This essay will demonstrate my knowledge and understanding of the contribution to qualitative research to Psychology through the discussion of published qualitative research. Firstly, what is qualitative research and how does this differ from qualitative research? According to Smith “Qualitative analysis is concerned with describing the constituent properties of an entity” whereas “Qualitative analysis is involved in determining how much of the entity there is” (Smith et al., 2008 p.1) Quantitative research is any data that is in numerical from such as statistics, percentages etc. Quantitative research compels a drop of phenomena to numbers for statistical analysis. This type of research is mostly interested in adding the number of …show more content…

All participants felt helpless and frustrated because they didn’t understand what was wrong with their sibling. Even after diagnosis they did not comprehend what the illness was, where it originated or what the consequences were. They were not familiar how to access information about the illness and found it hard to understand the symptoms of a person with schizophrenia. The next theme identifies the struggles the participants endured to get help from Health Care professionals. The participants felt the professionals did not see the family’s needs for information. Information was scarce and made the participants anxious and helpless. The 3rd theme was “Caring for the sibling “. This theme shows a number of issues surrounding caring for the individual with schizophrenia. The participants told the researchers they felt good sometimes caring for their sibling however other times they felt exhausted and overpowered physically and mentally. Being a carer for their siblings with schizophrenia at times, affected their life dramatically in terms of relationships with other family members, financially, and their work lives. The final theme is “Seeing beyond the illness”. The researchers found that there was a sense of admiration participants felt towards their siblings and how much they had overcome. They said the