ventures. Public administration review, (March/April 2009), 256-270
McNamara, C. (1998). Overview of methods to collect information.
As provided in Week 7 study notes.