In this essay, the link between helping and prosocial behavior and the use of qualitative analysis is explored and discussed. Qualitative research is the use of descriptive and narrative research methods to obtain and understand why or how a behaviour happens, in a certain situation; one example of this is, a study by Cotney and Banerjee (2017), which addresses how kindness can promote well-being and asks, ‘why are people kind?’ the paper indicates that kindness is defined as a prosocial act that can be motivated by putting other individuals needs and emotions before your own, even if there is no benefit to gain in a personal level from doing so. Helping and prosocial behaviour tie in very closely together; helping behaviour is defined as a voluntary action that is planned to help another individual, the helping behaviour can be done with a reward regarded or disregarded as the original intent (Poepsel & Schroeder, 2019). Prosocial behavior is the intent to help other individuals by showing concern for their rights, welfare, or feelings (Cherry, 2010). There are three types of prosocial behavior, pro-active, reactive, and altruistic. Each of these are ways of helping other individuals, proactive means that they help others for self-beneficial reasons. Reactive is the means of helping others in response to individual needs and altruistic means helping others without any personal gain (Cherry, 2010).
Qualitative data describes the situation that is being experimented on and thus can only be observed, never measured; it would be used to measure helping and prosocial behavior as it gives the researcher a chance to observe the behavior (Martí-Vilar et al., 2019). Researchers can study the individuals in their normal surroundings, in order to understand the different types of means (Denzin and Lincoln 1994). Qualitative research has various types of methods to be able to develop a deep understanding of how an individual may observe their own social realities or react to social situations; these include ethnography, narrative, phenomenological, grounded theory, focus group, and case study (Bhandari, 2020).
There are three types of helping and prosocial behaviour; proactive behavior is a way of acting in the effect of a forthcoming situation, rather than reacting for example, the Boduszek et al., (2019) study was a prosocial video game named Jesse, its intent was to increase the affective and cognitive responsiveness towards victims of intimate partner violence among children and adolescents. This was a proactive step taken to try and create helping and prosocial behavior in the children and adolescents. Proactive refers to taking control of a situation such as putting the game Jesse in place within the schools and making early changes, before intimate partner violence happens rather than waiting for something to happen (Boduszek et al., 2019).
Reactive means that the individual does not take initiative or make strategic decisions in life. These are actions that are performed in response to individual needs, for example, focus group one participant two picked up a drunken teenage girl and took her home, she felt that this was an automatic response and carried out this behaviour without thinking of the positive or negative effects of helping and prosocial behaviour (University of Ulster 2019), (Cherry, 2010).
Altruistic means actions that are supposed to help other individuals with no expectations of personal gain. Helping and prosocial behaviour underlie examples of altruism. Individuals may engage in such apparently selfless acts of helping and prosocial behaviours for selfish reasons. However, an individual might engage in altruism in order to gain the approval of others or to feel good about themselves (Batson & Powell, 2000).
Since helping and prosocial behaviour is described as the intent to help others (Cherry, 2010) and by using qualitive methods in prosocial and assisting behaviors to a focus group was carried out to study how multiple individuals would have acted in the same social situation. From the University of Ulster study focus groups, multiple individuals have stated that if they are in a group or do not feel threatened, then they are more likely to help an individual in need whether that be for their own benefit or not (Ulster University, 2019).
The qualitative method uses descriptive and narrative style, this research could have certain benefit to the researcher as they could then analyze qualitative reports in order to get a clear look at the types of knowledge that may otherwise be unavailable, this therefore leads them to gain new types of insight; for example, when focus group one talks about different helping and prosocial behavior based on the persons gender you may be helping (Ulster University, 2019).
Qualitative research uses focus groups to understand further helping and prosocial behavior. A focus group discussion is often used as a qualitative research approach to better understand social behaviour (Whitaker, 1997). A focus group is likely to generate the type of data required, as the discussion within the group is designed to gather helpful information with a moderator set in place to help guide the discussion. This can then lead to a better understanding of the researcher’s perspective of the group discussing the topic and can provide a better understanding of the situation, similar to the moderator in Focus Group Two (University of Ulster 2019).
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In a focus group study (University of Ulster 2019) the type of analysis can be difficult to understand and a particular type of knowledge in this area is necessary in order to get the correct results, for example when the social psychology lecture put together three focus groups and asked ‘under what circumstances do you think people are more likely to help other people?’ this question was given to the three focus groups made up by second-year psychology students, who have prior knowledge in this area via lectures and independent research.
The answers to this question was although different, explained how individuals felt about helping and prosocial behavior and how and under what circumstances would they help. In all groups the participants talked about helping and prosocial behaviour acts they had carried out in order to help other individuals in need. All three groups agreed that individuals such as themselves would be more likely to act with a helping and prosocial behavior if they were in a group situation and would be less likely to carry out helping and prosocial behavior if they were alone. However, this has already been proven wrong with and experiment by Darley and Latane back in 1968 called the ‘bystander intervention in emergencies: diffusion of responsibility’; where it was recorded that an individual is less likely to help or report an issue in a room full of others (Darley & Latane, 1968).
An example given in the focus group was an individual stopping to help someone laying on the side of a dual carriageway. The group discussed that they would be more likely to stop if they felt safe, such as with another individual or if it was an individual of the same gender they were stopping to help (Ulster University, 2019). If the individual has a caring personality this would indicate that they would be more inclined to stop and help the individual in need (Bekkers & Ottoni‐Wilhelm, 2016). If an individual has a personality that thrives on helping others or needs to do something to feel good about themselves, they will try to carry out a helping and prosocial behavior, dissimilar to an individual who is very self-centered or focused (Narcissist or Just Self-Centered? 4 Ways to Tell 2015). However, if an individual has a lot of empathy towards people in need, they would also be more likely to stop than an individual with very little empathy towards others (Markman., 2012). These factors could make the difference in an individual showing helping and prosocial behavior and those who do not.
There are also negative aspects of the use of qualitative methods, such as not allowing the individuals being interviewed or questions to be anonymous. This may lead the individual to give a different answer as they may not feel comfortable in expressing their honest opinion openly. Another reason that qualitative methods can have a negative impact is they do not have a definitive answer and, as such, can be interpreted incorrectly when either writing the report or from the perspective of an individual reading it.
The use of qualitative methods can clarify helping and prosocial behavior by exploring if individuals who have had no prior contact with each other have similar answers to the same helping and prosocial questions asked. Helping and prosocial behavior is difficult to measure in a numerical format as it is an action. Allowing the participants to answer freely and give statements on their own personal recollections of helping and prosocial behavior, will allow for a better understanding of why an individual may carry out a helping and prosocial behavior. This can also display what factors are needed for helping and prosocial behavior to occur.
This then allows the use of qualitative methods, such as focus groups, to help the researchers to gather the correct data and display it in a way that can clarify each individual’s behavior in a clear and precise way. As seen in the helping and prosocial focus group study carried out by Ulster University (University of Ulster 2019), where a discussion that was recorded had taken place, this allows the researcher to analyze the data in a way that allows further understanding of how individuals will go out of their way to help and their own reasoning behind it.
The aim of this essay was to discuss qualitative research methods and how these could be applied to further the understanding of helping and prosocial behavior. The essay points out that qualitative research methods are better geared towards situations that cannot be explained in numerical data or by performing an experiment the same way multiple times. Qualitative research is criticized due to its validity and reliability (Noble & Smith, 2015). It can, therefore, be difficult to be able to apply the conventual standards. It is impossible to replicate the qualitative studies accurately; although Ulster University had researched three different focus groups that were all asked the same question on helping and prosocial behavior, they all have different answers and life experiences to refer to. This shows that the focus groups cannot be replicated accurately.
The collecting of the data by the research can also be difficult as individuals may use others personal recollections and experiences to help answer questions in the form of focus groups or questionnaires, this would then not valid the data collected, due to the issue that information may have been passed on incorrectly to the researcher. Since behavior is not something that can be easily replicated in the form of an experiment, using qualitative methods to obtain information on how different an individual would react or have reacted in certain social situations, allows for a much better understanding of how helping and prosocial behavior are intertwined.
Qualitative research offers the researcher numerous options to gather their own data using different tools. It can be highly reliable as the researcher can collect their own data and get it cross-checked for the validity of their data by another researcher (Middleton, 2019).
Finally, qualitative research is a useful way of gathering data for when or how an individual helps others or shows helping and prosocial behavior. The way the questions are worded or asked can also be of high importance, as open questions give the individual more opportunity to answer freely. As for the data to be fully rounded personality testing should also be conducted to find the individuals personality, this could be carried out to allow the researcher to consider the other factors that could be considered when reporting the results of focus groups and other qualitative measures.
References
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- Bhandari, P. (2020, June 19). What is Qualitative Research? | Approaches, Methods & Examples. Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/qualitative-research/
- Boduszek, D., Debowska, A., Jones, A. D., Ma, M., Smith, D., Willmott, D., Trotman Jemmott, E., Da Breo, H., & Kirkman, G. (2019). Prosocial video game as an intimate partner violence prevention tool among youth: A randomised controlled trial. Computers in Human Behavior, 93, 260–266. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.12.028
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- Markman, A. (2012, May 22). Why Empathy Makes You More Helpful. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/201205/why-empathy-makes-you-more-helpful#:~:text=There%20is%20a%20lot%20of
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- Narcissist or Just Self-Centered? 4 Ways to Tell. (2015, Autumn 9). Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/fixing-families/201509/narcissist-or-just-self-centered-4-ways-tell
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