Digitalization of everyday lives has tremendously increased the amount of digital (trace) data of people's behaviour available for researchers. However, traditional qualitative research methods struggle with the width and breadth of the data. This paper reviewed 61 recent studies that had utilized qualitative big data for the practical challenges they had encountered and how they were addressed. While quantitative and qualitative big data share many common issues, the review points at that lack of qualitative methods and dataset reduction required by algorithms in big data research decreases the richness of the qualitative data. Locating relevant data and reducing noise are further challenges. Currently, these challenges can be only partially addressed with a combination of human and computer pattern recognition and crowdsourcing. The review describes many "tricks of the trade" but abduction research and pragmatist philosophy seem promising starting places for a more pervasive framework.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.