Learning to See Otherwise: Building Your Research Avatar Through Qualitative Awareness
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Authors
Mittra, Pallavi
Issue Date
2026-02-11
Type
Article
Language
en
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
Qualitative research methodology is not confined to data collection or analysis. Instead, it shapes how we define research problems, frame questions, select designs, and interpret findings. This guide cultivates a qualitative research sensibility that makes inquiry rigorous, reflective, and defensible from inception to conclusion. It is intended for doctoral researchers seeking to explore the potential and nuances of qualitative research and to those adopting a qualitative lens to their research problem.
The first section unpacks common conceptions of reality and knowledge through accessible illustrations of foundational philosophical concepts. The second section illustrates how a research problem can be framed and examined differently depending on the paradigms – of positivism, critical realism, and interpretivism – that determine how we view the social world we seek to examine. The final section presents a toolkit for querying and examining the literature and data by exploring the inductive, deductive, abductive, categorical, patterned, and causational facets of the knowledge we discover and create critically, reflexively, and more crucially, qualitatively. The guide further includes discipline-specific examples to illustrate how these concepts can be applied to a research problem.
Description
Dr. Pallavi Mittra holds an M.S. in Management, an M.Res. in Research Methodology, and a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the University of Strathclyde (UK). Her academic work is grounded in qualitative inquiry, with a particular focus on organizational behavior informed by psychoanalytic and interpretive perspectives. As an Academic Coach (Level II), Dr. Mittra works closely with graduate students on qualitative research design, data analysis, and all facets of academic writing. She is especially passionate about helping students develop strong, coherent, and critically grounded qualitative arguments. In her previous roles, she has taught undergraduate students and presented her research at several international conferences. She is also a recipient of a Best Paper Award from the British Academy of Management and has been nominated for a Teaching Excellence Award.