“We want to know the why,” explained Prof Natasja Holtzhausen, a qualitative researcher from the School of Public Management and Administration, to the third-year Marketing Research students.

In her guest lecture on 18 February 2016, Prof Holtzhausen shared with the students how qualitative research differs from quantitative studies. She highlighted the differences in focus, sampling, methodologies and reporting. She also pointed out that qualitative work digs deeper into people’s psyche, and thus often requires a lot of time and effort in order to gain trust from the research participant.

The students were interested in the examples of qualitative research that Prof Holtzhausen shared. She also provided the students with a history of research ethics – referring to the controversial Nazi experiments, which are a poignant reminder that in research, we should always seek to ‘do no harm’.