qualitative research meaning in nepali

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Qualitative research and its place in health research in Nepal

Affiliation.

• 1 School of Health and Social Care, University of Bournemouth, 19 Christchurch Road, Bournemouth, England, UK. [email protected]
• PMID: 22710544
• DOI: 10.3126/kumj.v9i4.6350

There has been a steady growth in recent decades in Nepal in health and health services research, much of it based on quantitative research methods. Over the same period international medical journals such as The Lancet, the British Medical Journal (BMJ), The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care and many more have published methods papers outlining and promoting qualitative methods. This paper argues in favour of more high-quality qualitative research in Nepal, either on its own or as part of a mixed-methods approach, to help strengthen the country's research capacity. After outlining the reasons for using qualitative methods, we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the three main approaches: (a) observation; (b) in-depth interviews; and (c) focus groups. We also discuss issues around sampling, analysis, presentation of findings, reflexivity of the qualitative researcher and theory building, and highlight some misconceptions about qualitative research and mistakes commonly made.

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English to Nepali Meaning of qualitative - गुणस्तरीय

गुणस्तरीय, विशेषता, जैविक, असल गुणहरू मा धनी, गुणहरू संग endowed, सद्गुण संग endowed

Meaning and definitions of qualitative, translation in Nepali language for qualitative with similar and opposite words. Also find spoken pronunciation of qualitative in Nepali and in English language.

What qualitative means in Nepali, qualitative meaning in Nepali, qualitative definition, examples and pronunciation of qualitative in Nepali language.

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Nepalese Journal of Qualitative Research Methods

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Use of qualitative research methods in natural resources management studies: sharing of some anthropological experiences from the ethnographic study of two indigenous irrigation systems from western terai, use of qualitative and quantitative research methods in poverty and livelihood study: sharing of some anthropological experiences from academic research in western tarai, nepal, use of qualitative research approach in postmodern studies: sharing of some anthropological experiences of the study on the pahari people of central nepal, application of qualitative and quantitative research methods in development domain: sharing of some anthropological experiences from rural development projects, book reviews, qualitative research by denzin, n.k. and lincoln, y. 2005, a companion to qualitative research by ewe flick, ernst von kardoff and ines steinke. 2004.

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• What Is Qualitative Research? | Methods & Examples

What Is Qualitative Research? | Methods & Examples

Published on June 19, 2020 by Pritha Bhandari . Revised on June 22, 2023.

Qualitative research involves collecting and analyzing non-numerical data (e.g., text, video, or audio) to understand concepts, opinions, or experiences. It can be used to gather in-depth insights into a problem or generate new ideas for research.

Qualitative research is the opposite of quantitative research , which involves collecting and analyzing numerical data for statistical analysis.

Qualitative research is commonly used in the humanities and social sciences, in subjects such as anthropology, sociology, education, health sciences, history, etc.

• How does social media shape body image in teenagers?
• How do children and adults interpret healthy eating in the UK?
• What factors influence employee retention in a large organization?
• How is anxiety experienced around the world?
• How can teachers integrate social issues into science curriculums?

Table of contents

Approaches to qualitative research, qualitative research methods, qualitative data analysis, advantages of qualitative research, disadvantages of qualitative research, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about qualitative research.

Qualitative research is used to understand how people experience the world. While there are many approaches to qualitative research, they tend to be flexible and focus on retaining rich meaning when interpreting data.

Common approaches include grounded theory, ethnography , action research , phenomenological research, and narrative research. They share some similarities, but emphasize different aims and perspectives.

Note that qualitative research is at risk for certain research biases including the Hawthorne effect , observer bias , recall bias , and social desirability bias . While not always totally avoidable, awareness of potential biases as you collect and analyze your data can prevent them from impacting your work too much.

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Each of the research approaches involve using one or more data collection methods . These are some of the most common qualitative methods:

• Observations: recording what you have seen, heard, or encountered in detailed field notes.
• Interviews:  personally asking people questions in one-on-one conversations.
• Focus groups: asking questions and generating discussion among a group of people.
• Surveys : distributing questionnaires with open-ended questions.
• Secondary research: collecting existing data in the form of texts, images, audio or video recordings, etc.
• You take field notes with observations and reflect on your own experiences of the company culture.
• You distribute open-ended surveys to employees across all the company’s offices by email to find out if the culture varies across locations.
• You conduct in-depth interviews with employees in your office to learn about their experiences and perspectives in greater detail.

Qualitative researchers often consider themselves “instruments” in research because all observations, interpretations and analyses are filtered through their own personal lens.

For this reason, when writing up your methodology for qualitative research, it’s important to reflect on your approach and to thoroughly explain the choices you made in collecting and analyzing the data.

Qualitative data can take the form of texts, photos, videos and audio. For example, you might be working with interview transcripts, survey responses, fieldnotes, or recordings from natural settings.

Most types of qualitative data analysis share the same five steps:

• Prepare and organize your data. This may mean transcribing interviews or typing up fieldnotes.
• Review and explore your data. Examine the data for patterns or repeated ideas that emerge.
• Develop a data coding system. Based on your initial ideas, establish a set of codes that you can apply to categorize your data.
• Assign codes to the data. For example, in qualitative survey analysis, this may mean going through each participant’s responses and tagging them with codes in a spreadsheet. As you go through your data, you can create new codes to add to your system if necessary.
• Identify recurring themes. Link codes together into cohesive, overarching themes.

There are several specific approaches to analyzing qualitative data. Although these methods share similar processes, they emphasize different concepts.

Qualitative research often tries to preserve the voice and perspective of participants and can be adjusted as new research questions arise. Qualitative research is good for:

• Flexibility

The data collection and analysis process can be adapted as new ideas or patterns emerge. They are not rigidly decided beforehand.

• Natural settings

Data collection occurs in real-world contexts or in naturalistic ways.

• Meaningful insights

Detailed descriptions of people’s experiences, feelings and perceptions can be used in designing, testing or improving systems or products.

• Generation of new ideas

Open-ended responses mean that researchers can uncover novel problems or opportunities that they wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

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Researchers must consider practical and theoretical limitations in analyzing and interpreting their data. Qualitative research suffers from:

• Unreliability

The real-world setting often makes qualitative research unreliable because of uncontrolled factors that affect the data.

• Subjectivity

Due to the researcher’s primary role in analyzing and interpreting data, qualitative research cannot be replicated . The researcher decides what is important and what is irrelevant in data analysis, so interpretations of the same data can vary greatly.

• Limited generalizability

Small samples are often used to gather detailed data about specific contexts. Despite rigorous analysis procedures, it is difficult to draw generalizable conclusions because the data may be biased and unrepresentative of the wider population .

• Labor-intensive

Although software can be used to manage and record large amounts of text, data analysis often has to be checked or performed manually.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Chi square goodness of fit test
• Degrees of freedom
• Null hypothesis
• Discourse analysis
• Control groups
• Mixed methods research
• Non-probability sampling
• Quantitative research
• Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Research bias

• Rosenthal effect
• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Selection bias
• Negativity bias
• Status quo bias

Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, while qualitative research deals with words and meanings.

Quantitative methods allow you to systematically measure variables and test hypotheses . Qualitative methods allow you to explore concepts and experiences in more detail.

There are five common approaches to qualitative research :

• Grounded theory involves collecting data in order to develop new theories.
• Ethnography involves immersing yourself in a group or organization to understand its culture.
• Narrative research involves interpreting stories to understand how people make sense of their experiences and perceptions.
• Phenomenological research involves investigating phenomena through people’s lived experiences.
• Action research links theory and practice in several cycles to drive innovative changes.

Data collection is the systematic process by which observations or measurements are gathered in research. It is used in many different contexts by academics, governments, businesses, and other organizations.

There are various approaches to qualitative data analysis , but they all share five steps in common:

• Prepare and organize your data.
• Review and explore your data.
• Develop a data coding system.
• Assign codes to the data.
• Identify recurring themes.

The specifics of each step depend on the focus of the analysis. Some common approaches include textual analysis , thematic analysis , and discourse analysis .

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• Examines the under-studied setting of Nepal from a language use and attitude perspective
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Home » Qualitative Research – Methods, Analysis Types and Guide

Qualitative Research – Methods, Analysis Types and Guide

Table of Contents

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is a type of research methodology that focuses on exploring and understanding people’s beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and experiences through the collection and analysis of non-numerical data. It seeks to answer research questions through the examination of subjective data, such as interviews, focus groups, observations, and textual analysis.

Qualitative research aims to uncover the meaning and significance of social phenomena, and it typically involves a more flexible and iterative approach to data collection and analysis compared to quantitative research. Qualitative research is often used in fields such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, and education.

Qualitative Research Methods

Qualitative Research Methods are as follows:

One-to-One Interview

This method involves conducting an interview with a single participant to gain a detailed understanding of their experiences, attitudes, and beliefs. One-to-one interviews can be conducted in-person, over the phone, or through video conferencing. The interviewer typically uses open-ended questions to encourage the participant to share their thoughts and feelings. One-to-one interviews are useful for gaining detailed insights into individual experiences.

Focus Groups

This method involves bringing together a group of people to discuss a specific topic in a structured setting. The focus group is led by a moderator who guides the discussion and encourages participants to share their thoughts and opinions. Focus groups are useful for generating ideas and insights, exploring social norms and attitudes, and understanding group dynamics.

Ethnographic Studies

This method involves immersing oneself in a culture or community to gain a deep understanding of its norms, beliefs, and practices. Ethnographic studies typically involve long-term fieldwork and observation, as well as interviews and document analysis. Ethnographic studies are useful for understanding the cultural context of social phenomena and for gaining a holistic understanding of complex social processes.

Text Analysis

This method involves analyzing written or spoken language to identify patterns and themes. Text analysis can be quantitative or qualitative. Qualitative text analysis involves close reading and interpretation of texts to identify recurring themes, concepts, and patterns. Text analysis is useful for understanding media messages, public discourse, and cultural trends.

This method involves an in-depth examination of a single person, group, or event to gain an understanding of complex phenomena. Case studies typically involve a combination of data collection methods, such as interviews, observations, and document analysis, to provide a comprehensive understanding of the case. Case studies are useful for exploring unique or rare cases, and for generating hypotheses for further research.

Process of Observation

This method involves systematically observing and recording behaviors and interactions in natural settings. The observer may take notes, use audio or video recordings, or use other methods to document what they see. Process of observation is useful for understanding social interactions, cultural practices, and the context in which behaviors occur.

Record Keeping

This method involves keeping detailed records of observations, interviews, and other data collected during the research process. Record keeping is essential for ensuring the accuracy and reliability of the data, and for providing a basis for analysis and interpretation.

This method involves collecting data from a large sample of participants through a structured questionnaire. Surveys can be conducted in person, over the phone, through mail, or online. Surveys are useful for collecting data on attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, and for identifying patterns and trends in a population.

Qualitative data analysis is a process of turning unstructured data into meaningful insights. It involves extracting and organizing information from sources like interviews, focus groups, and surveys. The goal is to understand people’s attitudes, behaviors, and motivations

Qualitative Research Analysis Methods

Qualitative Research analysis methods involve a systematic approach to interpreting and making sense of the data collected in qualitative research. Here are some common qualitative data analysis methods:

Thematic Analysis

This method involves identifying patterns or themes in the data that are relevant to the research question. The researcher reviews the data, identifies keywords or phrases, and groups them into categories or themes. Thematic analysis is useful for identifying patterns across multiple data sources and for generating new insights into the research topic.

Content Analysis

This method involves analyzing the content of written or spoken language to identify key themes or concepts. Content analysis can be quantitative or qualitative. Qualitative content analysis involves close reading and interpretation of texts to identify recurring themes, concepts, and patterns. Content analysis is useful for identifying patterns in media messages, public discourse, and cultural trends.

Discourse Analysis

This method involves analyzing language to understand how it constructs meaning and shapes social interactions. Discourse analysis can involve a variety of methods, such as conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, and narrative analysis. Discourse analysis is useful for understanding how language shapes social interactions, cultural norms, and power relationships.

Grounded Theory Analysis

This method involves developing a theory or explanation based on the data collected. Grounded theory analysis starts with the data and uses an iterative process of coding and analysis to identify patterns and themes in the data. The theory or explanation that emerges is grounded in the data, rather than preconceived hypotheses. Grounded theory analysis is useful for understanding complex social phenomena and for generating new theoretical insights.

Narrative Analysis

This method involves analyzing the stories or narratives that participants share to gain insights into their experiences, attitudes, and beliefs. Narrative analysis can involve a variety of methods, such as structural analysis, thematic analysis, and discourse analysis. Narrative analysis is useful for understanding how individuals construct their identities, make sense of their experiences, and communicate their values and beliefs.

Phenomenological Analysis

This method involves analyzing how individuals make sense of their experiences and the meanings they attach to them. Phenomenological analysis typically involves in-depth interviews with participants to explore their experiences in detail. Phenomenological analysis is useful for understanding subjective experiences and for developing a rich understanding of human consciousness.

Comparative Analysis

This method involves comparing and contrasting data across different cases or groups to identify similarities and differences. Comparative analysis can be used to identify patterns or themes that are common across multiple cases, as well as to identify unique or distinctive features of individual cases. Comparative analysis is useful for understanding how social phenomena vary across different contexts and groups.

Applications of Qualitative Research

Qualitative research has many applications across different fields and industries. Here are some examples of how qualitative research is used:

• Market Research: Qualitative research is often used in market research to understand consumer attitudes, behaviors, and preferences. Researchers conduct focus groups and one-on-one interviews with consumers to gather insights into their experiences and perceptions of products and services.
• Health Care: Qualitative research is used in health care to explore patient experiences and perspectives on health and illness. Researchers conduct in-depth interviews with patients and their families to gather information on their experiences with different health care providers and treatments.
• Education: Qualitative research is used in education to understand student experiences and to develop effective teaching strategies. Researchers conduct classroom observations and interviews with students and teachers to gather insights into classroom dynamics and instructional practices.
• Social Work : Qualitative research is used in social work to explore social problems and to develop interventions to address them. Researchers conduct in-depth interviews with individuals and families to understand their experiences with poverty, discrimination, and other social problems.
• Anthropology : Qualitative research is used in anthropology to understand different cultures and societies. Researchers conduct ethnographic studies and observe and interview members of different cultural groups to gain insights into their beliefs, practices, and social structures.
• Psychology : Qualitative research is used in psychology to understand human behavior and mental processes. Researchers conduct in-depth interviews with individuals to explore their thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
• Public Policy : Qualitative research is used in public policy to explore public attitudes and to inform policy decisions. Researchers conduct focus groups and one-on-one interviews with members of the public to gather insights into their perspectives on different policy issues.

How to Conduct Qualitative Research

Here are some general steps for conducting qualitative research:

• Identify your research question: Qualitative research starts with a research question or set of questions that you want to explore. This question should be focused and specific, but also broad enough to allow for exploration and discovery.
• Select your research design: There are different types of qualitative research designs, including ethnography, case study, grounded theory, and phenomenology. You should select a design that aligns with your research question and that will allow you to gather the data you need to answer your research question.
• Recruit participants: Once you have your research question and design, you need to recruit participants. The number of participants you need will depend on your research design and the scope of your research. You can recruit participants through advertisements, social media, or through personal networks.
• Collect data: There are different methods for collecting qualitative data, including interviews, focus groups, observation, and document analysis. You should select the method or methods that align with your research design and that will allow you to gather the data you need to answer your research question.
• Analyze data: Once you have collected your data, you need to analyze it. This involves reviewing your data, identifying patterns and themes, and developing codes to organize your data. You can use different software programs to help you analyze your data, or you can do it manually.
• Interpret data: Once you have analyzed your data, you need to interpret it. This involves making sense of the patterns and themes you have identified, and developing insights and conclusions that answer your research question. You should be guided by your research question and use your data to support your conclusions.
• Communicate results: Once you have interpreted your data, you need to communicate your results. This can be done through academic papers, presentations, or reports. You should be clear and concise in your communication, and use examples and quotes from your data to support your findings.

Examples of Qualitative Research

Here are some real-time examples of qualitative research:

• Customer Feedback: A company may conduct qualitative research to understand the feedback and experiences of its customers. This may involve conducting focus groups or one-on-one interviews with customers to gather insights into their attitudes, behaviors, and preferences.
• Healthcare : A healthcare provider may conduct qualitative research to explore patient experiences and perspectives on health and illness. This may involve conducting in-depth interviews with patients and their families to gather information on their experiences with different health care providers and treatments.
• Education : An educational institution may conduct qualitative research to understand student experiences and to develop effective teaching strategies. This may involve conducting classroom observations and interviews with students and teachers to gather insights into classroom dynamics and instructional practices.
• Social Work: A social worker may conduct qualitative research to explore social problems and to develop interventions to address them. This may involve conducting in-depth interviews with individuals and families to understand their experiences with poverty, discrimination, and other social problems.
• Anthropology : An anthropologist may conduct qualitative research to understand different cultures and societies. This may involve conducting ethnographic studies and observing and interviewing members of different cultural groups to gain insights into their beliefs, practices, and social structures.
• Psychology : A psychologist may conduct qualitative research to understand human behavior and mental processes. This may involve conducting in-depth interviews with individuals to explore their thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
• Public Policy: A government agency or non-profit organization may conduct qualitative research to explore public attitudes and to inform policy decisions. This may involve conducting focus groups and one-on-one interviews with members of the public to gather insights into their perspectives on different policy issues.

Purpose of Qualitative Research

The purpose of qualitative research is to explore and understand the subjective experiences, behaviors, and perspectives of individuals or groups in a particular context. Unlike quantitative research, which focuses on numerical data and statistical analysis, qualitative research aims to provide in-depth, descriptive information that can help researchers develop insights and theories about complex social phenomena.

Qualitative research can serve multiple purposes, including:

• Exploring new or emerging phenomena : Qualitative research can be useful for exploring new or emerging phenomena, such as new technologies or social trends. This type of research can help researchers develop a deeper understanding of these phenomena and identify potential areas for further study.
• Understanding complex social phenomena : Qualitative research can be useful for exploring complex social phenomena, such as cultural beliefs, social norms, or political processes. This type of research can help researchers develop a more nuanced understanding of these phenomena and identify factors that may influence them.
• Generating new theories or hypotheses: Qualitative research can be useful for generating new theories or hypotheses about social phenomena. By gathering rich, detailed data about individuals’ experiences and perspectives, researchers can develop insights that may challenge existing theories or lead to new lines of inquiry.
• Providing context for quantitative data: Qualitative research can be useful for providing context for quantitative data. By gathering qualitative data alongside quantitative data, researchers can develop a more complete understanding of complex social phenomena and identify potential explanations for quantitative findings.

When to use Qualitative Research

Here are some situations where qualitative research may be appropriate:

• Exploring a new area: If little is known about a particular topic, qualitative research can help to identify key issues, generate hypotheses, and develop new theories.
• Understanding complex phenomena: Qualitative research can be used to investigate complex social, cultural, or organizational phenomena that are difficult to measure quantitatively.
• Investigating subjective experiences: Qualitative research is particularly useful for investigating the subjective experiences of individuals or groups, such as their attitudes, beliefs, values, or emotions.
• Conducting formative research: Qualitative research can be used in the early stages of a research project to develop research questions, identify potential research participants, and refine research methods.
• Evaluating interventions or programs: Qualitative research can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions or programs by collecting data on participants’ experiences, attitudes, and behaviors.

Characteristics of Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is characterized by several key features, including:

• Focus on subjective experience: Qualitative research is concerned with understanding the subjective experiences, beliefs, and perspectives of individuals or groups in a particular context. Researchers aim to explore the meanings that people attach to their experiences and to understand the social and cultural factors that shape these meanings.
• Use of open-ended questions: Qualitative research relies on open-ended questions that allow participants to provide detailed, in-depth responses. Researchers seek to elicit rich, descriptive data that can provide insights into participants’ experiences and perspectives.
• Sampling-based on purpose and diversity: Qualitative research often involves purposive sampling, in which participants are selected based on specific criteria related to the research question. Researchers may also seek to include participants with diverse experiences and perspectives to capture a range of viewpoints.
• Data collection through multiple methods: Qualitative research typically involves the use of multiple data collection methods, such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, and observation. This allows researchers to gather rich, detailed data from multiple sources, which can provide a more complete picture of participants’ experiences and perspectives.
• Inductive data analysis: Qualitative research relies on inductive data analysis, in which researchers develop theories and insights based on the data rather than testing pre-existing hypotheses. Researchers use coding and thematic analysis to identify patterns and themes in the data and to develop theories and explanations based on these patterns.
• Emphasis on researcher reflexivity: Qualitative research recognizes the importance of the researcher’s role in shaping the research process and outcomes. Researchers are encouraged to reflect on their own biases and assumptions and to be transparent about their role in the research process.

Advantages of Qualitative Research

Qualitative research offers several advantages over other research methods, including:

• Depth and detail: Qualitative research allows researchers to gather rich, detailed data that provides a deeper understanding of complex social phenomena. Through in-depth interviews, focus groups, and observation, researchers can gather detailed information about participants’ experiences and perspectives that may be missed by other research methods.
• Flexibility : Qualitative research is a flexible approach that allows researchers to adapt their methods to the research question and context. Researchers can adjust their research methods in real-time to gather more information or explore unexpected findings.
• Contextual understanding: Qualitative research is well-suited to exploring the social and cultural context in which individuals or groups are situated. Researchers can gather information about cultural norms, social structures, and historical events that may influence participants’ experiences and perspectives.
• Participant perspective : Qualitative research prioritizes the perspective of participants, allowing researchers to explore subjective experiences and understand the meanings that participants attach to their experiences.
• Theory development: Qualitative research can contribute to the development of new theories and insights about complex social phenomena. By gathering rich, detailed data and using inductive data analysis, researchers can develop new theories and explanations that may challenge existing understandings.
• Validity : Qualitative research can offer high validity by using multiple data collection methods, purposive and diverse sampling, and researcher reflexivity. This can help ensure that findings are credible and trustworthy.

Limitations of Qualitative Research

Qualitative research also has some limitations, including:

• Subjectivity : Qualitative research relies on the subjective interpretation of researchers, which can introduce bias into the research process. The researcher’s perspective, beliefs, and experiences can influence the way data is collected, analyzed, and interpreted.
• Limited generalizability: Qualitative research typically involves small, purposive samples that may not be representative of larger populations. This limits the generalizability of findings to other contexts or populations.
• Time-consuming: Qualitative research can be a time-consuming process, requiring significant resources for data collection, analysis, and interpretation.
• Resource-intensive: Qualitative research may require more resources than other research methods, including specialized training for researchers, specialized software for data analysis, and transcription services.
• Limited reliability: Qualitative research may be less reliable than quantitative research, as it relies on the subjective interpretation of researchers. This can make it difficult to replicate findings or compare results across different studies.
• Ethics and confidentiality: Qualitative research involves collecting sensitive information from participants, which raises ethical concerns about confidentiality and informed consent. Researchers must take care to protect the privacy and confidentiality of participants and obtain informed consent.

Also see Research Methods

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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What is Qualitative Research? Methods, Types, Approaches and Examples

Qualitative research is a type of method that researchers use depending on their study requirements. Research can be conducted using several methods, but before starting the process, researchers should understand the different methods available to decide the best one for their study type. The type of research method needed depends on a few important criteria, such as the research question, study type, time, costs, data availability, and availability of respondents. The two main types of methods are qualitative research and quantitative research. Sometimes, researchers may find it difficult to decide which type of method is most suitable for their study. Keeping in mind a simple rule of thumb could help you make the correct decision. Quantitative research should be used to validate or test a theory or hypothesis and qualitative research should be used to understand a subject or event or identify reasons for observed patterns.  

Qualitative research methods are based on principles of social sciences from several disciplines like psychology, sociology, and anthropology. In this method, researchers try to understand the feelings and motivation of their respondents, which would have prompted them to select or give a particular response to a question. Here are two qualitative research examples :  

• Two brands (A & B) of the same medicine are available at a pharmacy. However, Brand A is more popular and has higher sales. In qualitative research , the interviewers would ideally visit a few stores in different areas and ask customers their reason for selecting either brand. Respondents may have different reasons that motivate them to select one brand over the other, such as brand loyalty, cost, feedback from friends, doctor’s suggestion, etc. Once the reasons are known, companies could then address challenges in that specific area to increase their product’s sales.  
• A company organizes a focus group meeting with a random sample of its product’s consumers to understand their opinion on a new product being launched.  

Table of Contents

What is qualitative research? 1

Qualitative research is the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting non-numerical data. The findings of qualitative research are expressed in words and help in understanding individuals’ subjective perceptions about an event, condition, or subject. This type of research is exploratory and is used to generate hypotheses or theories from data. Qualitative data are usually in the form of text, videos, photographs, and audio recordings. There are multiple qualitative research types , which will be discussed later.  

Qualitative research methods 2

Researchers can choose from several qualitative research methods depending on the study type, research question, the researcher’s role, data to be collected, etc.  

The following table lists the common qualitative research approaches with their purpose and examples, although there may be an overlap between some.  

Types of qualitative research 3,4

The data collection methods in qualitative research are designed to assess and understand the perceptions, motivations, and feelings of the respondents about the subject being studied. The different qualitative research types include the following:  

• In-depth or one-on-one interviews : This is one of the most common qualitative research methods and helps the interviewers understand a respondent’s subjective opinion and experience pertaining to a specific topic or event. These interviews are usually conversational and encourage the respondents to express their opinions freely. Semi-structured interviews, which have open-ended questions (where the respondents can answer more than just “yes” or “no”), are commonly used. Such interviews can be either face-to-face or telephonic, and the duration can vary depending on the subject or the interviewer. Asking the right questions is essential in this method so that the interview can be led in the suitable direction. Face-to-face interviews also help interviewers observe the respondents’ body language, which could help in confirming whether the responses match.  
• Document study/Literature review/Record keeping : Researchers’ review of already existing written materials such as archives, annual reports, research articles, guidelines, policy documents, etc.  
• Focus groups : Usually include a small sample of about 6-10 people and a moderator, to understand the participants’ opinion on a given topic. Focus groups ensure constructive discussions to understand the why, what, and, how about the topic. These group meetings need not always be in-person. In recent times, online meetings are also encouraged, and online surveys could also be administered with the option to “write” subjective answers as well. However, this method is expensive and is mostly used for new products and ideas.  
• Qualitative observation : In this method, researchers collect data using their five senses—sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. This method doesn’t include any measurements but only the subjective observation. For example, “The dessert served at the bakery was creamy with sweet buttercream frosting”; this observation is based on the taste perception.  

Qualitative research : Data collection and analysis

• Qualitative data collection is the process by which observations or measurements are gathered in research.  
• The data collected are usually non-numeric and subjective and could be recorded in various methods, for instance, in case of one-to-one interviews, the responses may be recorded using handwritten notes, and audio and video recordings, depending on the interviewer and the setting or duration.  
• Once the data are collected, they should be transcribed into meaningful or useful interpretations. An experienced researcher could take about 8-10 hours to transcribe an interview’s recordings. All such notes and recordings should be maintained properly for later reference.  
• Some interviewers make use of “field notes.” These are not exactly the respondents’ answers but rather some observations the interviewer may have made while asking questions and may include non-verbal cues or any information about the setting or the environment. These notes are usually informal and help verify respondents’ answers.  

2. Qualitative data analysis 

• This process involves analyzing all the data obtained from the qualitative research methods in the form of text (notes), audio-video recordings, and pictures.  
• Text analysis is a common form of qualitative data analysis in which researchers examine the social lives of the participants and analyze their words, actions, etc. in specific contexts. Social media platforms are now playing an important role in this method with researchers analyzing all information shared online.   

There are usually five steps in the qualitative data analysis process: 5

• Prepare and organize the data  
• Transcribe interviews  
• Collect and document field notes and other material  
• Review and explore the data  
• Examine the data for patterns or important observations  
• Develop a data coding system  
• Create codes to categorize and connect the data  
• Assign these codes to the data or responses  
• Review the codes  
• Identify recurring themes, opinions, patterns, etc.  
• Present the findings  
• Use the best possible method to present your observations  

The following table 6 lists some common qualitative data analysis methods used by companies to make important decisions, with examples and when to use each. The methods may be similar and can overlap.  

Characteristics of qualitative research methods 4

• Unstructured raw data : Qualitative research methods use unstructured, non-numerical data , which are analyzed to generate subjective conclusions about specific subjects, usually presented descriptively, instead of using statistical data.  
• Site-specific data collection : In qualitative research methods , data are collected at specific areas where the respondents or researchers are either facing a challenge or have a need to explore. The process is conducted in a real-world setting and participants do not need to leave their original geographical setting to be able to participate.  
• Researchers’ importance : Researchers play an instrumental role because, in qualitative research , communication with respondents is an essential part of data collection and analysis. In addition, researchers need to rely on their own observation and listening skills during an interaction and use and interpret that data appropriately.  
• Multiple methods : Researchers collect data through various methods, as listed earlier, instead of relying on a single source. Although there may be some overlap between the qualitative research methods , each method has its own significance.  
• Solving complex issues : These methods help in breaking down complex problems into more useful and interpretable inferences, which can be easily understood by everyone.  
• Unbiased responses : Qualitative research methods rely on open communication where the participants are allowed to freely express their views. In such cases, the participants trust the interviewer, resulting in unbiased and truthful responses.  
• Flexible : The qualitative research method can be changed at any stage of the research. The data analysis is not confined to being done at the end of the research but can be done in tandem with data collection. Consequently, based on preliminary analysis and new ideas, researchers have the liberty to change the method to suit their objective.  

When to use qualitative research   4

The following points will give you an idea about when to use qualitative research .  

• When the objective of a research study is to understand behaviors and patterns of respondents, then qualitative research is the most suitable method because it gives a clear insight into the reasons for the occurrence of an event.  
• A few use cases for qualitative research methods include:  
• New product development or idea generation  
• Strengthening a product’s marketing strategy  
• Conducting a SWOT analysis of product or services portfolios to help take important strategic decisions  
• Understanding purchasing behavior of consumers  
• Understanding reactions of target market to ad campaigns  
• Understanding market demographics and conducting competitor analysis  
• Understanding the effectiveness of a new treatment method in a particular section of society  

A qualitative research method case study to understand when to use qualitative research 7

Context : A high school in the US underwent a turnaround or conservatorship process and consequently experienced a below average teacher retention rate. Researchers conducted qualitative research to understand teachers’ experiences and perceptions of how the turnaround may have influenced the teachers’ morale and how this, in turn, would have affected teachers’ retention.  

Method : Purposive sampling was used to select eight teachers who were employed with the school before the conservatorship process and who were subsequently retained. One-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with these teachers. The questions addressed teachers’ perspectives of morale and their views on the conservatorship process.  

Results : The study generated six factors that may have been influencing teachers’ perspectives: powerlessness, excessive visitations, loss of confidence, ineffective instructional practices, stress and burnout, and ineffective professional development opportunities. Based on these factors, four recommendations were made to increase teacher retention by boosting their morale.  

Advantages of qualitative research 1

• Reflects real-world settings , and therefore allows for ambiguities in data, as well as the flexibility to change the method based on new developments.  
• Helps in understanding the feelings or beliefs of the respondents rather than relying only on quantitative data.  
• Uses a descriptive and narrative style of presentation, which may be easier to understand for people from all backgrounds.  
• Some topics involving sensitive or controversial content could be difficult to quantify and so qualitative research helps in analyzing such content.  
• The availability of multiple data sources and research methods helps give a holistic picture.  
• There’s more involvement of participants, which gives them an assurance that their opinion matters, possibly leading to unbiased responses.   

Disadvantages of qualitative research 1

• Large-scale data sets cannot be included because of time and cost constraints.  
• Ensuring validity and reliability may be a challenge because of the subjective nature of the data, so drawing definite conclusions could be difficult.  
• Replication by other researchers may be difficult for the same contexts or situations.  
• Generalization to a wider context or to other populations or settings is not possible.  
• Data collection and analysis may be time consuming.  
• Researcher’s interpretation may alter the results causing an unintended bias.  

Differences between qualitative research and quantitative research 1

Frequently asked questions on qualitative research  

Q: how do i know if qualitative research is appropriate for my study  .

A: Here’s a simple checklist you could use:  

• Not much is known about the subject being studied.  
• There is a need to understand or simplify a complex problem or situation.  
• Participants’ experiences/beliefs/feelings are required for analysis.  
• There’s no existing hypothesis to begin with, rather a theory would need to be created after analysis.  
• You need to gather in-depth understanding of an event or subject, which may not need to be supported by numeric data.  

Q: How do I ensure the reliability and validity of my qualitative research findings?  

A: To ensure the validity of your qualitative research findings you should explicitly state your objective and describe clearly why you have interpreted the data in a particular way. Another method could be to connect your data in different ways or from different perspectives to see if you reach a similar, unbiased conclusion.   

To ensure reliability, always create an audit trail of your qualitative research by describing your steps and reasons for every interpretation, so that if required, another researcher could trace your steps to corroborate your (or their own) findings. In addition, always look for patterns or consistencies in the data collected through different methods.  

Q: Are there any sampling strategies or techniques for qualitative research ?   

A: Yes, the following are few common sampling strategies used in qualitative research :  

1. Convenience sampling  

Selects participants who are most easily accessible to researchers due to geographical proximity, availability at a particular time, etc.  

2. Purposive sampling  

Participants are grouped according to predefined criteria based on a specific research question. Sample sizes are often determined based on theoretical saturation (when new data no longer provide additional insights).  

3. Snowball sampling  

Already selected participants use their social networks to refer the researcher to other potential participants.  

4. Quota sampling  

While designing the study, the researchers decide how many people with which characteristics to include as participants. The characteristics help in choosing people most likely to provide insights into the subject.  

Q: What ethical standards need to be followed with qualitative research ?  

A: The following ethical standards should be considered in qualitative research:  

• Anonymity : The participants should never be identified in the study and researchers should ensure that no identifying information is mentioned even indirectly.  
• Confidentiality : To protect participants’ confidentiality, ensure that all related documents, transcripts, notes are stored safely.  
• Informed consent : Researchers should clearly communicate the objective of the study and how the participants’ responses will be used prior to engaging with the participants.  

Q: How do I address bias in my qualitative research ?  

  A: You could use the following points to ensure an unbiased approach to your qualitative research :  

• Check your interpretations of the findings with others’ interpretations to identify consistencies.  
• If possible, you could ask your participants if your interpretations convey their beliefs to a significant extent.  
• Data triangulation is a way of using multiple data sources to see if all methods consistently support your interpretations.  
• Contemplate other possible explanations for your findings or interpretations and try ruling them out if possible.  
• Conduct a peer review of your findings to identify any gaps that may not have been visible to you.  
• Frame context-appropriate questions to ensure there is no researcher or participant bias.

We hope this article has given you answers to the question “ what is qualitative research ” and given you an in-depth understanding of the various aspects of qualitative research , including the definition, types, and approaches, when to use this method, and advantages and disadvantages, so that the next time you undertake a study you would know which type of research design to adopt.  

References:  

• McLeod, S. A. Qualitative vs. quantitative research. Simply Psychology [Accessed January 17, 2023]. www.simplypsychology.org/qualitative-quantitative.html    
• Omniconvert website [Accessed January 18, 2023]. https://www.omniconvert.com/blog/qualitative-research-definition-methodology-limitation-examples/  
• Busetto L., Wick W., Gumbinger C. How to use and assess qualitative research methods. Neurological Research and Practice [Accessed January 19, 2023] https://neurolrespract.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42466-020-00059  
• QuestionPro website. Qualitative research methods: Types & examples [Accessed January 16, 2023]. https://www.questionpro.com/blog/qualitative-research-methods/  
• Campuslabs website. How to analyze qualitative data [Accessed January 18, 2023]. https://baselinesupport.campuslabs.com/hc/en-us/articles/204305675-How-to-analyze-qualitative-data  
• Thematic website. Qualitative data analysis: Step-by-guide [Accessed January 20, 2023]. https://getthematic.com/insights/qualitative-data-analysis/  
• Lane L. J., Jones D., Penny G. R. Qualitative case study of teachers’ morale in a turnaround school. Research in Higher Education Journal . https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1233111.pdf  
• Meetingsnet website. 7 FAQs about qualitative research and CME [Accessed January 21, 2023]. https://www.meetingsnet.com/cme-design/7-faqs-about-qualitative-research-and-cme     
• Qualitative research methods: A data collector’s field guide. Khoury College of Computer Sciences. Northeastern University. https://course.ccs.neu.edu/is4800sp12/resources/qualmethods.pdf  

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Traditional Healers and Mental Health in Nepal: A Scoping Review

Tony v pham.

1 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States

2 Duke Global Health Institute, Durham, North Carolina, United States

Bonnie N. Kaiser

4 Department of Anthropology and Global Health Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States

Rishav Koirala

3 Transcultural Psychosocial Organization Nepal, Kathmandu, Nepal

5 University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

6 Brain and Neuroscience Center Nepal, Kathmandu, Nepal

Sujen Man Maharjan

Nawaraj upadhaya.

7 Utrecht University, Utrecth, Netherlands

Lauren Franz

8 Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

Brandon A. Kohrt

9 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, George Washington, Washington, D.C., USA

Associated Data

Introduction:.

Despite extensive ethnographic and qualitative research on traditional healers in Nepal, the role of traditional healers in relation to mental health has not been synthesized.

We focused on the following clinically based research question, “What are the processes by which Nepali traditional healers address mental well-being?” We adopted a scoping review methodology to maximize the available literature base and conducted a modified thematic analysis rooted in grounded theory, ethnography, and phenomenology. We searched five databases using terms related to traditional healers and mental health. We contacted key authors and reviewed references for additional literature.

Our scoping review yielded 86 eligible studies, 65 of which relied solely on classical qualitative study designs. The reviewed literature suggests that traditional healers use a wide range of interventions that utilize magico-religious explanatory models to invoke symbolic transference, manipulation of local illness narratives, roles, and relationships, cognitive restructuring, meaning-making, and catharsis.

Discussion:

Traditional healers’ perceived impact appears greatest for mild to moderate forms of psychological distress. However, the methodological and sample heterogeneity preclude uniform conclusions about traditional healing. Further research should employ methods which are both empirically sound and culturally adapted to explore the role of traditional healers in mental health.

Given increasing global recognition of the relationship between traditional healers and mental illness ( Incayawar, et al., 2009 ), Nortje and colleagues (2016) generated a systematic review on the relevant quantitative data with van der Watt and colleagues (2018) following up on the remaining qualitative literature. Their review suggested that traditional healers in low-and middle-income countries were perceived to effect the most change among those who suffered from less severe mental illness, expected positive change, and believed in the inherent meaning of their treatment. Because their review demonstrated a clear diversity in traditional healers and the cultures they practiced in, they concluded future studies should focus on the cultural specificity of traditional healing practices within individual nations using detailed, contextual data to facilitate more generalizable claims ( Nortje, et al., 2016 ; van der Watt, et al., 2018 ).

There is a rich body of ethnographic and qualitative literature from Nepal on traditional healers, however a cursory review may instead reveal an over-romanticized and arguably dismissive generalization of mysticism, neologisms, scientific jargon, and other paranormal, miraculous, or extraordinary claims (Krippner and Combs 2002; Castillo 2004; Sidky 2010 ). The potential for misunderstanding necessitates a further in-depth exploration of the total available literature, the term “traditional healers” and how traditional healers operate vis-à-vis mental health in Nepal. This is made especially true given their growing clinical significance.

Previous work has promoted traditional healers to the role of primary care providers or referral agents ( Poudyal, et al., 2003 , 2005 ). However, if medical providers delegate traditional healers to function simply as primary care providers or referral agents to other primary care providers, or even to deliver simplified manualized psychotherapies, then they lose access to the traditional healer’s unique ability to treat the patient’s teleological needs. Consequently, medical providers might benefit from bearing in mind Nepal’s diverse, specific, and idiosyncratic cosmologies of the mind, how they shape the work of local traditional healers, and how they could potentially shape the work of local medical providers.

Recent work by Chase and colleagues (2018) took a “scoping review” approach to synthesizing 38 publications on culture and the mental health in Nepal. The purpose of a scoping review is to provide an overview of the existing evidence, regardless of quality ( Arksey and O’Malley 2005 ; Levac, Colquhoun, and O’Brien 2010 ). The reviewed literature discussed how culture and indigenous knowledge, beliefs, and values shape and determine the symptom experience, expression, and help-seeking behaviors of those with mental illness. Chase and colleagues (2018) concluded by affirming the growing interest in culturally informed mental health research and encouraging its application within service design and capacity building.

Future researchers may take several approaches to this. For instance, given the traditional healer’s potential and unique capacity to engage in this healing role, medical providers could allow traditional healers to practice their own theories and interventions, without feeling the need to fulfill a medical role sub-serving biomedicine and vice versa ( Ventevogel 1996 ). Here, future medical providers could adopt a holistic bio-psycho-social-spiritual collaborative care model in which multi-disciplinary teams would meet the explanatory needs of opposing illness causality models. Traditional healers in these teams could cover issues which have no simple pharmacological or psychopathological answer, and yet still play a role in both symptoms and solutions. This idealistic approach draws from how biomedicine and traditional healing systems can principally learn from each other and both contain elements which the other lacks. Future medical providers, researchers and public health officials in Nepal could use this approach as a road map for bringing mental health resources to the underserved in a way that is neither invasive nor imperialistic, but rather empowering on a social, individual, and even spiritual level ( Craig, et al., 2010 ).

It is an ideal time to synthesize the relevant literature in Nepal. However, the traditional healing landscape is described through a heterogeneous and difficult to summarize literature base. To date, empiric research on the relationship between traditional healers and mental health has been quite scarce because of the unique challenges to the trial design, implementation, and evaluation of traditional healers ( Nortje et al., 2016 ; van der Watt et al., 2018 ). To study a field where fidelity, adherence, and manualized care do not easily translate into ways of understanding traditional healing, many past researchers have instead turned to ethnographic, qualitative, and other social science methods with poor quality and low evidence levels per biomedical criteria, e.g., GRADE recommendations ( Schünemann, et al., 2013 ).

Thus, to synthesize the relevant literature base in Nepal including the qualitative work which might otherwise elude systematic review, we adopt the scoping review methodology. Future researchers who wish to study traditional healers and mental health in Nepal, along with its socio-cultural diversity and complexity, should consider this scoping review in tandem with the work of Chase and colleagues (2018) who just recently reviewed culture and mental health in Nepal.

For our scoping review, we will first discuss the general scope of the included literature, introduce relevant terminology, and identify key atheoretical healer interventions before progressing to theoretical mechanisms of healing. Then we will summarize our results within a pathways to care model.

Setting and context

Nepal is a complex hotspot for cultural and biological diversity, altogether composed of 125 castes/ethnic groups and 123 languages, a fact which can be explained through Nepal’s intertwined nature between the borders of the Indian subcontinent and Tibet. And according to the 2011 National Population and Housing Census, 81% of the population follows Hinduism, 9% Buddhism, 4% Islam, 3% Kirat Mundhum (indigenous ethnic religion), 1% Christianity, and 1% other or no religion (“National Population and Housing Census 2011 (National Report).” Consequently, Nepal’s ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious heterogeneity has made it is hard to generalize all theories regarding self-hood, magico-religious thinking, and perceptions of traditional healers across the entire population ( Regmi 1987 ).

However, accurate, reliable data on religion has historically dodged Nepal’s census reports for several reasons. Strict classification systems fail to capture the syncretic nature with which mountain region Hinduism in Nepal has absorbed Buddhist tenets and vice versa. Furthermore, census enumerators have been known to incorrectly lump whole ethnicities and castes together while relying on rigid parameters to record religious preference. This has left many to claim “Hinduism” as their religion despite evidence to the contrary ( Dahal 2003 ; Ghimire 2019 ).

More recently, rapid shifts in religious preference have turned measurements into a moving target. For instance, census data has seen a rising popularity in Buddhism and Kirati religions among the Magar, Tharu, Chepang, and Dalit ethnic/caste groups. In another example, Christianity has surged 225% between 1961 to 2001, especially among the Tamang and Chepang ethnic groups ( Dahal 2003 ; Ghimire 2019 ).

In light of Nepal’s diversity, much of the literature on traditional healers and mental well-being has focused on specific Nepali subpopulations. Consequently, we categorized findings in this review by accepted social, political, geographic divisions within Nepal. Nepal has three main types of ecosystems that inform the types of populations, livelihoods, and political contexts. The northern part of the country is the Himalaya, characterized by high-altitude regions with mostly Tibeto-Burman language speaking populations, and with a greater concentration of Buddhism. The middle region of the country is known as the Middle Hills (Parbat). This region is lower altitude hills and mountains with populations speaking Nepali and practicing Hinduism, as well as middle-hill ethnic minority groups who may practice Hinduism or Buddhism. The southern part of the country is the plains region (Tarai) characterized by high agricultural production and populations of north Indian dissent typically speaking Indo-European languages related to Hindi. Here, Hinduism is the dominant religion, with small Muslim populations.

Search Strategy

Because of the broad landscape of rich, ethnographic data regarding traditional healing in Nepal, we focused on the clinically based research question, “What are the processes by which Nepali traditional healers address mental well-being?” Thus, our review, while open to Nepal’s cultural heterogeneity, does not seek to summarize every related aspect of it. Neither does it summarize each and every traditional healer intervention outside of those papers which match our research question.

We used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analysis Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) ( Figure 1 ; Appendix A ) ( Tricco, et al., 2018 ). We additionally registered our scoping review through the Open Science Framework (OSF) (osf.io/4ahuw).

PRISMA-ScR Flow Chart

We utilized broad search strategies to capture relevant idiomatic and ethnographic language that might escape a typical systematic review taxonomy. For example, we searched for “mental health” using informal language based on “mental well-being.” We searched databases from Anthrosource, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Scopus, and Pubmed. The full search strings used varied based on each database ( Appendix B ). We contacted key authors and reviewed references of included articles and publications from their work for additional literature.

Screening and Eligibility Criteria

The authors screened the initial search results using pre-defined inclusion/exclusion criteria in two phases: 1) title/abstract review and 2) full-text review ( Table 1 ). To avoid prior loose, unsystematic definitions, we used the same “traditional healer” definition as established by Nortje and colleagues (2016) : “healers who explicitly appeal to spiritual, magical or religious explanations for disease and distress.”

Inclusion/exclusion Criteria

Data Extraction and Synthesis

We conducted our analyses according to guidelines for a modified thematic analysis rooted in grounded theory, ethnography and phenomenology ( Braun and Clarke 2006 ; Taylor and Bogdan 1998 ). This approach relied on identifying and describing explanatory patterns within texts and allowed for a more flexible account of the qualitative, heterogeneous body of literature.

Two of us (TVP and BNK) completed two passes of the literature to establish the final codes, themes, and organizational frameworks. Our first reading of the literature identified initial codes. We adjusted these codes through constant comparison across literature. To enhance trustworthiness of the qualitative analysis, we engaged in active discourse with respect to coding, organization of coding categories, and identification of emerging themes. We discussed the data and provided critical feedback on their interpretations. This provided a theoretical sounding board which allowed us to reflect on and then explore alternative interpretations before making changes.

By the end of our first pass, the codebook reached data saturation, i.e. no new themes emerged. We agreed upon the final codebook by reading the coded data and checking the codes for consistency ( Appendix C ).

Altogether, our scoping review yielded 86 publications, including 65 qualitative studies, two quantitative studies, eight literature reviews, five perspective or opinion pieces, and six mixed methods studies ( Table 2 ). Many were limited in scope; did not use regimented study designs, validated scales, or ratings for outcome assessments; relied primarily on ethnographic data without any biomedically defined framework; used terminology with ambiguous definitions inconsistent with the broader literature and health policies.

Summary of Reviewed Literature

(NS = Not Specified; IID = In-depth Interview; KII = Key Informant Interview; FGD = Focus Group Discussion; VDC = Village Development Committee; TH = Traditional Healer)

The reviewed literature spanned across most major regions of Nepal including the Kathmandu Valley (n=15), Western Himalaya (n=5), Central Himalaya (n=18), Eastern Himalaya (16), Western Middle Hills (n=6), Central Middle Hills (n=4), Eastern Middle Hills (n=4), Western Tarai (n=4), Central Tarai (n=8), Eastern Tarai (n=1) as well as England (n=3), Hong Kong (n=1), and India (n=3). Five works sampled from multiple regions. The reviewed literature also covered a broad range of ethnicities and castes including the lower castes (n=6), higher castes (n=10), Newar (n=7), middle hills ethnic groups (n=26), Tarai indigenous groups (n=4), Kirati (n=12), Chantel (n=1), Sherpa (n=8), Bhutanese (n=3), Tibetan (n=1), and Sikh (n=1). 10 works represented multiple ethnicities or castes.

Despite such cultural heterogeneity in terms and constructs, much of mental health research and practice has described Nepal’s fluid areas of self and life using a framework by Author and Harper (2008) . In this framework, they conceived of the Nepali self in terms of the man (heart-mind), dimaag (brain-mind), iu/saarir (physical body), saato/atma (spirit/soul), ijjat (social status/honor), and samaaj (social world). Nepali phenomenological concepts of the self, such as the man (heart-mind) notably bypass local notions of stigma classically associated with mental illness ( Author and Harper 2008 ). The distinction between man and dimaag (brain-mind) is especially important given that issues and solutions related to the man offer a satisfying explanation for sickness and misfortune whereas dimaag issues and solutions face the same stigma as mental illness ( Author and Harper, 2008 ). This nuanced stigma has presented tremendous barriers for healthcare delivery, and traditional healing is built upon this cultural psychology (ethnopsychology).

Overall, the literature reported on a wide variety of traditional healers in Nepal while simultaneously revealing that Nepali had no agreed upon general term for “traditional healer.” The majority of the reviewed literature used local terms (emic) when referring to distinct ethnic and cultural types of traditional healers. These included but were not limited to dhami (mediums or villagers like any other who indirectly heal through divine possession states; conventionally used in Western Nepal), jhankri (non-mediums who directly heal through their own powers with or without divine possession states; conventionally used in Eastern Nepal) ( Hitchcock 1976 ), dhami-jhankri (an unconventional though common amalgam of dhami and jhankri ), lama (a Buddhist term for monk ritual practitioner which also refers to an informal traditional healer), mata (female healer, often referred to a woman who had become possessed by a spirit that in turn gave her healing powers), ban jhankri (jungle healer), jyotishi (astrologers who can heal patients) , mopa (diviners), ngags pa (tantric priests), baul (mystic minstrels) ( Hyam 2019 ), amchi (Tibetan doctors) ( Craig, et al., 2010 ), bijuwa (Rai traditional healer) ( Hyam 2019 ), bombo (Tamang or Yolmo healer), lambu (Tamang healer) ( Höfer 1997 ), phombo (Jirel traditional healer) ( Sidky 2000 ), pande (Chepang healer) ( Riboli 2012 ), puimbo (Sunuwar healer), ngiarni (Sunuwar healer) ( Fournier 1976 ), poju (Gurung healer), hlewri (Gurung healer) ( Messerschmidt 1976 ), gurau (Tharu traditional healer) ( Shrestha 1980 ), and yeba (Limbu traditional healer) ( S. Jones 1976 ). Others referred to less conventional healers such as a punjari (priests who specialize in puja rituals either at home or the temple, typically Hindu) ( Hitchcock and Jones 1976 ; Sidky 2008 ). Curiously, jajmani (similar to pujari , however jajmani were villagers like any other who happened to be performing in-home rituals including but not limited to puja) did not appear in the included literature.

Certain healer types, such as ayurvedic healers, bhaidya (healers in the ayurveda tradition, who typically prepared herbal medications), naturopathic healers (also similar to ayurvedic healers, but with an emphasis on vitalism), lhapa / lhamo (oracles), and aaya (ritual specialists who are often concerned with forms of mental distress and misfortune, as well as with other issues) also did not appear in the included literature. Although patients likely present to these healer types for ailments reminiscent of Western psychopathology, our review of the available literature base did not reveal explicit documentation of a ritualistic interaction with a psychological outcome in keeping with our inclusion/exclusion criteria.

The included literature used non local (etic) terms such as “traditional healer,” though less commonly than their emic counterparts. Other etic terms included “faith healer,” “traditional faith healer,” “traditional medical practitioner,” “shaman,” and “medium.” The broad etic language had at times proven confusing as, for example, faith healers could also distinguish themselves from traditional healers through their emphasis on prayer or other faith-based practices.

In spite of the aforementioned clear boundaries across individual healer types and for the purposes of narrative simplicity within the broader context of patient-healer interventions, we will refer to all traditional healer types, whether faith healers, shamans, dhami-jhankri , etc., as “traditional healers” unless contextually necessary. We also refer to all those receiving the traditional healer’s intervention as “patients” whether they be clients, villagers, community members, etc. while recognizing the biomedical connotations inherent within this term.

Our review revealed many kinds of traditional healer diagnostic approaches often in the setting of but not specifically for mental health complaints. Diagnostic approaches included pulse checks, social interpretation, and magico-religious divination, recitals, and offerings. Interestingly, many traditional healers used techniques interchangeably, and patients demonstrated little interest in the traditional healer’s actual diagnosis ( Skultans 1988 ). Some diagnostic approaches blurred the line between diagnosis and treatment, as was the case with more elaborate performances and the involvement of social support ( Maskarinec 1995 ; Sidky 2010 ; Sagant 1976 ; Brenman, et al., 2014 ; Skultans 1988 ).

Traditional healers could divine the cause of illness by taking the patient’s pulse, although with a less consistent approach when compared to the biomedical model ( van Leeuwen 2008 ). If no pulse was in the right wrist, then no major deities could be said to be the cause. If there was no pulse in the left wrist, then an evil spirit or witch was thought to be at work. If there was a pulse on both wrists, then the cause was deemed natural ( Maskarinec, 1995 ; Soubrouillard, 1995 ).

Traditional healers could diagnose between magico-religious and physical causes of illness using specific acts of divination. One common technique was known as jokana , of which there were several similar varieties. During the process of jokana the traditional healer would take a few pieces of rice from a small pile on a plate, name a general magico-religious category of illness, and then determine the stated category’s presence based on the pattern of rice as the traditional healer separated them. In theory, the traditional healer would perform this lengthy process each time. In reality, the traditional healer shortcuted this time consuming process and performed what the traditional healer found intuitively true ( Reinhard 1976 ).

Traditional healers could diagnose through elaborate performances. During these performances, traditional healers could offer animals, food, or other items to the gods or ancestors to receive an answer about the patient’s illness ( Sagant 1976 ; Brenman, et al., 2014 ). Other times, traditional healers could perform recitals adopted from traditional healer texts and/or other technical maps with fixed cosmologies about Nepali selfhood and culture ( Soubrouillard 1995 ). For example, traditional healers could recite historical tales about local spirits before exhorting them to leave the afflicted humans alone and to return to the wilderness where they belonged. While these narrative recitals aimed to identify a singular spirit, sometimes singling out just one was not possible, and in these cases, the traditional healer would have to appease each offending spirit ( Maskarinec 1995 ; Sidky 2008 ).

Some urban traditional healers involved the patient’s friends and family for diagnostic interpretation. As a result, those involved made the diagnostic and curative events clearer through personal elaboration of the traditional healer’s original findings ( Maskarinec 1995 ; Skultans 1988 ). In rural settings, where close ones can form a constant backdrop to the patient’s life, no particular emphasis was placed on outsider attendance.

Our review revealed a wide range of traditional healer treatment styles including traditional healer and/or patient altered states of consciousness, spoken rituals, and non-spoken rituals. Some treatments overlapped with diagnostic approaches. While traditional healers applied their treatments broadly across different disease states, many specifically reserved altered states of consciousness and non-spoken rituals specifically for considerable mental distress ( Hitchcock and Jones 1976 ; Regmi 1987 ; Skultans 1988 ; Desjarlais 1992 ; Soubrouillard 1995 ; Hardman 1996 ; Peters 2007 ; Subba 2007 ; Sidky 2010 )

Relevant to the traditional healer’s ability to treat mental distress, traditional healers have been the center of debate with regards to their own possible psychopathology ( Paul 1976 ). Traditional healers generally would undergo an initiation process during which they therapeutically transformed from possible psychosis to a more organized and integrated social identity. Afterwards, they would willfully enter in and out of controlled altered states of consciousness, sometimes referred to as an ecstatic state, distinguish between ordinary and non-ordinary realities, and deliberately engage in meaningful conversation about the cosmology of society ( Sidky 2008 ).

For patients, each individual would first deeply concentrate through drugs, sweat lodges, vision quests, breathing exercises, percussion instruments, or complex meditation and imagery exercises. Ego boundaries would then dissolve leading to the psychological and sometimes terrifying annihilation of the self. Eventually the patient would develop a collaborative relationship between their revealed unconscious and conscious selves ( van Leeuwen 2008 ; Peters 2004 ).

Traditional healers, both well- or ill-intentioned, delivered mantra (spoken prayer, hymns, or chanting) or tantra (bodies of text or schools of thought or sometimes a meaningless term spoken with manntra ) to either heal clients or harm others ( Soubrouillard 1995 ). For example, mantra and tantra could raise the saya (soul) in people whose saya has fallen, correct the ancestor-person relationship, treat ambiguous and confusing physical and psychosocial distress, or help a family overcome grief over a child’s unexpected death ( Hardman 2004 ; Subba 2007 ). However, mantra and tantra faced certain limitations. For example, while traditional healers insisted that they could control all major spirits using mantra and tantra , they could not control spirits that caused madness ( Sidky 2008 ).

Traditional healers could use materials and visualizations that accompanied their mantra to guide and organize the body. For instance, the traditional healer could bring up a mantra and illustration specifically to tackle madness or to do away with minor malevolent spirits caused by their close physical proximity. Other techniques included offering patients protective amulets to reduce the fear surrounding illness ( van Leeuwen 2008 ), performing phukne (blowing an evil spirit away), playing the dhangro (drum), and adorning and/or employing traditional items such as a rudraksha mala (garland), ghanti bhayako mala (other type of garland), dumsi kanda (a special cap with a porcupine quill), and mayurko pwankh (peacock feather) ( Jimba, et al., 2005 ).

Traditional healers could perform elaborate sacrificial ceremonies in the name of a greater cosmological force to not only diagnose but to treat illness. Traditional healers, during multiple accounts, helped patients to overcome suffering, enhance cultural human-animal relationships, prevent the occurrence of future traumatic events, treat feelings of a sinful past life, disharmony, or bhootvidya (psychiatric conditions caused by gods, goddesses, demons, witches, and astrology), and feel assured of their child’s safe return to or welcome from the Maoist Insurgency, a civil war which raged from 1996 to 2006 through the countryside with death sentences, murders, purges, abductions, and other war crimes against humanity ( R. L. Jones 1976 ; Fournier 1976 ; Sidky, et al., 2000 ; Peters 2007 ; Gewali 2008 ; Lohani 2010 ; Author 2014 )

Traditional healers and patients considered beatings particularly effective against illnesses of unknown etiology given the presumption that such ailments and their associated beatings both affected the whole individual ( Winkler 1976 ; Gewali 2008 ). Discouragingly, violence, high drama, and a focus on the visceral reactions of bulging eyes, popping veins, and emesis at tines resulted in considerable bodily harm. Some dhami-jhankri went as far as threatening, suffocating (e.g. with water), beating, or applying a red-hot iron to patients ( Jimba, et al., 2005 ; van Leeuwen 2008 ; Alter 2014 ). Worse still, healer rituals, while viewed as a culturally appropriate form of divine justice among humans, could instead reinforce oppressive power structures and human injustices against disenfranchised populations such as women rather than alleviating distress or innovating social order ( Lecomte-Tilouine 2009b ).

Theoretical Mechanisms of Healing

Our review revealed several theoretical mechanisms which sought to explain why patients perceive positive benefit from traditional healers. We categorized these mechanisms as traditional healing through crafting a symbolic spiritual narrative, providing personal comfort, mobilizing social support, inducing an altered state of consciousness, or facilitating spontaneous recovery.

The traditional healer in essence embraces the human need to connect with a symbolic life and spiritual explanation for misfortune. The traditional healer crafts the symbolic life within a culturally relevant narrative for the self and names and makes known visible unknown agents of affliction. In contrast to conventional psychotherapy, the traditional healer alters and manipulates the patient’s innately-lived human experience, subjective socio-cultural environment, and perceptual logic using myths and magico-religious symbols. Compared to biomedical explanatory paradigms, whose causal hypotheses can prove considerably abstract and counter-intuitive, the metaphors from traditional healers, long since embedded within Nepal’s cultural and socoio-political psyche, are more popular, acceptable, and culturally logical. This allows for a form of therapy which is less explicit, more comprehensible, and emotionally palatable ( Soubrouillard 1995 ; Craig, et al., 2010 ; Alter 2014 ).

Traditional healers can even vary the prominence and dramatic effect of their spiritual metaphors through the degree to which they act out magici-religious strength. For instance, traditional healers can perform visceral rituals while paying tedious attention to their procedure and craftsmanship of ritual and alter paraphernalia ( Nicoletti 2006 ). By demonstrating their healing powers through psychodrama, traditional healers separate themselves from priests, who focus on the life cycle, planting, harvesting, and temple worship, and doctors, who practice professionalism ( S. K. Jones 1976 ).

Once the traditional healer activates locally relevant magico-religious symbols, they then remedy the mind by phenomenologically reorienting a patient’s experiential reality to permit the free expression of mental illness without the reductionist vocabulary constraints of western psychiatry ( Alter 2014 ; Brenman, et al., 2014 ). This phenomenological reorientation, sometimes dubbed as the heart-mind solution, can occur in the following sequence: 1) illness narrative 2) physiological experience, and then 3) communication ( Author and Harper 2008 ). Here, the patient will present to traditional healers not for mental health treatment but for issues with ghosts, spirits, gods, or witches, after which the traditional healer, as both a spiritual and community leader, establishes a consensus to hand responsibility of sickness and misfortune to higher magico-religious beings ( van Leeuwen 2008 ).

Whether granting good luck or facilitating the free expression of anger, traditional healers can craft rationalizations for patients when they are confounded by issues related to illness, identity and actions, the seemingly impossible, Nepal’s storm afflicted, harsh environment, and so forth ( Hitchcock and Jones 1976 ; Messerschmidt 1976 ; Reinhard 1976 ; Regmi 1987 ; Skultans 1988 ; Desjarlais 1992 ; Maskarinec 1995 ; Subba 2007 ; Author and Harper 2008 ; van Leeuwen 2008 ). For mundane quarrels between individuals or groups, traditional healers can attempt to depersonalize the conflict and impersonally blame it on spirits as much as possible ( Michl 1976 ). In another example, the patient may suffer from a seemingly unremitting illness. For their family, traditional healers can make an offering to the gods in order to help them feel some psychological benefit from knowing they have done everything they can. Among the worst scenarios, traditional healers can help the family cope with an unnatural death ( Hitchcock and Jones 1976 ).

Regardless of the exact ritual, the traditional healer reenacts a broader cosmology so that the patient interfaces with a spiritual and aesthetic creation of the self to create, sustain, and transmit a system of meanings for inexplicable physical, mental, and social suffering. This interface within a separate metaphorical reality is more locally understood, intimate, malleable, and psychologically penetrating than what conventional spoken word or illness narratives have to offer ( Peters 2007 ; Craig 2010 ; Sidky 2010 ). It permits the individual to admit powerlessness to an external locus of control, remove agency from the self, engage in intersubjective dynamics ( Desjarlais 1992 , bypass local notions of stigma ( Messerschmidt 1976 ; Author and Harper 2008 ), and perhaps even activate fundamental brain (neurognostic) structures responsible for therapeutic behavioral and cognitive healing ( Sidky 2008 ). Through symbolic narration, the individual eventually depersonalizes, defuses, reinterprets, and unburdens unfortunate, baffling, and frightening events while reintegrating their mental distress within a particularization of a more meaningful mythic world ( Desjarlais 1992 ; Sidky 2010 ). This creates a satisfying explanation that is internally consistent with traditional Nepali beliefs and meets the underlying security and existential needs within the patient, curer, and community ( Hitchcock and Jones 1976 ; Reinhard 1976 ); Craig 2010 ;.

On a simpler level, the traditional healer can act as a therapeutic ally when providing personal support, empathy, and higher expectations of treatment ( Hitchcock and Jones 1976 ). This invokes a placebo-like response that can aid depression, anxiety, insomnia, and sometimes even schizophrenia ( Nicoletti 2006 ; Sidky 2010 ). Traditional healers are particularly adept at eliciting empathy because often they are community neighbors who can naturally establish personal relationships and familiarize themselves with longstanding family history ( Sidky 2008 ). The traditional healer’s familiar role in Nepali society allows them to embody psychological attributes, expand their capacity for empathy, and express more sensitivity to their patient’s needs ( Hitchcock and Jones 1976 ). When compared to medical providers, traditional healers appear more familiar, less frightening, and less intrusive ( Maskarinec 1995 ).

The traditional healer’s familiarity is further fueled by their historical role as doctor or priest in remote Nepali communities during which medical and religious specialties were not differentiated ( S. K. Jones 1976 ). However, unlike conventional priests or doctors who acquire roles through social inheritance, succession, or biomedical training, traditional healers acquire supernatural strength through spiritual inheritance, possession, divine intervention, and magician-religious training whether alone or under a guru. For instance, jhankri (traditional healers from Eastern Nepal) carry a certain power and status regardless of their being possessed by a divine entities. Dhami (western traditional healers) are primarily mediums who have no power in themselves, making dhami simple people like any other. To heal, a deity possesses and performs the act through the dhami ( Hitchcock 1976 ). With this perceived power, traditional healers, whether dhami , jhankri , or otherwise, possess the capacity to insert their treatments into the patient’s private and public selves because they too had to undergo a public and private initiatory transformation ( Hitchcock 1976 ; Maskarinec 1995 ).

The traditional healer’s ability to raise expectations stems from how they are viewed by Nepali society. When strictly viewed within the scientific plane, researchers may overlook the traditional healer’s culturally perceived role as the guardian of an individual’s psychic equilibrium and the active mediator between the human and spiritual realms ( Nicoletti 2006 ; Sidky 2008 ). In fact, the traditional healer, through their spiritual role, can create religious explanatory frameworks to treat an individual’s psychological and sociological existential crises ( Macdonald 1976 ; Craig 2010 ), and it is within this psychosociological foundation that the traditional healer manipulates unconscious symbols of the body and self as a kind of culturally relevant psychotherapy.

In tandem with the traditional healer’s spiritual and psychological benefit, the traditional healer may mobilize social support directly or indirectly. For instance, with the reintegration of child soldiers from the Maoist insurgency certain traditional healer rituals directly facilitate a patient’s restoration back to an original role or transformation to a new one during a liminal state, or a state between two social roles. Unfortunately, these social rituals may also lead to the loss of opportunities during the possible transition to a more submissive role, for instance when girl soldiers must return to a patriarchal society ( Author 2014 ).

The traditional healer can indirectly mobilize social support as the family rallies together behind a patient whose magico-religious explanation for illness exonerates them from more stigmatizing mental illness. Social support and magico-religious involvement may even allow for material rewards, relief from unpleasant work responsibilities, reduced conflict from the authority over them, and upward mobility in status ( S. K. Jones 1976 ; Skultans 1988 ). Social support helps to bind the patient and their family more closely together and provide attention, a sense of inclusion, and a feeling of comfort. Magico-religious illness states and traditional healer rituals can also offer a safe space in which the patient can express their pain, personal and social conflict, distress, anger, social problems, and sometimes actual mental illness without directly attacking their oppressors. In this way, traditional healers help patients grasp a profoundly complex life situation by expressing aspects of themselves previously unexpressed ( Peters 2004 ; van Leeuwen 2008 ; Sapkota, et al., 2014 ). Hence, traditional healers are thought to be particularly effective for psychosomatic illnesses and disenfranchised populations such as marginalized or unmarried women with a lower position in society and very little chance of advancing their status ( Peters 2007 ; Sidky 2008 ; Hyam 2019 ).

Because the patient may perceive physical relief during the process of the traditional healer’s treatment, they may in turn develop more capacity to tackle other underlying sociological issues. This explanation flows with the Nepali belief that mental distress is an everyday occurrence which must be dealt with individually ( Chase and Sapkota 2017 ) and may explain why patients tend to attribute mental relief following a traditional healer`s intervention to an incidental benefit following physical relief ( Alter 2014 ).

The traditional healer may also induce a patient altered state of consciousness through the healer’s own learned dissociative experiences. Recent interpretation has viewed altered states of consciousness less as abnormal but more as an alteration of normal human consciousness through special psychophysiological states ( Sidky 2008 ). Other interpretations view altered states of consciousness as a Jungian transcendent function in which mystical experiences turn existential crisis into a transformational growth experience. In this shared state, the traditional healer can provide a sense of understanding as well as an institutionalized framework for proper expression of patient mental processes which have been compartmentalized and integrated into phenomena such as spirit possession ( Sidky 2008 ).

However, critics have expressed skepticism about the degree to which the traditional healer’s intervention registers on a conscious level. Any speech during performances tends to be beyond the literal comprehension of both the traditional healer and patient ( Maskarinec 1995 ). Many patients or traditional healers are unable to decipher the traditional healer’s rhetoric which often is in a specialized and ambiguous vocabulary that is too idiosyncratic, non-indigenous, and specialized, or archaic. Furthermore, patients can face difficulty when parsing the traditional healer’s rhetoric given the acoustics and noise levels of the room ( Winkler 1976 ; Brown 1988 ). The traditional healer’s performance may also be of questionable psychotherapeutic benefit in the setting of infants, the demented, the very sick, and animals (e.g. cows or yaks) ( Paul 1976 ).

On the whole, much of the reviewed literature primarily suggested that traditional healers most effectively treat mental well-being in the case of less severe pathology. In this light, others have theorized that patients perceive positive benefit from their treatment because of the patient’s underlying cyclically resolving disease state. Conversely, severe, intractable, and less cyclical illnesses such as schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder have a harder time being treated through expectation, belief, and meaning-making. In other words, it would be expected for there to be gradual improvement regardless of the diagnosis or treatment ( Sidky 2008 ). Put together, given the subjective nature of symptom resolution, outcomes should be open to interpretation ( Author and Schreiber 1999 ).

Our scoping review yielded 86 studies on the relationship between the interventions of Nepali traditional healers and mental well-being, 65 of which were qualitative in study design. The reviewed literature covered a wide range of diagnostic and treatment strategies including divination, pulse checks, recitals, offerings, spoken and non-spoken rituals, and altered states of consciousness. The traditional healer’s interventional approach may not deeply depend on the exact technique. Rather, patients focus on whether the outcome relates to magico-religious and locally relevant symbols such as spirits, gods, spells, astrology, and karma. Traditional healers can craft these magico-religious constructs into digestible illness narratives, offer empathy, raise expectations, and mobilize the patient’s family and community to provide personal and social support, induce altered states of consciousness to facilitate catharsis, and/or shepherd the patient through an unpleasant time until spontaneous recovery from cyclical disease processes.

While the literature suggests that Nepali traditional healers share elements with Western psychotherapy, that is not to say that they are psychotherapists. In addition to or in place of conventional psychotherapy, traditional healers act like flexible social actors and leaders who transform into magico-religious leaders that narrate and act out meaningful, affective, and therapeutic mythological stories within the context of local cosmological beliefs. The traditional healer as social actor and leader can even involve the patient’s family and community to collaborate with the patient, elaborate upon the traditional healer’s diagnosis, and restore family structure, community identity, and social cohesion.

The traditional healer fuels the patient’s superstition about why things happen or didn’t happen through an intuitive misunderstanding of cause-and-effect relationships. The treatment process relates back to the patient’s issues and ailments and gives the impression that traditional healers can influence otherwise unpredictable and significant events without relying on the seemingly unnatural constructs of psychological insight and standard psychotherapeutic verbalization (Singh 2018). In the face of misfortune and confusion, patients generate meaning, restructure their cognition, and freely express themselves.

Overall, the traditional healer’s unconventional approach to healing the mind, body, and spirit raises the question of whether biomedicine will ever fully unravel the mechanisms of traditional healing. Nonetheless, the contrasting nature between traditional healers and conventional psychotherapy, specifically the spiritual dimension in which the former operates but the latter does not, can at least partially explain why remote patients prefer traditional healers over medical providers, even when doing so paradoxically can come at a greater financial cost ( Regmi 1987 ).

Thus far, the Nepali-based discussion on non-spoken rituals, altered states of consciousness, and several mechanistic theories of traditional healing bears striking resemblance to the broader cross-cultural work from which we based our scoping review (Winkelman 2004, 2010; Nortje, et al., 2016 ; van der Watt, et al., 2018 ). Namely, Nepali traditional healers share with non-Nepali traditional healers the general techniques of hypnotic drumming, dissociative states, and physical exertion in the setting of, but not expressly for, mental distress. Furthermore, scholars have theorized mechanisms of healing within Nepal also described in other traditional healing cultures. These include meaning-making, enhanced community cohesion, and spontaneous recovery because of the natural course of chronic remitting illnesses like bipolar disorder or pain.

Current Findings and Potential Gaps in Knowledge

We devised an overall pathways to care model to better visualize the connections among our synthesized findings and to highlight themes about the relationship between traditional healers and mental well-being that may be present but are scarcely covered by the current literature ( Figure 2 ). Our model is adapted from prior work by Author and colleagues (2020) who themselves adopted a mechanisms of action approach to breaking down a specific psychosocial intervention into its specific and non-specific ingredients/processes ( Alavi and Sanderson 2015 .

A Pathways to Care Model Highlighting Current Findings and Gaps in Knowledge

For our model, we fit our results within the broader cultural literature on culture and mental well-being in Nepal and highlighted relative gaps in knowledge ( Chase, et al., 2017 ; Nortje, et al., 2016 ; van der Watt, et al. 2018 ). We also offer a written description of our model below. However, we must again emphasize the overall heterogeneity within Nepal’s cultural makeup. Therefore, while our pathways to care model captures a broad snapshot of the academic community’s current knowledge state, it does so by sacrificing the nuanced values inherent within each of Nepal’s cultural systems.

I. Access to Care:

The origins of Nepali mental distress may fall under biological, psychological, sociological, and/or spiritual categories. Given the cultural dimensions of mental health stigma, medical illiteracy, and sociological oppression, patients may self-interpret their underlying psychological and sociological distress into a culturally appropriate care seeking behavior. For instance, patients may interpret their mental distress as a less stigmatized biological or magico-religious complaint. Patients will then present either to the biomedical treatment realm (e.g. doctors), the magico-religious treatment realm (e.g. traditional healers), or both depending on the context of their environment and illness. Few studies have investigated the specific social and economic barriers which influence the self-interpretation from a primary psychological or social issue to a medical or spiritual one. Of interest may be the precise process of self-interpretation from stigmatized to less stigmatized complaints and other magico-religious complaints not yet biomedically studied .

II. Interventions:

Magico-religious diagnostic techniques include divination, pulse checks, recitals, offerings, and social interpretation. Common treatments include non-spoken rituals, spoken rituals, and altered states of consciousness. Relationships may exist between a patient’s specific care seeking behavior and the traditional healer’s chosen intervention. Furthermore, relative to Nepal’s deep cultural diversity, the scarce available research hints at other diagnostic techniques and treatments not yet biomedically studied .

III. Theoretical Mechanisms of Healing:

Traditional healers elicit subjective improvement spiritually through symbolic narration, psychologically through personal support, and socially through mobilizing family and community. They can also induce an altered state of consciousness or more simply facilitate spontaneous recovery. Relationships may exist between a traditional healer’s specific intervention and the patient’s mechanism of healing. Insufficient research has formally investigated the mechanisms of magico-religious healing, especially with the help of locally validated interview structures, objective rating scales, neuroimaging approaches, and/or other psychophysiological measurements of bodily states, thus hinting at other phenomenological processes not yet biomedically studied .

IV. Resolution of suffering:

A patient may perceive a satisfactory resolution of suffering after their first visit to either the medical provider or the traditional healer. On the other hand, a patient may perceive an unsatisfactory resolution if they receive an intervention that lacks the biomedical or magico-religious background which they inherently desire. Scarce research has investigated the outcomes of magico-religious healing, thus hinting at relationships between a patient’s specific mechanism of healing and their satisfaction level .

Given the number of exceptions which exist for a culturally diverse country such as Nepal, researchers should avoid making pan generalizations about cultural tenets and by extension magico-religious ideologies from our paper ( Tol, et al., 2005 ; Cassaniti and Luhrmann 2014). Such over simplifications may inadvertently exotify folk theories of illness from the possible underlying psychological and physical processes. Furthermore, personal testimonials regarding traditional healers and mental health cannot be taken literally, and many published anthropologists have viewed their own findings with some level of skepticism ( Author and Schreiber 1999 ; Krippner and Combs 2002; Castillo 2004; Sidky 2010 ).

Limitations

Given the diverse Nepali population, the available literature did not cover every region nor every culture, particularly those less accessible to prior researchers. For instance, healers from the northern mountainous margins of Nepa went underrepresented likely because of our search strategy and/or inclusion/exclusion criteria. The unequal geographic distribution of our included studies may also reflect how the late 1990s to early 2000s Maoist Insurgency limited where researchers could safely travel, especially in certain rural areas. By focusing on the therapeutic aspects of patient-healer interactions and their associated psychological outcomes, we also neglected more formalized practitioners whose work may confer ritualistic healing on a more subtle level. The reviewed literature relied heavily on western diagnostics which poorly distinguish subtly dissimilar states such as dissociative trance and primary thought disorders. The reviewed literature also infrequently focused on the negative aspects of spiritual healing, possibly due to publication bias, retrospective bias, participant bias to please the researchers, or observer bias - all biases inherent from a predominantly ethnographic research base.

The available literature used inconsistent terminology, especially in regards to traditional healers and mental health, most likely to avoid relying on psychiatric terminology which would have missed out on nuanced Nepali phenomenological states. As a result, our systematic search had limited utility even when broadened to a scoping review, and we undoubtedly did not exhaust the full scope of the relevant literature. Furthermore, we relied on papers written primarily by Western authors making the scoping review itself susceptible to western bias. This is made additionally problematic in light of the Nepali preference to report physical complaints over mental which consequently blurs the line among physical illness, somatic complaints, and “true” psychiatric disease.

Future Research Recommendations

Further literature review could expand this scoping review and that of Chase and colleague’s (2018) into the realm of more formalized traditional practitioners such as Ayurvedic, Tibetan, and/or Chinese medicine practitioners whose alternative techniques and interactions may confer psychological benefit with or without the ritualistic interactions emphasized in this review. As this scoping review focused on diagnostic approaches, treatments, and theoretical mechanisms of healing, and Chase and colleagues (2018) on culture, other reviews could focus on different aspects of patient-healer pathways to care including epidemiological and economic patient-healer data, traditional healer demographics, perceptions of traditional healers, barriers to care, chief complaints, “idioms of distress,” duration and frequency of traditional healer encounters, etc. Additional review of the Nepali written literature would reveal insights previously hidden from English-locked reviews such as ours.

Research teams who work across the boundaries of culture, medicine, and psychiatry should, as Höfer (1992) once suggested, frame the broader therapeutic strategies of ritual and its continued gaps in knowledge through systematic, empirically sound, though still culturally adapted, methods including locally-validated psychological tests, medical examinations and the like ( Höfer 1992 ). To date, there are few studies which have taken a systematic, objective approach to examining the relationship between traditional healers and mental health in Nepal, e.g. interventional clinical studies, double blinding of traditional and biomedical treatment, control arms to adjust for confounding factors.

Consider the traditional healers from Kalabo, Zambia who have suggested additional utility from traditional healer services in hospital settings, an option not unlike the priest-physician relationship within US hospitals ( Stekelenburg, et al., 2005 ). If future research reveals similar desires among Nepali healer-goers then one research design could evaluate the efficacy of in-hospital traditional healer consultations. Alternatively, one could apply this approach within the outpatient setting with medical providers instead permitting or not permitting the patient to enlist outside, parallel traditional healer treatment. Established researchers could utilize implementation science research methods, e.g., the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research, to study how collaboration succeeds or fails based on programmatic, contextual, provider, and client-level factors.

For epidemiological and economic data surrounding traditional healer utilization, the research team could draft, pilot, and deliver a structured survey instrument based upon prior studies. Because traditional healers may treat mental distress secondary to patient reported physical or supernatural injury, researchers ought to caution themselves against surveys which exclusively measure mental illness using conventional psychological terminology.

One area of interest has been the objective measurement of symptom resolution through neuroimaging and other psychophysiological measurements of bodily states ( Seligman 2018 ). Prior cross-cultural work by Winkelman (2004, 2010) proposed a neurotheological explanation in which healer induced feelings of self-confidence, authority, belief and expectation intensify connections between the limbic system and lower brain structures. Here, increased activation discharges synchronous slow (theta) waves into the frontal brain supposedly creating an integrative mode of consciousness. His theories elegantly connect the general human psychophysiological tendency to the emotional, cognitive, and psychoneuroimmunlogical responses (Winkelman 2004, 2010). However, recent neuroimaging, brain biology, and chemistry studies have criticized his theories for lacking empirical justification and compatibility with modern findings ( Sidky 2008 ).

Other innovative and scientifically sound neuroimaging studies on consciousness, while faintly related to traditional healer and patient altered states of consciousness, may also inform future neurobiological work on healers and mental-well-being in Nepal ( Lutz, et al., 2007 , 2008; Marcia 2003 ; Perlman, et al., 2010 ; Acunzo, et al., 2013 ; Seppälä, et al., 2014 ; Dahl, et al., 2015 ). Richard Davidson has arguably pioneered this field by applying functional magnetic resonance imaging to extensively study the mechanisms of brain function and new therapeutic approaches for psychology. For instance, his findings have demonstrated how mental training and meditation can increase the strength of activation in the left prefrontal cortex, which houses positive emotions, while dampening the right prefrontal cortex, which houses negative emotions. His other studies have found similar neurocorrelates between mental training and mediation and the insula, amygdala, right temporo-parietal junction, right posterior superior temporal sulcus, limbic circuitry, and immune system ( Davidson and Goleman 1977 ; Davidson, et al., 2003 ; Davidson and Lutz 2008 ).

However, such “gold standard” measures, though critical in their own right, may, alone, fail to enlist participants who live far away from clinical settings or worse, test the ethnical limits of consent and blinded treatment among vulnerable patient populations. Furthermore, though traditional healers are finding themselves interacting more and more with biomedical professionals, research data from idealistic, controlled clinical settings provide limited utility for the rural and migratory residents who traditional healers primarily tend to. Instead, the Community-Based Participatory Research model would better capture the rural pathways to care which extend across formal and informal health system actors ( Wilson, et al., 2018 ).

As an example, researchers could explore the intertwined lives of traditional healers and medical providers as they treat shared patients in search of a holistic sense of relief. As the patient traverses their personalized care network, researchers could cross-culturally compare seemingly disparate explanatory models, diagnoses, and treatments. And rather than focusing entirely on biomedical definitions of symptoms, interventions, and outcomes, researchers could follow local conceptions of self, e.g. man (heart-mind), dimaag (brain), distress, e.g. fallen saya (soul), and traditional healers, e.g. amchi , as defined and volunteered by the patients, traditional healers, and perhaps even medical providers themselves. Local traditional healers might even assist the research team with negotiating and translating local disease causality models, notions of truth, relevant scientific concepts, and research priorities not shared across all cultures ( Adams, et al., 2005 ; Adams, et al., 2008 ; Shrestha and Lediard 1980 ). Research teams could take a conventional field-based approach or even explore new technological avenues for communication, documentation, and analysis of complex, parallel study groups ( Bhatta, et al., 2015 ; Chib, et al., 2015 ; Style, et al., 2017 ; Ni, et al., 2020 ).

However, researchers should balance the naturalistic approach of Community-Based Research Participation with one or several structured and locally-validated instruments. For instance, Craig and colleagues (2010) applied an adaptation of the McGill Illness Narrative Interview (MINI) to systematically study illness narratives and explanatory frameworks among patients in Mustang, many of whom sought treatment from local traditional healers. Alternatively, Author and colleagues (2020) used a locally validated, structured observational rating scale, titled Enhancing Assessment of Common Therapeutic factors (ENACT), to measure the psychotherapeutic factors in common between traditional healers and conventional psychotherapists within the Central Middle Hills of Nepal. Yet, blind adoption of structured questionnaires, interview formats, and biomedical diagnostics could also hamper rather than facilitate meaningful data collection. For instance, Van Ommeran and colleagues (2000) argued that the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI), which assesses psychiatric somatic complaints, focuses too heavily on 1) the biomedical framework and 2) the assumption that all medical providers deliver diagnoses to their patients, thus confounding its cultural validity in Nepal. In other examples, questions from the locally validated Barriers to Access Care Evaluation (BACE) scale ( Clement, et al., 2012 ), applied by Author and colleagues (2018) to assess stigma reduction among mental healthcare providers, and even the aforementioned McGill Illness Narrative Interview can prove restricting and at times misleading when measuring tacit community biases surrounding indigenous belief models ( Author, et al., 2020 ) or blurred distinctions between the self and other, religion and medicine, etc. ( Craig, et al., 2010 ; Author, et al., 2018 ).

We now summarize the aforementioned ideas for future research (see Table 3 ).

Ideas for Future Research

In Nepal, traditional healers’ perceived impact appears greatest for mild to moderate forms of psychological distress. However, the methodological and sample heterogeneity preclude uniform conclusions about traditional healing with Nepal, or more broadly in global appraisals of traditional healing. Further research should employ methods which are both empirically sound and culturally adapted to explore the role of traditional healers in mental health. Ultimately, by completing the picture on traditional healers and mental well-being, social scientists, clinicians, and public health practitioners can better understand how and for whom traditional healing impacts distress. The work is also useful to uncover the diverse conceptions of self and how these models shape healing. Medical providers, researchers, and public officials can create a collaborative, integrative, and interdisciplinary approach to offer better wrap around care in a country with serious ongoing mental healthcare disparities. Globally, researchers can apply similar approaches to determine how traditional healers uniquely respond to the non-pharmacological and therapeutic needs of developing countries without resorting to overly prescriptive and medically imperialistic treatment models.

Supplementary Material

1597630_appendix1, 1597630_appendix2, 1597630_appendix3, acknowledgments:.

We thank three anonymous reviewers for their expertise, time, and energy which strongly shaped earlier drafts of the manuscript.

The authors received no specific funding for this work. The first author (Author) was supported by a VECD Global Health Fellowship, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the Fogarty International Center (FIC) of the NIH (D43 TW009337). The senior author (BAK) was supported by the NIH (K01MH104310).

Publisher's Disclaimer: This Author Accepted Manuscript is a PDF file of an unedited peer-reviewed manuscript that has been accepted for publication but has not been copyedited or corrected. The official version of record that is published in the journal is kept up to date and so may therefore differ from this version.

Statement of Originality

This research is original work except where due reference is made. We guarantee that we have not submitted or published our work elsewhere.

Conflict of Interest

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

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Qualitative vs Quantitative Research Methods & Data Analysis

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What is the difference between quantitative and qualitative?

The main difference between quantitative and qualitative research is the type of data they collect and analyze.

Quantitative research collects numerical data and analyzes it using statistical methods. The aim is to produce objective, empirical data that can be measured and expressed in numerical terms. Quantitative research is often used to test hypotheses, identify patterns, and make predictions.

Qualitative research , on the other hand, collects non-numerical data such as words, images, and sounds. The focus is on exploring subjective experiences, opinions, and attitudes, often through observation and interviews.

Qualitative research aims to produce rich and detailed descriptions of the phenomenon being studied, and to uncover new insights and meanings.

Quantitative data is information about quantities, and therefore numbers, and qualitative data is descriptive, and regards phenomenon which can be observed but not measured, such as language.

What Is Qualitative Research?

Qualitative research is the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting non-numerical data, such as language. Qualitative research can be used to understand how an individual subjectively perceives and gives meaning to their social reality.

Qualitative data is non-numerical data, such as text, video, photographs, or audio recordings. This type of data can be collected using diary accounts or in-depth interviews and analyzed using grounded theory or thematic analysis.

Qualitative research is multimethod in focus, involving an interpretive, naturalistic approach to its subject matter. This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. Denzin and Lincoln (1994, p. 2)

Interest in qualitative data came about as the result of the dissatisfaction of some psychologists (e.g., Carl Rogers) with the scientific study of psychologists such as behaviorists (e.g., Skinner ).

Since psychologists study people, the traditional approach to science is not seen as an appropriate way of carrying out research since it fails to capture the totality of human experience and the essence of being human.  Exploring participants’ experiences is known as a phenomenological approach (re: Humanism ).

Qualitative research is primarily concerned with meaning, subjectivity, and lived experience. The goal is to understand the quality and texture of people’s experiences, how they make sense of them, and the implications for their lives.

Qualitative research aims to understand the social reality of individuals, groups, and cultures as nearly as possible as participants feel or live it. Thus, people and groups are studied in their natural setting.

Some examples of qualitative research questions are provided, such as what an experience feels like, how people talk about something, how they make sense of an experience, and how events unfold for people.

Research following a qualitative approach is exploratory and seeks to explain ‘how’ and ‘why’ a particular phenomenon, or behavior, operates as it does in a particular context. It can be used to generate hypotheses and theories from the data.

Qualitative Methods

There are different types of qualitative research methods, including diary accounts, in-depth interviews , documents, focus groups , case study research , and ethnography.

The results of qualitative methods provide a deep understanding of how people perceive their social realities and in consequence, how they act within the social world.

The researcher has several methods for collecting empirical materials, ranging from the interview to direct observation, to the analysis of artifacts, documents, and cultural records, to the use of visual materials or personal experience. Denzin and Lincoln (1994, p. 14)

Here are some examples of qualitative data:

Interview transcripts : Verbatim records of what participants said during an interview or focus group. They allow researchers to identify common themes and patterns, and draw conclusions based on the data. Interview transcripts can also be useful in providing direct quotes and examples to support research findings.

Observations : The researcher typically takes detailed notes on what they observe, including any contextual information, nonverbal cues, or other relevant details. The resulting observational data can be analyzed to gain insights into social phenomena, such as human behavior, social interactions, and cultural practices.

Unstructured interviews : generate qualitative data through the use of open questions.  This allows the respondent to talk in some depth, choosing their own words.  This helps the researcher develop a real sense of a person’s understanding of a situation.

Diaries or journals : Written accounts of personal experiences or reflections.

Notice that qualitative data could be much more than just words or text. Photographs, videos, sound recordings, and so on, can be considered qualitative data. Visual data can be used to understand behaviors, environments, and social interactions.

Qualitative Data Analysis

Qualitative research is endlessly creative and interpretive. The researcher does not just leave the field with mountains of empirical data and then easily write up his or her findings.

Qualitative interpretations are constructed, and various techniques can be used to make sense of the data, such as content analysis, grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), or discourse analysis .

For example, thematic analysis is a qualitative approach that involves identifying implicit or explicit ideas within the data. Themes will often emerge once the data has been coded .

Key Features

• Events can be understood adequately only if they are seen in context. Therefore, a qualitative researcher immerses her/himself in the field, in natural surroundings. The contexts of inquiry are not contrived; they are natural. Nothing is predefined or taken for granted.
• Qualitative researchers want those who are studied to speak for themselves, to provide their perspectives in words and other actions. Therefore, qualitative research is an interactive process in which the persons studied teach the researcher about their lives.
• The qualitative researcher is an integral part of the data; without the active participation of the researcher, no data exists.
• The study’s design evolves during the research and can be adjusted or changed as it progresses. For the qualitative researcher, there is no single reality. It is subjective and exists only in reference to the observer.
• The theory is data-driven and emerges as part of the research process, evolving from the data as they are collected.

Limitations of Qualitative Research

• Because of the time and costs involved, qualitative designs do not generally draw samples from large-scale data sets.
• The problem of adequate validity or reliability is a major criticism. Because of the subjective nature of qualitative data and its origin in single contexts, it is difficult to apply conventional standards of reliability and validity. For example, because of the central role played by the researcher in the generation of data, it is not possible to replicate qualitative studies.
• Also, contexts, situations, events, conditions, and interactions cannot be replicated to any extent, nor can generalizations be made to a wider context than the one studied with confidence.
• The time required for data collection, analysis, and interpretation is lengthy. Analysis of qualitative data is difficult, and expert knowledge of an area is necessary to interpret qualitative data. Great care must be taken when doing so, for example, looking for mental illness symptoms.

Advantages of Qualitative Research

• Because of close researcher involvement, the researcher gains an insider’s view of the field. This allows the researcher to find issues that are often missed (such as subtleties and complexities) by the scientific, more positivistic inquiries.
• Qualitative descriptions can be important in suggesting possible relationships, causes, effects, and dynamic processes.
• Qualitative analysis allows for ambiguities/contradictions in the data, which reflect social reality (Denscombe, 2010).
• Qualitative research uses a descriptive, narrative style; this research might be of particular benefit to the practitioner as she or he could turn to qualitative reports to examine forms of knowledge that might otherwise be unavailable, thereby gaining new insight.

What Is Quantitative Research?

Quantitative research involves the process of objectively collecting and analyzing numerical data to describe, predict, or control variables of interest.

The goals of quantitative research are to test causal relationships between variables , make predictions, and generalize results to wider populations.

Quantitative researchers aim to establish general laws of behavior and phenomenon across different settings/contexts. Research is used to test a theory and ultimately support or reject it.

Quantitative Methods

Experiments typically yield quantitative data, as they are concerned with measuring things.  However, other research methods, such as controlled observations and questionnaires , can produce both quantitative information.

For example, a rating scale or closed questions on a questionnaire would generate quantitative data as these produce either numerical data or data that can be put into categories (e.g., “yes,” “no” answers).

Experimental methods limit how research participants react to and express appropriate social behavior.

Findings are, therefore, likely to be context-bound and simply a reflection of the assumptions that the researcher brings to the investigation.

There are numerous examples of quantitative data in psychological research, including mental health. Here are a few examples:

Another example is the Experience in Close Relationships Scale (ECR), a self-report questionnaire widely used to assess adult attachment styles .

The ECR provides quantitative data that can be used to assess attachment styles and predict relationship outcomes.

Neuroimaging data : Neuroimaging techniques, such as MRI and fMRI, provide quantitative data on brain structure and function.

This data can be analyzed to identify brain regions involved in specific mental processes or disorders.

For example, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) is a clinician-administered questionnaire widely used to assess the severity of depressive symptoms in individuals.

The BDI consists of 21 questions, each scored on a scale of 0 to 3, with higher scores indicating more severe depressive symptoms. 

Quantitative Data Analysis

Statistics help us turn quantitative data into useful information to help with decision-making. We can use statistics to summarize our data, describing patterns, relationships, and connections. Statistics can be descriptive or inferential.

Descriptive statistics help us to summarize our data. In contrast, inferential statistics are used to identify statistically significant differences between groups of data (such as intervention and control groups in a randomized control study).

• Quantitative researchers try to control extraneous variables by conducting their studies in the lab.
• The research aims for objectivity (i.e., without bias) and is separated from the data.
• The design of the study is determined before it begins.
• For the quantitative researcher, the reality is objective, exists separately from the researcher, and can be seen by anyone.
• Research is used to test a theory and ultimately support or reject it.

Limitations of Quantitative Research

• Context: Quantitative experiments do not take place in natural settings. In addition, they do not allow participants to explain their choices or the meaning of the questions they may have for those participants (Carr, 1994).
• Researcher expertise: Poor knowledge of the application of statistical analysis may negatively affect analysis and subsequent interpretation (Black, 1999).
• Variability of data quantity: Large sample sizes are needed for more accurate analysis. Small-scale quantitative studies may be less reliable because of the low quantity of data (Denscombe, 2010). This also affects the ability to generalize study findings to wider populations.
• Confirmation bias: The researcher might miss observing phenomena because of focus on theory or hypothesis testing rather than on the theory of hypothesis generation.

Advantages of Quantitative Research

• Scientific objectivity: Quantitative data can be interpreted with statistical analysis, and since statistics are based on the principles of mathematics, the quantitative approach is viewed as scientifically objective and rational (Carr, 1994; Denscombe, 2010).
• Useful for testing and validating already constructed theories.
• Rapid analysis: Sophisticated software removes much of the need for prolonged data analysis, especially with large volumes of data involved (Antonius, 2003).
• Replication: Quantitative data is based on measured values and can be checked by others because numerical data is less open to ambiguities of interpretation.
• Hypotheses can also be tested because of statistical analysis (Antonius, 2003).

Antonius, R. (2003). Interpreting quantitative data with SPSS . Sage.

Black, T. R. (1999). Doing quantitative research in the social sciences: An integrated approach to research design, measurement and statistics . Sage.

Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology . Qualitative Research in Psychology , 3, 77–101.

Carr, L. T. (1994). The strengths and weaknesses of quantitative and qualitative research : what method for nursing? Journal of advanced nursing, 20(4) , 716-721.

Denscombe, M. (2010). The Good Research Guide: for small-scale social research. McGraw Hill.

Denzin, N., & Lincoln. Y. (1994). Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA, US: Sage Publications Inc.

Glaser, B. G., Strauss, A. L., & Strutzel, E. (1968). The discovery of grounded theory; strategies for qualitative research. Nursing research, 17(4) , 364.

Minichiello, V. (1990). In-Depth Interviewing: Researching People. Longman Cheshire.

Punch, K. (1998). Introduction to Social Research: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches. London: Sage

Further Information

• Mixed methods research
• Designing qualitative research
• Methods of data collection and analysis
• Introduction to quantitative and qualitative research
• Checklists for improving rigour in qualitative research: a case of the tail wagging the dog?
• Qualitative research in health care: Analysing qualitative data
• Qualitative data analysis: the framework approach
• Using the framework method for the analysis of
• Qualitative data in multi-disciplinary health research
• Content Analysis
• Grounded Theory
• Thematic Analysis

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What Is Qualitative vs. Quantitative Study?

Qualitative research focuses on understanding phenomena through detailed, narrative data. It explores the “how” and “why” of human behavior, using methods like interviews, observations, and content analysis. In contrast, quantitative research is numeric and objective, aiming to quantify variables and analyze statistical relationships. It addresses the “when” and “where,” utilizing tools like surveys, experiments, and statistical models to collect and analyze numerical data.

In This Article:

What is qualitative research, what is quantitative research.

• How Do Qualitative and Quantitative Research Differ?

What’s the Difference Between a Qualitative and Quantitative Study?

Analyzing qualitative and quantitative data, when to use qualitative or quantitative research, develop your research skills at national university.

Qualitative and quantitative data are broad categories covering many research approaches and methods. While both share the primary aim of knowledge acquisition, quantitative research is numeric and objective, seeking to answer questions like when or where. On the other hand, qualitative research is concerned with subjective phenomena that can’t be numerically measured, like how different people experience grief.

Having a firm grounding in qualitative and quantitative research methodologies will become especially important once you begin work on your dissertation or thesis toward the end of your academic program. At that point, you’ll need to decide which approach best aligns with your research question, a process that involves working closely with your Dissertation Chair.

Keep reading to learn more about the difference between quantitative vs. qualitative research, including what research techniques they involve, how they approach the task of data analysis, and some strengths — and limitations — of each approach. We’ll also briefly examine mixed-method research, which incorporates elements of both methodologies.

Qualitative research differs from quantitative research in its objectives, techniques, and design. Qualitative research aims to gain insights into phenomena, groups, or experiences that cannot be objectively measured or quantified using mathematics. Instead of seeking to uncover precise answers or statistics in a controlled environment like quantitative research, qualitative research is more exploratory, drawing upon data sources such as photographs, journal entries, video footage, and interviews.

These features stand in stark contrast to quantitative research, as we’ll see throughout the remainder of this article.

Quantitative research tackles questions from different angles compared to qualitative research. Instead of probing for subjective meaning by asking exploratory “how?” and “why?” questions, quantitative research provides precise causal explanations that can be measured and communicated mathematically. While qualitative researchers might visit subjects in their homes or otherwise in the field, quantitative research is usually conducted in a controlled environment. Instead of gaining insight or understanding into a subjective, context-dependent issue, as is the case with qualitative research, the goal is instead to obtain objective information, such as determining the best time to undergo a specific medical procedure.

How Does Qualitative and Quantitative Research Differ?

How are the approaches of quantitative and qualitative research different?

In qualitative studies, data is usually gathered in the field from smaller sample sizes, which means researchers might personally visit participants in their own homes or other environments. Once the research is completed, the researcher must evaluate and make sense of the data in its context, looking for trends or patterns from which new theories, concepts, narratives, or hypotheses can be generated.

Quantitative research is typically carried out via tools (such as questionnaires) instead of by people (such as a researcher asking interview questions). Another significant difference is that, in qualitative studies, researchers must interpret the data to build hypotheses. In a quantitative analysis, the researcher sets out to test a hypothesis.

Both qualitative and quantitative studies are subject to rigorous quality standards. However, the research techniques utilized in each type of study differ, as do the questions and issues they hope to address or resolve. In quantitative studies, researchers tend to follow more rigid structures to test the links or relationships between different variables, ideally based on a random sample. On the other hand, in a qualitative study, not only are the samples typically smaller and narrower (such as using convenience samples), the study’s design is generally more flexible and less structured to accommodate the open-ended nature of the research.

Below are a few examples of qualitative and quantitative research techniques to help illustrate these differences further.

Sources of Quantitative Research

Some example methods of quantitative research methods or sources include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Conducting polls, surveys, and experiments
• Compiling databases of records and information
• Observing the topic of the research, such as a specific reaction
• Performing a meta-analysis, which involves analyzing multiple prior studies in order to identify statistical trends or patterns
• Supplying online or paper questionnaires to participants

The following section will cover some examples of qualitative research methods for comparison, followed by an overview of mixed research methods that blend components of both approaches.

Sources of Qualitative Research

Researchers can use numerous qualitative methods to explore a topic or gain insight into an issue. Some sources of, or approaches to, qualitative research include the following examples:

• Conducting ethnographic studies, which are studies that seek to explore different phenomena through a cultural or group-specific lens
• Conducting focus groups
• Examining various types of records, including but not limited to diary entries, personal letters, official documents, medical or hospital records, photographs, video or audio recordings, and even minutes from meetings
• Holding one-on-one interviews
• Obtaining personal accounts and recollections of events or experiences

Examples of Research Questions Best Suited for Qualitative vs. Quantitative Methods

Qualitative research questions:.

• How do patients experience the process of recovering from surgery?
• Why do some employees feel more motivated in remote work environments?
• What are the cultural influences on dietary habits among teenagers?

Quantitative Research Questions:

• What is the average recovery time for patients after surgery?
• How does remote work impact employee productivity levels?
• What percentage of teenagers adhere to recommended dietary guidelines?

These examples illustrate how qualitative research delves into the depth and context of human experiences, while quantitative research focuses on measurable data and statistical analysis.

Mixed Methods Research

In addition to the purely qualitative and quantitative research methods outlined above, such as conducting focus groups or performing meta-analyses, it’s also possible to take a hybrid approach that merges qualitative and quantitative research aspects. According to an article published by LinkedIn , “Mixed methods research avoids many [of the] criticisms” that have historically been directed at qualitative and quantitative research, such as the former’s vulnerability to bias, by “canceling the effects of one methodology by including the other methodology.” In other words, this mixed approach provides the best of both worlds. “Mixed methods research also triangulates results that offer higher validity and reliability.”

If you’re enrolled as a National University student, you can watch a video introduction to mixed-method research by logging in with your student ID. Our resource library also covers qualitative and quantitative research methodologies and a video breakdown of when to use which approach.

When it comes to quantitative and qualitative research, methods of collecting data differ, as do the methods of organizing and analyzing it. So what are some best practices for analyzing qualitative and quantitative data sets, and how do they call for different approaches by researchers?

How to Analyze Qualitative Data

Below is a step-by-step overview of how to analyze qualitative data.

• Make sure all of your data is finished being compiled before you begin any analysis.
• Organize and connect your data for consistency using computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS).
• Code your data, which can be partially automated using a feedback analytics platform.
• Start digging deep into analysis, potentially using augmented intelligence to get more accurate results.
• Report on your findings, ideally using engaging aids to help tell the story.

How to Analyze Quantitative Data

There are numerous approaches to analyzing quantitative data. Some examples include cross-tabulation, conjoint analysis, gap analysis, trend analysis, and SWOT analysis, which refers to Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Whichever system or systems you use, there are specific steps you should take to ensure that you’ve organized your data and analyzed it as accurately as possible. Here’s a brief four-step overview.

• Connect measurement scales to study variables, which helps ensure that your data will be organized in the appropriate order before you proceed.
• Link data with descriptive statistics, such as mean, median, mode, or frequency.
• Determine what measurement scale you’ll use for your analysis.
• Organize the data into tables and conduct an analysis using methods like cross-tabulation or Total Unduplicated Reach and Frequency (TURF) analysis.

Simply knowing the difference between quantitative and qualitative research isn’t enough — you also need an understanding of when each approach should be used and under what circumstances. For that, you’ll need to consider all of the comparisons we’ve made throughout this article and weigh some potential pros and cons of each methodology.

Pros and Cons of Qualitative Research

Qualitative research has numerous strengths, but the research methodology is only more appropriate for some projects or dissertations. Here are some strengths and weaknesses of qualitative research to help guide your decision:

• Pro — More flex room for creativity and interpretation of results
• Pro — Greater freedom to utilize different research techniques as the study evolves
• Con — Potentially more vulnerable to bias due to their subjective nature
• Con — Sample sizes tend to be smaller and non-randomized

Pros and Cons of Quantitative Research

Quantitative research also comes with drawbacks and benefits, depending on what information you aim to uncover. Here are a few pros and cons to consider when designing your study.

• Pro — Large, random samples help ensure that the broader population is more realistically reflected
• Pro — Specific, precise results can be easily communicated using numbers
• Con — Data can suffer from a lack of context or personal detail around participant answers
• Con — Numerous participants are needed, driving up costs while posing logistical challenges

If you dream of making a scientific breakthrough and contributing new knowledge that revolutionizes your field, you’ll need a strong foundation in research, from how it’s conducted and analyzed to a clear understanding of professional ethics and standards. By pursuing your degree at National University, you build stronger research skills and countless other in-demand job skills.

With flexible course schedules, convenient online classes , scholarships and financial aid , and an inclusive military-friendly culture, higher education has never been more achievable or accessible. At National University, you’ll find opportunities to challenge and hone your research skills in more than 75 accredited graduate and undergraduate programs and fast-paced credential and certificate programs in healthcare, business, engineering, computer science, criminal justice, sociology, accounting, and more.

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Agency Information Collection Activities; Renewal of an Approved Information Collection: Generic Clearance for the Collection of Qualitative Feedback on Agency Service Delivery

A Notice by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on 08/15/2024

This document has a comment period that ends in 27 days. (09/16/2024) Submit a formal comment

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• Document Details Published Content - Document Details Agencies Department of Transportation Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Agency/Docket Number Docket No. FMCSA-2024-0062 Document Citation 89 FR 66492 Document Number 2024-18284 Document Type Notice Pages 66492-66493 (2 pages) Publication Date 08/15/2024 Published Content - Document Details
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Department of Transportation

Federal motor carrier safety administration.

• [Docket No. FMCSA-2024-0062]

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), Department of Transportation (DOT).

Notice and request for comments.

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, FMCSA announces its plan to submit the Information Collection Request (ICR) described below to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and approval. This ICR allows for ongoing, collaborative, and actionable communication between FMCSA and its customers and stakeholders. It also allows feedback to contribute directly to the improvement of program management. No public comments were received in response to the 60-day Federal Register notice.

Comments on this notice must be received on or before September 16, 2024.

Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection should be submitted within 30 days of publication of this notice to www.reginfo.gov/​public/​do/​PRAMain . Find this information collection by selecting “Currently under 30-day Review—Open for Public Comments” or by using the search function.

Ms. Roxane Oliver, FMCSA, Office of Analysis, DOT, FMCSA, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, 6th Floor, Washington, DC 20590-0001; 202-385-2324; [email protected] .

Title: Generic Clearance for the Collection of Qualitative Feedback on Agency Service Delivery.

OMB Control Number: 2126-0049.

Type of Request: Renewal of a currently approved ICR.

Respondents: State and local agencies, the general public and stakeholders, original equipment manufacturers and suppliers to the commercial motor vehicle (CMV) industry, CMV fleet owners, CMV owner-operators, State CMV safety agencies, research organizations and contractors, news organizations, safety advocacy groups, and other Federal agencies.

Estimated Number of Respondents: 9,270.

Estimated Time per Response: Range from 5 to 30 minutes.

Expiration Date: August 31, 2024.

Frequency of Response: Generally, on an annual basis. ( print page 66493)

Estimated Total Annual Burden: 2,233.

Executive Order 12862 , “Setting Customer Service Standards,” directs Federal agencies to provide service to the public that matches or exceeds the best service available in the private sector ( 58 FR 48257 , Sept. 11, 1993). To work continuously to ensure that our programs are effective and meet our customers' needs, FMCSA seeks to extend OMB approval of a generic clearance to collect qualitative feedback from our customers on our service delivery. The surveys covered in this generic clearance provide a way for FMCSA to collect this data directly from our customers.

The proposed future information collection activity provides a means to garner qualitative customer and stakeholder feedback in an efficient, timely manner, in accordance with the Administration's commitment to improving service delivery. By qualitative feedback, we mean information that provides useful insights on perceptions and opinions but are not statistical surveys that yield quantitative results that can be generalized to the population of study. This feedback will provide insights into customer or stakeholder perceptions, experiences, and expectations; provide an early warning of issues with service; or focus attention on areas where communication, training, or changes in operations might improve delivery of products or services. The information collected from our customers and stakeholders will help ensure that users have an effective, efficient, and satisfying experience with FMCSA's programs.

The solicitation of feedback will target areas such as: timeliness, appropriateness, accuracy of information, courtesy, efficiency of service delivery, and resolution of issues with service delivery. Responses will be assessed to plan and inform efforts to improve or maintain the quality of service offered to the public. If this information is not collected, vital feedback from customers and stakeholders on the Agency's services will be unavailable.

The Agency will only submit a collection for approval under this generic clearance if it meets the following conditions:

• The collections are voluntary;
• The collections are low-burden for respondents (based on considerations of total burden hours, total number of respondents, or burden-hours per respondent) and are low-cost for both the respondents and the Federal government;
• The collections are noncontroversial and do not raise issues of concern to other Federal agencies;
• Any collection is targeted to the solicitation of opinions from respondents who have experience with the program or may have experience with the program in the near future;
• Personally identifiable information is collected only to the extent necessary and is not retained;
• Information gathered will be used only internally for general service improvement and program management purposes and is not intended for release outside of the Agency;
• Information gathered will not be used for the purpose of substantially informing influential policy decisions; and
• Information gathered will yield qualitative information; the collections will not be designed or expected to yield statistically reliable results or used as though the results are generalizable to the population of study.

Feedback collected under this generic clearance provides useful information, but it does not yield data that can be generalized to the overall population. This type of generic clearance for qualitative information will not be used for quantitative information collections that are designed to yield reliably actionable results, such as monitoring trends over time or documenting program performance. Such data uses require more rigorous designs that address: the target population to which generalizations will be made, the sampling frame, the sample design (including stratification and clustering), the precision requirements or power calculations that justify the proposed sample size, the expected response rate, methods for assessing potential nonresponse bias, the protocols for data collection, and any testing procedures that were or will be undertaken prior to fielding the study. Depending on the degree of influence the results are likely to have, such collections may still be eligible for submission for other generic mechanisms that are designed to yield quantitative results.

As a general matter, information collections under this control number will not result in any new system of records containing privacy information and will not ask questions of a sensitive nature, such as sexual behavior and attitudes, religious beliefs, and other matters that are commonly considered private.

Public Comments Invited: You are asked to comment on any aspect of this information collection, including: (1) whether the proposed collection is necessary for the performance of FMCSA's functions; (2) the accuracy of the estimated burden; (3) ways for FMCSA to enhance the quality, usefulness, and clarity of the collected information; and (4) ways that the burden could be minimized without reducing the quality of the collected information.

Issued under the authority of 49 CFR 1.87 .

Larry W. Minor,

Associate Administrator for Policy.

[ FR Doc. 2024-18284 Filed 8-14-24; 8:45 am]

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