Easily Reduced to a Single Data Point.

¶ … easily reduced to a single data point. This allows researchers to find the answers to their questions quickly and in direct relation to the research question. However, one of the key drawbacks to quantitative research is that it often does not allow for a detailed exploration or to explore the "human" side of the equation. Quantitative research gives quick and simple answers, but it does not always provide the best solution to the research problem. Qualitative research provides greater depth and insight into the problem at hand.

According to Creswell (2007), "we conduct qualitative research because a problem or issue needs to be explored" (pg. 39). Researchers embark on the exploration of a phenomenon because of a "need to study a group or population, identify variables that can be measured, or hear silenced voices" (2007, pg. 40). Researchers ask open-ended questions to allow the participants to tell their stories, and to gain a deeper understanding of the problem (Creswell, 2007). The questions may change during the process, as the researcher gains clarity through the interviews (Creswell, 2007). These are come that some of the key attributes of qualitative research that make it suitable for projects where the variables are not so easily defined. Qualitative research is a toll that is well-suited for the exploration of a subject that is not easily definable in empirical terms.

The purpose of the research being conducted in this study is to explore the dynamics of mothers in African-American Communities that have lost children to suicide. This is a complex issue due to the social issues involved in the spirituality surrounding suicide. The study participants will include African-American mothers who have lost e-mail child to suicide. The data collection method will consist of face-to-face interviews with these mothers. The study design will take place in churches or in their homes. This setting will allow the researcher to view the women within their own context, which is an important part of ethnobiographic qualitative studies (Creswell, 2007).

The research will explore the topic using multiple sources of data to discover themes, categories, and the larger dimensions that exist within the study group (Creswell, 2007). The primary interview method will be to allow study participants to tell their own stories. Data collection will use a combination of focus group interviews, observations, and confidential surveys needed to answer the research questions. Using these multiple sources of data collection will allow the researcher to uncover patterns and trends that might not otherwise be apparent.

Triangulation and combination data will be gathered from several different sources to confirm the findings of the initial study. The data will be analyzed in categories to order to identify trends, themes, and differences among the women's cases. The data will be used to uncover physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual barriers to helping these women to heal from their trauma.

The proposed study will be a phenomenological study that will explore the lived experiences of the identified group of African women. The research approach used in this study is driven by the research problem, which is to explore the factors in women's lives that affect their ability to heal from the suicide of a male child. This study will use and ethnobiographic approach to explore the phenomenon experienced by these women. Ethnobiography is a challenging nothing because the researcher needs to understand the cultural and socio-cultural mechanisms within the group of participants (Garson, 2008).

Garson (1997) require several decisions to be made prior to the research design. The first is to decide whether it will be a macro ethnography or whether it will be a micro ethnography. A macroethnobiographic study involves a larger group of people, such as the people in one state or region of a country. The mictoethnobiographic study uses a more narrowly defined research group. The research for the study will be a microethnobiographic study, as it involves a clearly defined group of study participants. The case study is a new level of clearly defined study participants. It is so narrow that it only involves one or two sample participants at the most. It is been argued that the case study is too narrow in scope to make it useful in determining outcomes for other similar cases. The same can be said for ethnobiographic studies, but not to the extent that it applies to case studies.

Flyybjerg (2011) defines a case study as a study that is defined by its own boundaries. For instance, it only explores a phenomenon in the context of one particular time or place. This differs from the ethnobiographic study that explored a phenomenon within a larger group, all having a single set of characteristics. The boundaries of the ethnobiographic study are broader than those in the single case study. However, the boundaries are still narrower than those in quantitative studies.

According to Flyybjerg (2006), contends that five common misunderstandings exist regarding case study research. The first is that theoretical knowledge is more important than the practical knowledge gained from the singles case study. The second is that the case study cannot be generalized and therefore does not contribute to a scientific understanding of the problem. The third misunderstanding is that the case study is most valuable for generating, rather than testing hypotheses. The last misunderstanding discussed in the article is that case studies are difficult to summarize. Flyyberg discredits each of these misunderstandings further in his work. He uses examples to support his arguments.

Case studies allow the researcher to explore the application of a theory or phenomenon in depth. Although Flyybjerg argues that the inability to use a case study to define phenomenon in other cases, it is still widely accepted that case studies add to the direction that future research should take rather than to provide answers to hypotheses. Another problem with case studies is the inability to reproduce the results. If the same situation were applied to different case, the results may be entirely different from what was found in the first case study. This only adds confusion to the body of research, rather than the answers that are being sought.