Comparative Research

Comparative Research

Comparative research is a broad term that refers to the evaluation of the similarities, differences, and associations between entities. Entities may be based on many lines such as statements from an interview or individual, symbols, case studies, social groups, geographical or political configurations, and cross-national comparisons.

Comparative research is used within most qualitative approaches, such as comparisons by core emic categories in ethnographic studies, within-case comparisons in phenomenology, case study   comparisons, comparative politics, and examination of contrasts in narrative and discourse analysis.

 

The Goal of Comparative Research

The underlying goal of comparative research is to search for similarity and variation between the entities that are the object of comparison.

The ontology of patterns or categories is assumed to be universal and independent of time and space. In other words, the comparison should be broad enough to allow researchers to compare at a “higher level” of abstraction.

Following Max Weber’s comparative sociology, for example, the search for variance places more emphasis on context and difference so as to understand specificities. Comparisons not only uncover differences between social entities but also reveal unique aspects of a particular entity that would be virtually impossible to detect otherwise.

A well-known type of comparative analysis used in qualitative research is Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss’s technique of “constant comparative analysis” derived from the sociological theory of symbolic interactionism.

The central task is to compare one piece of data with all others to compare similarities and differences. Data may be in the form of an interview, a statement, a theme, or another specified unit.

Another common comparative application within qualitative research is that of cross-national comparisons. A long-standing practice in ethnography is the use of “controlled comparison” of different societies stemming from the work of Frederick Eggan during the early 1950s.

Comparative research poses several key methodological problems that continue to frustrate, captivate, and stimulate researchers. These are the selection of cases (including the unit, level, and scale of analysis), construct equivalence, case versus characteristic orientation, and the debate regarding causality.