The Qualitative Aspects of the “Friends-With-Benefits” Relationships Study

This essay will examine the qualitative aspects of a study based on adolescents and “Friends-with-Benefits” relationships and in what regard the findings are useful in both understanding human relationships and the benefits this may have to an individual on both a professional and personal level. The disadvantages of qualitative research and its limitations as documented by the scientific community through a range of papers and studies will also be examined, along with the contributions that qualitative research has offered various fields, particularly psychology. The concept of friends-with-benefits is an interesting topic, because it goes against the status quo of what constitutes the line between friendship and a romantic relationship. It is also a topic which requires qualitative research to truly understand. Statistical research, although useful, doesn't allow us to understand the intricate reasoning and series of events that may lead to someone having a friends-with-benefits relationship and how it effects an individual on an intimate level (Parker, 2007).

Qualitative research is used to gather a more in-depth understanding of human behavior than that of its counter-part, quantitative research. The two important questions when performing qualitative research is why and how an individual made the decisions that they did. The disadvantage of this research method is that it only gives a clear insight into the behaviors and decisions of those studied, and to make any conclusions outside of the sample group would require quantitative methods to support these conclusions. However, some researchers intertwine the two and it is argued that in doing so may enhance research on subjects that require both perspectives (Ann L Casebe...

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... The particular paper on FWB is a good subject matter for Qualitative research as it requires the experiences and causes to generate an understanding of FWB relationships and the individuals who engage in them. This study however is focused on not only a very specific age group, but also city and only involved two men out of the eight participants. This of course means that the paper is not representative of the general population, and that there is large margin of error in relation to the results. This is a common criticism of Qualitative research, although due to its insightful nature, there has been recommendations to use both Qualitative and Quantitative research to reach a conclusion on a subject matter. It is definitely arguable that a combination of the two is the best way in which to support or build a theory. (Ann L Casebeer and Marja J Verhoef 1997.)