What are strengths and limitations of qualitative research? I would settle for a good reference.?

Qualitative analysis: Richness and Precision.





The aim of qualitative analysis is a complete, detailed description. No attempt is made to assign frequencies to the linguistic features which are identified in the data, and rare phenomena receives (or should receive) the same amount of attention as more frequent phenomena. Qualitative analysis allows for fine distinctions to be drawn because it is not necessary to shoehorn the data into a finite number of classifications. Ambiguities, which are inherent in human language, can be recognized in the analysis. For example, the word "red" could be used in a corpus to signify the color red, or as a political categorization (e.g. socialism or communism). In a qualitative analysis both senses of red in the phrase "the red flag" could be recognized.





The main disadvantage of qualitative approaches to corpus analysis is that their findings cannot be extended to wider populations with the same degree of certainty that quantitative analyses can. This is because the findings of the research are not tested to discover whether they are statistically significant or due to chance.