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500+ Qualitative Research Titles and Topics

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Qualitative research is a methodological approach that involves gathering and analyzing non-numerical data to understand and interpret social phenomena. Unlike quantitative research , which emphasizes the collection of numerical data through surveys and experiments, qualitative research is concerned with exploring the subjective experiences, perspectives, and meanings of individuals and groups. As such, qualitative research topics can be diverse and encompass a wide range of social issues and phenomena. From exploring the impact of culture on identity formation to examining the experiences of marginalized communities, qualitative research offers a rich and nuanced perspective on complex social issues. In this post, we will explore some of the most compelling qualitative research topics and provide some tips on how to conduct effective qualitative research.

Qualitative Research Titles

Qualitative research titles often reflect the study’s focus on understanding the depth and complexity of human behavior, experiences, or social phenomena. Here are some examples across various fields:

• “Understanding the Impact of Project-Based Learning on Student Engagement in High School Classrooms: A Qualitative Study”
• “Navigating the Transition: Experiences of International Students in American Universities”
• “The Role of Parental Involvement in Early Childhood Education: Perspectives from Teachers and Parents”
• “Exploring the Effects of Teacher Feedback on Student Motivation and Self-Efficacy in Middle Schools”
• “Digital Literacy in the Classroom: Teacher Strategies for Integrating Technology in Elementary Education”
• “Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices: A Case Study in Diverse Urban Schools”
• “The Influence of Extracurricular Activities on Academic Achievement: Student Perspectives”
• “Barriers to Implementing Inclusive Education in Public Schools: A Qualitative Inquiry”
• “Teacher Professional Development and Its Impact on Classroom Practice: A Qualitative Exploration”
• “Student-Centered Learning Environments: A Qualitative Study of Classroom Dynamics and Outcomes”
• “The Experience of First-Year Teachers: Challenges, Support Systems, and Professional Growth”
• “Exploring the Role of School Leadership in Fostering a Positive School Culture”
• “Peer Relationships and Learning Outcomes in Cooperative Learning Settings: A Qualitative Analysis”
• “The Impact of Social Media on Student Learning and Engagement: Teacher and Student Perspectives”
• “Understanding Special Education Needs: Parent and Teacher Perceptions of Support Services in Schools

Health Science

• “Living with Chronic Pain: Patient Narratives and Coping Strategies in Managing Daily Life”
• “Healthcare Professionals’ Perspectives on the Challenges of Rural Healthcare Delivery”
• “Exploring the Mental Health Impacts of COVID-19 on Frontline Healthcare Workers: A Qualitative Study”
• “Patient and Family Experiences of Palliative Care: Understanding Needs and Preferences”
• “The Role of Community Health Workers in Improving Access to Maternal Healthcare in Rural Areas”
• “Barriers to Mental Health Services Among Ethnic Minorities: A Qualitative Exploration”
• “Understanding Patient Satisfaction in Telemedicine Services: A Qualitative Study of User Experiences”
• “The Impact of Cultural Competence Training on Healthcare Provider-Patient Communication”
• “Navigating the Transition to Adult Healthcare Services: Experiences of Adolescents with Chronic Conditions”
• “Exploring the Use of Alternative Medicine Among Patients with Chronic Diseases: A Qualitative Inquiry”
• “The Role of Social Support in the Rehabilitation Process of Stroke Survivors”
• “Healthcare Decision-Making Among Elderly Patients: A Qualitative Study of Preferences and Influences”
• “Nurse Perceptions of Patient Safety Culture in Hospital Settings: A Qualitative Analysis”
• “Experiences of Women with Postpartum Depression: Barriers to Seeking Help”
• “The Impact of Nutrition Education on Eating Behaviors Among College Students: A Qualitative Approach”
• “Understanding Resilience in Survivors of Childhood Trauma: A Narrative Inquiry”
• “The Role of Mindfulness in Managing Work-Related Stress Among Corporate Employees: A Qualitative Study”
• “Coping Mechanisms Among Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder”
• “Exploring the Psychological Impact of Social Isolation in the Elderly: A Phenomenological Study”
• “Identity Formation in Adolescence: The Influence of Social Media and Peer Groups”
• “The Experience of Forgiveness in Interpersonal Relationships: A Qualitative Exploration”
• “Perceptions of Happiness and Well-Being Among University Students: A Cultural Perspective”
• “The Impact of Art Therapy on Anxiety and Depression in Adult Cancer Patients”
• “Narratives of Recovery: A Qualitative Study on the Journey Through Addiction Rehabilitation”
• “Exploring the Psychological Effects of Long-Term Unemployment: A Grounded Theory Approach”
• “Attachment Styles and Their Influence on Adult Romantic Relationships: A Qualitative Analysis”
• “The Role of Personal Values in Career Decision-Making Among Young Adults”
• “Understanding the Stigma of Mental Illness in Rural Communities: A Qualitative Inquiry”
• “Exploring the Use of Digital Mental Health Interventions Among Adolescents: A Qualitative Study”
• “The Psychological Impact of Climate Change on Young Adults: An Exploration of Anxiety and Action”
• “Navigating Identity: The Role of Social Media in Shaping Youth Culture and Self-Perception”
• “Community Resilience in the Face of Urban Gentrification: A Case Study of Neighborhood Change”
• “The Dynamics of Intergenerational Relationships in Immigrant Families: A Qualitative Analysis”
• “Social Capital and Economic Mobility in Low-Income Neighborhoods: An Ethnographic Approach”
• “Gender Roles and Career Aspirations Among Young Adults in Conservative Societies”
• “The Stigma of Mental Health in the Workplace: Employee Narratives and Organizational Culture”
• “Exploring the Intersection of Race, Class, and Education in Urban School Systems”
• “The Impact of Digital Divide on Access to Healthcare Information in Rural Communities”
• “Social Movements and Political Engagement Among Millennials: A Qualitative Study”
• “Cultural Adaptation and Identity Among Second-Generation Immigrants: A Phenomenological Inquiry”
• “The Role of Religious Institutions in Providing Community Support and Social Services”
• “Negotiating Public Space: Experiences of LGBTQ+ Individuals in Urban Environments”
• “The Sociology of Food: Exploring Eating Habits and Food Practices Across Cultures”
• “Work-Life Balance Challenges Among Dual-Career Couples: A Qualitative Exploration”
• “The Influence of Peer Networks on Substance Use Among Adolescents: A Community Study”

Business and Management

• “Navigating Organizational Change: Employee Perceptions and Adaptation Strategies in Mergers and Acquisitions”
• “Corporate Social Responsibility: Consumer Perceptions and Brand Loyalty in the Retail Sector”
• “Leadership Styles and Organizational Culture: A Comparative Study of Tech Startups”
• “Workplace Diversity and Inclusion: Best Practices and Challenges in Multinational Corporations”
• “Consumer Trust in E-commerce: A Qualitative Study of Online Shopping Behaviors”
• “The Gig Economy and Worker Satisfaction: Exploring the Experiences of Freelance Professionals”
• “Entrepreneurial Resilience: Success Stories and Lessons Learned from Failed Startups”
• “Employee Engagement and Productivity in Remote Work Settings: A Post-Pandemic Analysis”
• “Brand Storytelling: How Narrative Strategies Influence Consumer Engagement”
• “Sustainable Business Practices: Stakeholder Perspectives in the Fashion Industry”
• “Cross-Cultural Communication Challenges in Global Teams: Strategies for Effective Collaboration”
• “Innovative Workspaces: The Impact of Office Design on Creativity and Collaboration”
• “Consumer Perceptions of Artificial Intelligence in Customer Service: A Qualitative Exploration”
• “The Role of Mentoring in Career Development: Insights from Women in Leadership Positions”
• “Agile Management Practices: Adoption and Impact in Traditional Industries”

Environmental Studies

• “Community-Based Conservation Efforts in Tropical Rainforests: A Qualitative Study of Local Perspectives and Practices”
• “Urban Sustainability Initiatives: Exploring Resident Participation and Impact in Green City Projects”
• “Perceptions of Climate Change Among Indigenous Populations: Insights from Traditional Ecological Knowledge”
• “Environmental Justice and Industrial Pollution: A Case Study of Community Advocacy and Response”
• “The Role of Eco-Tourism in Promoting Conservation Awareness: Perspectives from Tour Operators and Visitors”
• “Sustainable Agriculture Practices Among Smallholder Farmers: Challenges and Opportunities”
• “Youth Engagement in Climate Action Movements: Motivations, Perceptions, and Outcomes”
• “Corporate Environmental Responsibility: A Qualitative Analysis of Stakeholder Expectations and Company Practices”
• “The Impact of Plastic Pollution on Marine Ecosystems: Community Awareness and Behavioral Change”
• “Renewable Energy Adoption in Rural Communities: Barriers, Facilitators, and Social Implications”
• “Water Scarcity and Community Adaptation Strategies in Arid Regions: A Grounded Theory Approach”
• “Urban Green Spaces: Public Perceptions and Use Patterns in Megacities”
• “Environmental Education in Schools: Teachers’ Perspectives on Integrating Sustainability into Curricula”
• “The Influence of Environmental Activism on Policy Change: Case Studies of Grassroots Campaigns”
• “Cultural Practices and Natural Resource Management: A Qualitative Study of Indigenous Stewardship Models”

Anthropology

• “Kinship and Social Organization in Matrilineal Societies: An Ethnographic Study”
• “Rituals and Beliefs Surrounding Death and Mourning in Diverse Cultures: A Comparative Analysis”
• “The Impact of Globalization on Indigenous Languages and Cultural Identity”
• “Food Sovereignty and Traditional Agricultural Practices Among Indigenous Communities”
• “Navigating Modernity: The Integration of Traditional Healing Practices in Contemporary Healthcare Systems”
• “Gender Roles and Equality in Hunter-Gatherer Societies: An Anthropological Perspective”
• “Sacred Spaces and Religious Practices: An Ethnographic Study of Pilgrimage Sites”
• “Youth Subcultures and Resistance: An Exploration of Identity and Expression in Urban Environments”
• “Cultural Constructions of Disability and Inclusion: A Cross-Cultural Analysis”
• “Interethnic Marriages and Cultural Syncretism: Case Studies from Multicultural Societies”
• “The Role of Folklore and Storytelling in Preserving Cultural Heritage”
• “Economic Anthropology of Gift-Giving and Reciprocity in Tribal Communities”
• “Digital Anthropology: The Role of Social Media in Shaping Political Movements”
• “Migration and Diaspora: Maintaining Cultural Identity in Transnational Communities”
• “Cultural Adaptations to Climate Change Among Coastal Fishing Communities”

Communication Studies

• “The Dynamics of Family Communication in the Digital Age: A Qualitative Inquiry”
• “Narratives of Identity and Belonging in Diaspora Communities Through Social Media”
• “Organizational Communication and Employee Engagement: A Case Study in the Non-Profit Sector”
• “Cultural Influences on Communication Styles in Multinational Teams: An Ethnographic Approach”
• “Media Representation of Women in Politics: A Content Analysis and Audience Perception Study”
• “The Role of Communication in Building Sustainable Community Development Projects”
• “Interpersonal Communication in Online Dating: Strategies, Challenges, and Outcomes”
• “Public Health Messaging During Pandemics: A Qualitative Study of Community Responses”
• “The Impact of Mobile Technology on Parent-Child Communication in the Digital Era”
• “Crisis Communication Strategies in the Hospitality Industry: A Case Study of Reputation Management”
• “Narrative Analysis of Personal Stories Shared on Mental Health Blogs”
• “The Influence of Podcasts on Political Engagement Among Young Adults”
• “Visual Communication and Brand Identity: A Qualitative Study of Consumer Interpretations”
• “Communication Barriers in Cross-Cultural Healthcare Settings: Patient and Provider Perspectives”
• “The Role of Internal Communication in Managing Organizational Change: Employee Experiences”

Information Technology

• “User Experience Design in Augmented Reality Applications: A Qualitative Study of Best Practices”
• “The Human Factor in Cybersecurity: Understanding Employee Behaviors and Attitudes Towards Phishing”
• “Adoption of Cloud Computing in Small and Medium Enterprises: Challenges and Success Factors”
• “Blockchain Technology in Supply Chain Management: A Qualitative Exploration of Potential Impacts”
• “The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Personalizing User Experiences on E-commerce Platforms”
• “Digital Transformation in Traditional Industries: A Case Study of Technology Adoption Challenges”
• “Ethical Considerations in the Development of Smart Home Technologies: A Stakeholder Analysis”
• “The Impact of Social Media Algorithms on News Consumption and Public Opinion”
• “Collaborative Software Development: Practices and Challenges in Open Source Projects”
• “Understanding the Digital Divide: Access to Information Technology in Rural Communities”
• “Data Privacy Concerns and User Trust in Internet of Things (IoT) Devices”
• “The Effectiveness of Gamification in Educational Software: A Qualitative Study of Engagement and Motivation”
• “Virtual Teams and Remote Work: Communication Strategies and Tools for Effectiveness”
• “User-Centered Design in Mobile Health Applications: Evaluating Usability and Accessibility”
• “The Influence of Technology on Work-Life Balance: Perspectives from IT Professionals”

Tourism and Hospitality

• “Exploring the Authenticity of Cultural Heritage Tourism in Indigenous Communities”
• “Sustainable Tourism Practices: Perceptions and Implementations in Small Island Destinations”
• “The Impact of Social Media Influencers on Destination Choice Among Millennials”
• “Gastronomy Tourism: Exploring the Culinary Experiences of International Visitors in Rural Regions”
• “Eco-Tourism and Conservation: Stakeholder Perspectives on Balancing Tourism and Environmental Protection”
• “The Role of Hospitality in Enhancing the Cultural Exchange Experience of Exchange Students”
• “Dark Tourism: Visitor Motivations and Experiences at Historical Conflict Sites”
• “Customer Satisfaction in Luxury Hotels: A Qualitative Study of Service Excellence and Personalization”
• “Adventure Tourism: Understanding the Risk Perception and Safety Measures Among Thrill-Seekers”
• “The Influence of Local Communities on Tourist Experiences in Ecotourism Sites”
• “Event Tourism: Economic Impacts and Community Perspectives on Large-Scale Music Festivals”
• “Heritage Tourism and Identity: Exploring the Connections Between Historic Sites and National Identity”
• “Tourist Perceptions of Sustainable Accommodation Practices: A Study of Green Hotels”
• “The Role of Language in Shaping the Tourist Experience in Multilingual Destinations”
• “Health and Wellness Tourism: Motivations and Experiences of Visitors to Spa and Retreat Centers”

Qualitative Research Topics

Qualitative Research Topics are as follows:

• Understanding the lived experiences of first-generation college students
• Exploring the impact of social media on self-esteem among adolescents
• Investigating the effects of mindfulness meditation on stress reduction
• Analyzing the perceptions of employees regarding organizational culture
• Examining the impact of parental involvement on academic achievement of elementary school students
• Investigating the role of music therapy in managing symptoms of depression
• Understanding the experience of women in male-dominated industries
• Exploring the factors that contribute to successful leadership in non-profit organizations
• Analyzing the effects of peer pressure on substance abuse among adolescents
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with disabilities in the workplace
• Understanding the factors that contribute to burnout among healthcare professionals
• Examining the impact of social support on mental health outcomes
• Analyzing the perceptions of parents regarding sex education in schools
• Investigating the experiences of immigrant families in the education system
• Understanding the impact of trauma on mental health outcomes
• Exploring the effectiveness of animal-assisted therapy for individuals with anxiety
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful intergenerational relationships
• Investigating the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals in the workplace
• Understanding the impact of online gaming on social skills development among adolescents
• Examining the perceptions of teachers regarding technology integration in the classroom
• Analyzing the experiences of women in leadership positions
• Investigating the factors that contribute to successful marriage and long-term relationships
• Understanding the impact of social media on political participation
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with mental health disorders in the criminal justice system
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful community-based programs for youth development
• Investigating the experiences of veterans in accessing mental health services
• Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health outcomes
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood obesity prevention
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful multicultural education programs
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in the workplace
• Understanding the impact of poverty on academic achievement
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with autism spectrum disorder in the workplace
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful employee retention strategies
• Investigating the experiences of caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease
• Understanding the impact of parent-child communication on adolescent sexual behavior
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding mental health services on campus
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful team building in the workplace
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with eating disorders in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of mentorship on career success
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with physical disabilities in the workplace
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful community-based programs for mental health
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with substance use disorders in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of social media on romantic relationships
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding child discipline strategies
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful cross-cultural communication in the workplace
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with anxiety disorders in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of cultural differences on healthcare delivery
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with hearing loss in the workplace
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful parent-teacher communication
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with depression in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of childhood trauma on adult mental health outcomes
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding alcohol and drug use on campus
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful mentor-mentee relationships
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with intellectual disabilities in the workplace
• Understanding the impact of work-family balance on employee satisfaction and well-being
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with autism spectrum disorder in vocational rehabilitation programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful project management in the construction industry
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with substance use disorders in peer support groups
• Understanding the impact of mindfulness meditation on stress reduction and mental health
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood nutrition
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful environmental sustainability initiatives in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with bipolar disorder in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of job stress on employee burnout and turnover
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with physical disabilities in recreational activities
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful strategic planning in nonprofit organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with hoarding disorder in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of culture on leadership styles and effectiveness
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding sexual health education on campus
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful supply chain management in the retail industry
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with personality disorders in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of multiculturalism on group dynamics in the workplace
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with chronic pain in mindfulness-based pain management programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful employee engagement strategies in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with internet addiction disorder in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of social comparison on body dissatisfaction and self-esteem
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood sleep habits
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful diversity and inclusion initiatives in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with schizophrenia in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of job crafting on employee motivation and job satisfaction
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with vision impairments in navigating public spaces
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful customer relationship management strategies in the service industry
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with dissociative amnesia in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of cultural intelligence on intercultural communication and collaboration
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding campus diversity and inclusion efforts
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful supply chain sustainability initiatives in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of transformational leadership on organizational performance and employee well-being
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with mobility impairments in public transportation
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful talent management strategies in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with substance use disorders in harm reduction programs
• Understanding the impact of gratitude practices on well-being and resilience
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood mental health and well-being
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful corporate social responsibility initiatives in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with borderline personality disorder in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of emotional labor on job stress and burnout
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with hearing impairments in healthcare settings
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful customer experience strategies in the hospitality industry
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with gender dysphoria in gender-affirming healthcare
• Understanding the impact of cultural differences on cross-cultural negotiation in the global marketplace
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding academic stress and mental health
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful supply chain agility in organizations
• Understanding the impact of music therapy on mental health and well-being
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with dyslexia in educational settings
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful leadership in nonprofit organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in online support groups
• Understanding the impact of exercise on mental health and well-being
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood screen time
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful change management strategies in organizations
• Understanding the impact of cultural differences on international business negotiations
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with hearing impairments in the workplace
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful team building in corporate settings
• Understanding the impact of technology on communication in romantic relationships
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful community engagement strategies for local governments
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of financial stress on mental health and well-being
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful mentorship programs in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with gambling addictions in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of social media on body image and self-esteem
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood education
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful virtual team management strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with dissociative identity disorder in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of cultural differences on cross-cultural communication in healthcare settings
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with chronic pain in cognitive-behavioral therapy programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful community-building strategies in urban neighborhoods
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with alcohol use disorders in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of personality traits on romantic relationships
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding mental health stigma on campus
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful fundraising strategies for political campaigns
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with traumatic brain injuries in rehabilitation programs
• Understanding the impact of social support on mental health and well-being among the elderly
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in medical treatment decision-making processes
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful innovation strategies in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with dissociative disorders in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of cultural differences on cross-cultural communication in education settings
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood physical activity
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful conflict resolution in family relationships
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with opioid use disorders in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of emotional intelligence on leadership effectiveness
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with learning disabilities in the workplace
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful change management in educational institutions
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with eating disorders in recovery support groups
• Understanding the impact of self-compassion on mental health and well-being
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding campus safety and security measures
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful marketing strategies for nonprofit organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with postpartum depression in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of ageism in the workplace
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with dyslexia in the education system
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with anxiety disorders in cognitive-behavioral therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of socioeconomic status on access to healthcare
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood screen time usage
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful supply chain management strategies
• Understanding the impact of parenting styles on child development
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with addiction in harm reduction programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful crisis management strategies in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with trauma in trauma-focused therapy programs
• Examining the perceptions of healthcare providers regarding patient-centered care
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful product development strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with autism spectrum disorder in employment programs
• Understanding the impact of cultural competence on healthcare outcomes
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in healthcare navigation
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful community engagement strategies for non-profit organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with physical disabilities in the workplace
• Understanding the impact of childhood trauma on adult mental health
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful supply chain sustainability strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with personality disorders in dialectical behavior therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of gender identity on mental health treatment seeking behaviors
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with schizophrenia in community-based treatment programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful project team management strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder in exposure and response prevention therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of cultural competence on academic achievement and success
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding academic integrity
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful social media marketing strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with bipolar disorder in community-based treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of mindfulness on academic achievement and success
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with substance use disorders in medication-assisted treatment programs
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with anxiety disorders in exposure therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of healthcare disparities on health outcomes
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful supply chain optimization strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with borderline personality disorder in schema therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of culture on perceptions of mental health stigma
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with trauma in art therapy programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful digital marketing strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with eating disorders in online support groups
• Understanding the impact of workplace bullying on job satisfaction and performance
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding mental health resources on campus
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful supply chain risk management strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with chronic pain in mindfulness-based pain management programs
• Understanding the impact of cognitive-behavioral therapy on social anxiety disorder
• Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on mental health and well-being
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with eating disorders in treatment programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful leadership in business organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with chronic pain in cognitive-behavioral therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of cultural differences on intercultural communication
• Examining the perceptions of teachers regarding inclusive education for students with disabilities
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with depression in therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of workplace culture on employee retention and turnover
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with traumatic brain injuries in rehabilitation programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful crisis communication strategies in organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with anxiety disorders in mindfulness-based interventions
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in healthcare settings
• Understanding the impact of technology on work-life balance
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with learning disabilities in academic settings
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful entrepreneurship in small businesses
• Understanding the impact of gender identity on mental health and well-being
• Examining the perceptions of individuals with disabilities regarding accessibility in public spaces
• Understanding the impact of religion on coping strategies for stress and anxiety
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in complementary and alternative medicine treatments
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful customer retention strategies in business organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with postpartum depression in therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of ageism on older adults in healthcare settings
• Examining the perceptions of students regarding online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful team building in virtual work environments
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with gambling disorders in treatment programs
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in peer support groups
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful social media marketing strategies for businesses
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with ADHD in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of sleep on cognitive and emotional functioning
• Examining the perceptions of individuals with chronic illnesses regarding healthcare access and affordability
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with borderline personality disorder in dialectical behavior therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of social support on caregiver well-being
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in disability activism
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful cultural competency training programs in healthcare settings
• Understanding the impact of personality disorders on interpersonal relationships
• Examining the perceptions of healthcare providers regarding the use of telehealth services
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with dissociative disorders in therapy programs
• Understanding the impact of gender bias in hiring practices
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with visual impairments in the workplace
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful diversity and inclusion programs in the workplace
• Understanding the impact of online dating on romantic relationships
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood vaccination
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful communication in healthcare settings
• Understanding the impact of cultural stereotypes on academic achievement
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with substance use disorders in sober living programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful classroom management strategies
• Understanding the impact of social support on addiction recovery
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding mental health stigma
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful conflict resolution in the workplace
• Understanding the impact of race and ethnicity on healthcare access and outcomes
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder in treatment programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful project management strategies
• Understanding the impact of teacher-student relationships on academic achievement
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful customer service strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with social anxiety disorder in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of workplace stress on job satisfaction and performance
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with disabilities in sports and recreation
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful marketing strategies for small businesses
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with phobias in treatment programs
• Understanding the impact of culture on attitudes towards mental health and illness
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding sexual assault prevention
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful time management strategies
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with addiction in recovery support groups
• Understanding the impact of mindfulness on emotional regulation and well-being
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with chronic pain in treatment programs
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful conflict resolution in romantic relationships
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with autism spectrum disorder in social skills training programs
• Understanding the impact of parent-child communication on adolescent substance use
• Examining the perceptions of parents regarding childhood mental health services
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful fundraising strategies for non-profit organizations
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with chronic illnesses in support groups
• Understanding the impact of personality traits on career success and satisfaction
• Exploring the experiences of individuals with disabilities in accessing public transportation
• Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful team building in sports teams
• Investigating the experiences of individuals with chronic pain in alternative medicine treatments
• Understanding the impact of stigma on mental health treatment seeking behaviors
• Examining the perceptions of college students regarding diversity and inclusion on campus.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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Qualitative study design: Historical

• Qualitative study design
• Phenomenology
• Grounded theory
• Ethnography
• Narrative inquiry
• Action research
• Case Studies
• Field research
• Focus groups
• Observation
• Surveys & questionnaires
• Study Designs Home

Looking at the past to inform the future.

Describing and examining past events to better understand the present and to anticipate potential effects on the future. To identify a need for knowledge that requires a historical investigation. Piecing together a history, particularly when there are no people living to tell their story.  

• Oral recordings

Can provide a fuller picture of the scope of the research as it covers a wider range of sources. As an example, documents such as diaries, oral histories and official records and newspaper reports were used to identify a scurvy and smallpox epidemic among Klondike gold rushers (Highet p3).

Unobtrusiveness of this research method.

Limitations

Issues with validity – can only use the historical information that is available today.

Primary sources are hard to locate.  

Hard to triangulate findings (find other resources to back up the information provided in the original resource). 

Example questions

• What caused an outbreak of polio in the past that may contribute to the outbreaks of today? 
• How has the attitude to LGBTQIA+ changed over the past 50 years?

Example studies

• Hallett, C. E., Madsen, W., Pateman, B., & Bradshaw, J. (2012). " Time enough! Or not enough time!" An oral history investigation of some British and Australian community nurses' responses to demands for "efficiency" in health care, 1960-2000 . Nursing History Review, 20, 136-161. 
• Navarro, J. A., Kohl, K. S., Cetron, M. S., & Markel, H. (2016). A tale of many cities: a contemporary historical study of the implementation of school closures during the 2009 pA(H1N1) influenza pandemic. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 41(3), 393-422. Retrieved from  http://ezproxy.deakin.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,sso&db=lhh&AN=20163261834&site=ehost-live&scope=site   

Edith Cowan University Library. (2019). Historical Research Method. Retrieved from  https://ecu.au.libguides.com/historical-research-method   

Godshall, M. (2016). Fast facts for evidence-based practice in nursing: Implementing EBP in a nutshell (2nd ed.). New York: Springer Publishing Company. 

Highet, M. J. (2010). "It Depends on Where You Look": The Unusual Presentation of Scurvy and  Smallpox Among Klondike Gold Rushers as Revealed Through Qualitative Data Sources. Past Imperfect, 16, 3-34. doi:10.21971/P7J59D 

Saks, M., & Allsop, J. (2012). Researching health: qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods (2nd ed.). London: SAGE. 

Taylor, B. J., & Francis, K. (2013). Qualitative research in the health sciences: methodologies, methods and processes. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 

University of Missouri-St. Louis. Qualitative Research Designs. Retrieved from http://www.umsl.edu/~lindquists/qualdsgn.html   

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• Last Updated: Mar 19, 2024 9:32 AM
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• Harvard Library
• Research Guides
• Faculty of Arts & Sciences Libraries

Library Support for Qualitative Research

Oral history.

• Resources for Methodology
• Remote Research & Virtual Fieldwork

Oral History Collections at Harvard

Oral history collections beyond harvard, harvard library research guides for oral history, selected resources to make your own oral histories, handbooks and guides to oral history methodology, scholarship & commentary on oral history methodology, participative resources and projects for oral history.

• Data Management & Repositories
• Campus Access

On this page, you will find:

• Selected Oral History Collections at Harvard and Beyond Harvard
• Scholarship and Commentary on Oral History Methodology

Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System Digital Collection: Interviews and Manuals, 1950-1953 (inclusive) Named the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System (also known as the Harvard Refugee Interview Project), this was a large scale, unclassified project, based largely on interviews with Soviet émigrés in West Germany, Austria, and the United States, aimed at gaining new insights into strategic psychological and sociological aspects of the Soviet social system. 

Oral Histories at Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America Get started with archival research on women's oral histories with this guide.

Woodberry Poetry Room Oral History Initiative Check out video recordings on YouTube of this 2021 series of oral histories on   pioneering Boston women poets. Tip: Look for  "ORAL HISTORY INITIATIVE" in the title.  

Find More at Harvard

You may search for interviews and oral histories (whether in textual or audiovisual formats) held in archival collections at Harvard Library. HOLLIS searches all documented collections at Harvard, whereas HOLLIS for Archival Discovery searches only those with finding aids. Although HOLLIS for Archival Discovery covers less material, you may find it easier to parse your search results, especially when you wish to view results at the item level (within collections). Try these approaches:

Search in HOLLIS:  

• To retrieve items available online, do an Advanced Search for interview* OR "oral histor*" (in Subject), with Resource Type "Archives/Manuscripts," then refine your search by selecting "Online" under "Show Only" on the right of your initial result list.  Revise the search above by adding your topic in the Keywords or Subject field (for example: African Americans ) and resubmitting the search.  
•  To enlarge your results set, you may also leave out the "Online" refinement; if you'd like to limit your search to a specific repository, try the technique of searching for Code: Library + Collection on the "Advanced Search" page .  

Search in HOLLIS for Archival Discovery:  

• To retrieve items available online, search for  interview* OR "oral histor*" limited to digital materials . Revise the search above by adding your topic (for example:  artist* ) in the second search box (if you don't see the box, click +).  
• To preview results by collection, search for interview* OR "oral histor*" limited to collections .  Revise the search above by adding your topic (for example:  artist* ) in the second search box (if you don't see the box, click +). Although this method does not allow you to isolate digitized content, you may find the refinement options on the right side of the screen (refine by repository, subject or names) helpful. Once your select a given collection, you may search within it (e.g., for your topic or the term interview).

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) To find oral histories among the millions of materials from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions across the United States, search for "oral history," and then use the subject and other refinements to discover oral histories of interest to you.

The HistoryMakers Contains interviews African Americans who have made a significant contribution in area of American life or culture, or who has been associated with a particular movement or organization that is important in the African American community. Disciplines include Art, Business, Civics, Education, Entertainment, Law, Media, Medicine, Military, Music, Politics, Religion, Science, Sports and Style. Harvard constituents have full access to this database when connecting via Harvard.

Library of Congress Digital Collections The Library of Congress provides several oral history collections online. To locate them, search the Digital Collections site for "oral history".

Oral History Centers and Collections Curated by members of the H-OralHist Network.

Oral History Online An index to worldwide oral history collections, with links to interview-level bibliographic records in English and to full-text materials, audio files and visual files where these are available. 

Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage Collections More than 80,000 historical and contemporary items from the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage's Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections are available in the Smithsonian’s Collections Search Center . Find complete collection descriptions in finding aids and inventories in the Smithsonian Online Virtual Archive , which often include digital surrogates.

South Asian Oral History Project The SAOHP has been conducted in four phases. Each phase is marked by key historical events that drew South Asians to the United States: 1) 1950s Immigrants, 2) 1960s and 1970s Immigrants, 3) 1980s Immigrants, 4) South Asian classical performing artists (vocalists, instrumentalists and dancers) in the Pacific Northwest. The transcriptions and audio recordings from phase one and the transcription and audio/video recordings from phase two through four are available digitally.

1947 Partition Archive The 1947 Partition Archive, "The Archive" has been preserving oral histories of Partition witnesses since 2010 through a combined program that includes an innovative technique for crowdsourcing by Citizen Historians, as well as collection by trained scholars. Nearly 10,000 oral histories have been preserved on digital video, making The Archive the largest documentation effort focused on Partition.  Oral histories have been recorded from 500+ cities in 15 countries across the world. See  information about accessing the archive materials .

Statue of Liberty Oral History Project: A Record of Living Memory One of the world’s largest and most diverse chronicles of the American immigrant experience, this resource includes interviews from passengers, families, immigration officials, military personnel, detainees, and former Ellis Island employees. It is available to researchers, students, educators, and the general public.

The Tretter Transgender Oral History Project A growing collection of oral histories of gender transgression, broadly understood through a trans framework.

Visual History Archive (VHA), USC Shoah Foundation Created by the Shoah Foundation, this fully indexed and searchable digital repository contains the visual testimony of approximately 55,000 survivors of genocidal wars. The majority of the testimonies are from Holocaust survivors (1939-1945) but the archive also includes survivor testimony from the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda (1994), the Armenian Genocide (1915-23) the Cambodian Genocide, the Guatemalan Genocide (1978-96) and the Nanjing Massacre (1937), among others. For more information about the testimonies, visit the VHA guide . Harvard constituents have full access to this repository when connecting via Harvard.

Ways of Knowing Oral History Collection This project documents the stories of individuals who have developed and implemented alternative library classification schemes or controlled vocabularies. These projects describe how institutional descriptive practices facilitate some ways of knowing and not others and demonstrate that such practices can change.

Oral History and Interviews, Harvard Library Research Guide for History Compiled by Harvard Librarians, this guide offers strategies for locating oral history interviews, as well as a list of relevant databases and collections.

Freshman Seminar 64 E Asian American Literature The "Oral History" section of this guide lists several oral history resources  relevant to researching the Asian American experience in the 1960s.

ArcGIS StoryMaps An engaging platform for presenting your oral histories.

See the "Conducting Interviews" and "Transcription & Coding" tabs of the Interview Skills page of this guide . There, you will find technical tools, tips, and assistance available at Harvard. Please note that these resources have been selected for a wide range of interviewing methodologies; thus, some may not apply to the oral history genre.

Beyond Harvard

The Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University You will find here innovative approaches to oral history, some of which utilize various art forms.

Columbia Center for Oral History Research: Resources A helpful selection of resources for conducting oral history research.

Oral History guide from Coates Library, Trinity University Useful tips and resources compiled by Abna Schnur.

Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS) Created by the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky, this tool allows producers of oral history to inexpensively and efficiently enhance access to oral history online. Because OHMS provides word-level search capability and a time-correlated transcript or indexed interview, the audience is connected from a search result to the corresponding moment in a recorded interview. 

American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Oral History Interviews Recommendations for planning an oral history project and tips for conducting interviews

American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Folklife and Fieldwork: A Layman’s Introduction to Field Techniques Although folklorists tend to be more interested in documenting ways of living than history, per se, many of their methods are similar. This guide includes helpful advice for conducting fieldwork in folklore, including tips for planning, conducting, recording, and archiving interviews.

Indigenous Studies: Oral History Provides helpful information and resources to inform respectful understanding and citation of Indigenous oral histories.

Oral History Association: Principles and Best Practices An invaluable document for maintaining an ethical stance as a researcher, with guidance on archiving interviews and managing rights/copyright.

Oral History Methodology (Hajek A., 2014) The case study starts with a historical outline of the advent of oral history research in Western society, its strengths and its weaknesses, before it moves to a practical exploration of oral history methodology. It explains how to set up an oral history project, how to conduct interviews and what legal concerns to keep in mind. It also provides details on recording equipment and discusses a number of potential outputs of oral history data.

The Oral History Reader (edited by Perks, R. and Thomson, A., 2015)   A comprehensive, international anthology combining major classic articles with cutting-edge pieces on the theory, method and use of oral history.

Webinar: Introduction to Oral History and Interviewing , Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, Concordia University

Belfast to Boston: Oral History Goes Awry WNYC Studios' "The Takeaway" speaks with Boston Globe columnist, Kevin Cullen, about how Boston College's well meaning attempt to promote truth and reconciliation around the Troubles backfired on the ground in Belfast.

Blee, K. (1993). Evidence, Empathy, and Ethics: Lessons from Oral Histories of the Klan. The Journal of American History, 80(2), 596-606. doi:10.2307/2079873 Critically examines issues that arise in oral history methodology around the life stories of ordinary people whose political agendas are unsavory, dangerous, or deliberately deceptive.

Davis, M., & Kennedy, E. (1986). Oral History and the Study of Sexuality in the Lesbian Community: Buffalo, New York, 1940-1960.  Feminist Studies,   12 (1), 7-26. doi:10.2307/3177981 This article explores the role of sexuality in the cultural and political development of the Buffalo lesbian community.

Portelli, Alessandro. (2010). The death of Luigi Trastulli. Memory and event - memory and fact. Anuarul Institutului De Istorie Orală : AIO, 12, 245-274. Luigi Trastulli, a young steel worker in Terni, Italy, died in an altercation with police in 1949, when workers left the factory to protest against a North-Atlantic Treaty signed by the Italian Government. The strike, confrontation and assassination greatly impacted the identity and culture of Terni. This essay discusses how the event has been portrayed and interpreted over the years in both official and oral sources. The essay linked above is in Italian. For an English language translation, see The Death of Luigi Trastulli, and Other Stories.

Portelli, Alessandro (2016). What makes oral history different. In Perks, Robert and Alistair Thomson, The Oral History Reader, Routledge, p. 68-78. Publisher abstract: "There seems to be a fear that once the floodgates of orality are opened, writing (and rationality along with it) will be swept out as if by a spontaneous uncontrollable mass of fluid, amorphous material. But this attitude blinds us to the fact that our awe of writing has distorted our perception of language and communication to the point where we no longer understand either orality or the nature of writing itself. As a matter of fact, written and oral sources are not mutually exclusive. They have common as well as autonomous characteristics, and specific functions which only either one can fill (or which one set of sources fills better than the other). Therefore, they require different specific interpretative instruments. But the undervaluing and the overvaluing of oral sources end up by cancelling out specific qualities, turning these sources either into mere supports for traditional written sources, or into an illusory cure for all ills. This chapter will attempt to suggest some of the ways in which oral history is intrinsically different, and therefore specifically useful."

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Except where otherwise noted, this work is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , which allows anyone to share and adapt our material as long as proper attribution is given. For details and exceptions, see the Harvard Library Copyright Policy ©2021 Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College.

Historical Overview of Qualitative Research in the Social Sciences

Qualitative research does not represent a monolithic, agreed-on approach to research but is a vibrant and contested field with many contradictions and different perspectives. To respect the multivoicedness of qualitative research, this chapter will approach its history in the plural—as a variety of histories. The chapter will work polyvocally and focus on six histories of qualitative research, which are sometimes overlapping, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes even incommensurable. They can be considered articulations of different discourses about the history of the field, which compete for researchers’ attention. The six histories are: (a) the conceptual history of qualitative research, (b) the internal history of qualitative research, (c) the marginalizing history of qualitative research, (d) the repressed history of qualitative research, (e) the social history of qualitative research, and (f) the technological history of qualitative research.

• Related Documents

Qualitative research does not represent a monolithic, agreed-upon approach to research but is a vibrant and contested field with many contradictions and different perspectives. In order to respect the multivoicedness of qualitative research, we will approach its history in the plural—as a variety of histories. We will work polyvocally and focus on six histories of qualitative research, which are sometimes overlapping, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes even incommensurable. They can be considered as articulations of different discourses about the history of the field, which compete for researchers’ attention. The six histories are: (1) the conceptual history of qualitative research, (2) the internal history of qualitative research, (3) the marginalizing history of qualitative research, (4) the repressed history of qualitative research, (5) the social history of qualitative research, and (6) the technological history of qualitative research.

Alex Grant and the Big Ditch

The technological history of the building of the Welland ship canal (1913-1932) is well recorded with photographs, documents, maps and plans in various archives. On the other hand, the social history of this saga is harder for the reader to discover because the engineers, contractors, and labourers have left little trace of their experiences “on the ground.” Fortunately, a diary kept by the engineer in charge, Alexander J. Grant, has come to life. Covering the longest period of construction, it chronicles the day-to-day problems of a hard-working, intelligent professional -- but also offers glimpses into the emotional and social life of the man. It will be a valuable source for a future biographer of this remarkable engineer.

Ethnography

Ethnography (Understanding Qualitative Research) provides a comprehensive guide to understanding, conceptualizing, and critically assessing ethnographic research and its resultant texts. Through a series of discussions and illustrations, utilizing both classic and contemporary examples, the book highlights distinct features of ethnography as both a research methodology and a writing tradition. It emphasizes the importance of training—including familiarity with culture as an anthropologically derived concept and critical awareness of the history of ethnography. To this end, it introduces the notion of ethnographic comportment, which serves as a standard for engaging and gauging ethnography. Indeed, ethnographic comportment issues from a familiarity with ethnography’s problematic past and inspires a disposition of accountability for one’s role in advancing ethnographic practices. Following an introductory chapter outlining the emergence and character of ethnography as a professionalized field, subsequent chapters conceptualize ethnographic research design, consider the practices of representing research methodologies, discuss the crafting of accurate and evocative ethnographic texts, and explain the different ways in which research and writing gets evaluated. While foregrounding interpretive and literary qualities that have gained prominence since the late twentieth century, the book properly situates ethnography at the nexus of the social sciences and the humanities. Ethnography (Understanding Qualitative Research) presents novice ethnographers with clear examples and illustrations of how to go about conducting, analyzing, and representing their research; its primary purpose, however, is to introduce readers to effective practices for understanding and evaluating the quality of ethnography.

The Two Faces of Contingency

The work of Pierre Rosanvallon is discussed here from the perspective of the conceptual history of “politics” (La Politique) and of “the political” (La Politique). In Rosanvallon's early work in the second half of the 1970s, there is a marked defence of the autonomy of politics, as a manifestation of contingency, against the language of “society,” then dominant in the social sciences and philosophy. Since the 1980s, Le Politique become a fashionable concept in French political thought, a phenomenon brought about by the reception of both Schmitt and Heidegger, in opposition to mere la politique. Although Rosanvallon can partly be linked to this fashion, he differs from his more philosophical colleagues in two respects: his concept of the political is more historically informed and he refrains from showing contempt for the activity of politics.

Accounting for discovery

The paper presents an analysis of genetic scientists’ accounts of a 1992 scientific breakthrough. Members of the research team were interviewed in the course of a wider study of the history of the discovery and its implications for clinical practice. The isolation of the genetic basis for myotonic dystrophy was an important milestone in the development of contemporary genetic medicine and a significant event in the lives and careers of the scientists involved. Despite the significance of some key publications on scientists’ discovery accounts, the paper argues that there has been a neglect of scientists’ narratives and accounting practices, despite the increased visibility of narrative analysis in the social sciences, the increasing sophistication of qualitative research methods, and the expansion of qualitative research on scientific work and practice. The paper outlines a number of themes in the scientists’ autobiographical work and their methods in recounting the discovery.

Towards a reflexive intelligence of emerging sociology in France around 1900 (Tome 142, 7e Série, n°3-4, (2021))

Abstract Recent years have seen a proliferation of publications reconsidering the emergence of sociology in France. The present review discusses and compares three of these works: S. Mosbah-Natanson’s bibliometric study on the fashion of sociology around 1900 (2017a); Th. Hirsch’s history of the idea of social time from the Durkheimians to Les Annales (2016a); and M. Joly’s enquiry into a purported sociological revolution in France and Germany at around the same time (2017a). Pushing respectively for a sociological, a historical and an epistemological history of sociology, they represent three distinct ways of renewing the historiography of the social sciences. The article argues that qualities and limitations of these works alike suggest two challenges for the history of sociology: (1) integrating sociological, historical and epistemological competences in a comprehensive intelligence of sociological texts; and (2) accounting for the reflexivity involved in a social history of the social sciences.

ERRATUM. The brief notice which appears in vol. 10, no. 3 (p. 491) should be headed CHRISTOPHER HOOKWAY and PHILIP PETTIT (eds.), Action & interpretation: Studies in the philosophy of the social sciences. Cambridge University Press, 1980. Paperback.The notice for the Klar et al. book is as follows: Contains a number of good short studies, including, of special interest here, a valuable and cogent paper, “How languages die: A social history of unstable bilingualism among the Eastern Porno” by S. McLendon, 137–50. Language in Society regrets the error.

Politics and the urban process: the case of Philadelphia, 1800–54

History is a discipline in a state of perpetual crisis. Thus, in 1970, Arthur Marwick explained much of the controversy over historians' use of social science methods and theories in the latest incarnation of a social history which emerged after the Second World War. History's flirtations with the social sciences are recurrent. So are its crises. In the 1980s, Marwick's view of cyclical crises in history has been borne out. The use in history of ‘illuminating’ social science methods and concepts is now widely accepted. A spirit of tolerance, respect and professional courtesy has replaced the outward hostility which until recently characterized exchanges between the so-called ‘traditional’ and new social historians respectively.

Mead, Dewey, and Their Influence in the Social Sciences

This chapter traces novel aspects of the relationship between George Herbert Mead and John Dewey. It identifies major aspects of Dewey’s reception in and engagement with the social sciences. Dewey’s influence in the social sciences is closely connected with Mead, both in the sense that Dewey’s ideas relevant to the social sciences have been developed in substantial collaboration with Mead and in the sense that Dewey has been interpreted by later social scientists primarily through Mead’s work and the work of Mead’s students and colleagues. Dewey and Mead worked to develop functional and later social psychology, social reform efforts, educational theory, the social history of thought, and other aspects of pragmatist philosophy. Dewey also had moderate influence on the sociologists and anthropologists at Columbia, institutional economists at Chicago and elsewhere, and later European social theorists, and his publications and correspondence about Mead after the latter’s death influenced Mead’s own legacy.

Qualitative Research and Speech-Language Pathology

As an analytic paradigm, qualitative research offers much to clinical speech-language pathology. This paradigm has a long history of use in the social sciences, and it is well suited to address the complex issues of speech, language, and communication. As an introduction to this forum on qualitative research, this article provides an operational definition of qualitative research, discusses the primary distinguishing traits of this research paradigm, and describes six viable traditions of inquiry for our application. Additionally, numerous qualitative studies within our field are considered, and five potential reasons for the increased use of qualitative research studies in our discipline are discussed.

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2 Historical Overview of Qualitative Research in the Social Sciences

Svend Brinkmann, Department of Communication & Psychology, University of Aalborg

Michael Hviid Jacobsen, Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University

Søren Kristiansen, Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University

• Published: 02 September 2020
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Qualitative research does not represent a monolithic, agreed-on approach to research but is a vibrant and contested field with many contradictions and different perspectives. To respect the multivoicedness of qualitative research, this chapter will approach its history in the plural—as a variety of histories . The chapter will work polyvocally and focus on six histories of qualitative research, which are sometimes overlapping, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes even incommensurable. They can be considered articulations of different discourses about the history of the field, which compete for researchers’ attention. The six histories are: (a) the conceptual history of qualitative research, (b) the internal history of qualitative research, (c) the marginalizing history of qualitative research, (d) the repressed history of qualitative research, (e) the social history of qualitative research, and (f) the technological history of qualitative research.

History writing is not only about charting the past but also about prospects for the future. There is no doubt that one’s way of depicting the past is greatly important for how the future will unfold. This holds for human history in general but is perhaps particularly true for a contested field such as qualitative research. For decades, especially in the years following the rise of positivist social science in the mid-20th century, qualitative research methods were considered of little value, and some researchers even deemed them unscientific. Fortunately, this situation has been changing in recent years, and while disciplines such as social anthropology and communication studies have always been open to qualitative inquiry (and have even been built around it in the case of ethnography), disciplines in the health sciences and psychology are now rediscovering their roots in qualitative studies of human lives and social phenomena. Most social sciences, such as sociology and political science, lie somewhere between an unproblematic acceptance of and mild hostility toward qualitative inquiry, with huge local differences concerning openness toward qualitative research.

In this chapter, we do not seek to articulate the history of qualitative research in the social sciences, because this could easily monopolize one interpretation of the past with unfortunate consequences for the future. Qualitative research does not represent a monolithic, once-and-for-all, agreed-on approach to research but is a vibrant and contested field with many contradictions and perspectives. To respect the multivoicedness of qualitative research and inquire into its past in a way that is more congenial to a qualitative stance, we will present a variety of histories (in the plural) of qualitative research in the social sciences. Some of these histories are quite well known to insiders of the field, while others may be more surprising and perhaps even provocative. One thing to be avoided is writing the historical narratives as Whig history , presenting the development of qualitative research as necessarily progressing toward enlightenment and liberation. There is still a tendency among some qualitative researchers to present their methods of inquiry as inherently more humane and liberating than the “objectifying” measures of quantitative researchers. This, we find, is a myth—which sometimes goes by the name qualitative ethicism (Brinkmann & Kvale, 2005 )—but it is a myth that may be understandable as qualitative researchers here and there feel marginalized and have been looking for solid arguments to justify their practices. The marginalization of qualitative research, however, is possibly itself another myth that we will challenge in the multiperspectival histories to be unfolded in this chapter.

History writing in any field presupposes that it is possible to delineate and delimit the field whose history an individual is interested in recounting. This is a significant problem in qualitative research, so this gives us one further reason to approach the matter in terms of histories in the plural. We are aware that interesting accounts of the historical development of qualitative research exist, such as Denzin and Lincoln’s useful depiction of the so-called eight historical moments in the development of qualitative research (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011 ). We believe, however, that there are too many separate qualitative histories in the social science disciplines and too little overall cumulative development for us to dare attempt a grand narrative of the history of qualitative research.

To repeat our basic point, history writing is not just about the past but also about the present and the future. When one knows how something came to be, one will often know what it currently is, and one will have a powerful voice in determining how it will develop in the future. In what follows, we will work polyvocally and focus on six histories of qualitative research, which are sometimes overlapping, sometimes in conflict, and sometimes even incommensurable. They can be considered articulations of different discourses about the history of the field, which compete for researchers’ attention. The six histories are: (a) the conceptual history of qualitative research, (b) the internal history of qualitative research, (c) the marginalizing history of qualitative research, (d) the repressed history of qualitative research, (e) the social history of qualitative research, and (f) the technological history of qualitative research.

These histories represent our selection. They are not representative or exhaustive of all possible histories about qualitative research, and others would undoubtedly have cut the historical cake differently. Therefore, ironically, this chapter, with its preselected histories, might itself become a subject of qualitative scrutiny. As in all qualitative research, it remains a fundamental premise that different aspects of reality are salient for different researchers, but as always, this should be considered a virtue rather than a vice. It enables us to celebrate the richness of a past that allows us to reflect on it from so many angles, giving us so many interpretations. Not all histories, however, are given equal space in our account. With some of them, we tell a short story, perhaps offering a novel perspective, while with others, we recount a longer and more elaborated story. This goes, in particular, for the second internal history of qualitative research, concentrating in some detail on giants such as Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Blumer, Goffman, and Garfinkel. We have been guided in our selection by an ambition to understand the development of qualitative research as more than a pure history of ideas. We will argue against this form of idealism, which looks at theories and paradigms in abstraction from broader social, cultural, political, and technological forces; and we will try to show that it has often been exactly such forces that have been pushing qualitative research forward (or, perhaps in some cases, backward). This should not be thought of as rendering qualitative research invalid, because no form of research exists in a historical vacuum, but it should instead enable qualitative researchers now and in the future to understand the complexities of their practices better.

The Conceptual History of Qualitative Research

Our first history is a basic conceptual history of the term qualitative research . While the term itself is much younger than one would think, the adjective qualitative has a longer history. Medieval philosophers of scholasticism distinguished qualia (the qualities of things) from quanta (the quantities) hundreds of years ago, and, with modern philosophy from the 17th century onward, empiricist philosophers like John Locke argued that there are different kinds of qualities: On the one hand, primary qualities were thought to be independent of observers and include, for example, extension, number, and solidity. Secondary qualities, on the other hand, were thought to be produced as effects in observers, such as colors, tastes, and smells. Modern philosophers—those who worked in the postmedieval world (Descartes, Locke, Hume, etc.)—confined the secondary qualities to the subjective mind, since the new natural scientists (Galileo, Newton) had seemingly demonstrated that objective reality is nothing but matter in motion. The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics, Galileo said, implying a metaphysics of quantities as the primary reality. A new subjective/objective dichotomy thus arose, relegating human experience and all the sounds, sights, and smells that we live with to the realm of the subjective. In many ways, qualitative researchers in the 21 st century still struggle with this issue and are sometimes accused of being unscientific because of the significance of subjectivity in their endeavors, having inherited the problem of objectivity versus subjectivity in large part from 17th-century metaphysics.

Not all philosophers after Locke, or all scientists after Galileo and Newton, were satisfied with the division of the world into objective primary qualities (qualities that can be studied scientifically) and subjective secondary qualities. There is a great difference, Goethe argued in 1810 in his Theory of Colors , between studying colors in terms of Newtonian optics and in terms of human experience, and although the latter cannot reasonably be reduced to the former, it does not mean that it is any less important or amenable to systematic scientific studies. As an example of a field of human experience, Goethe argued that our understanding of colors has suffered greatly from being understood in terms of mechanical optics (see Robinson, 2002 , p. 10), and one can read his theory as an early qualitative study of the phenomenology of colors (see also Giorgi & Giorgi, 2008 , for a reading of Goethe as a phenomenologist avant la lettre ).

Moving from discussing the term qualitative to discussing qualitative research , we may note that it was only quite late in the 20th century that qualitative research became a self-defining field of inquiry, although researchers had been employing similar methodologies before. In his book on writing up qualitative research, Harry Wolcott ( 2009 ) reminded us that “prior to the past three or four decades, not much had been written about field methods” (p. 80); he continued,

As best I recall, the phrase “qualitative research” was rarely (never?) heard in the 1960s. Of what had been written earlier, outside their respective academic disciplines, the same few references and the same few illustrative studies were cited almost to the exclusion of all others. (p. 80)

He mentions Bronislaw Malinowski’s introduction to his 1922 classic Argonauts of the Western Pacific and William F. Whyte’s 1943 Street Corner Society , both of which were first and foremost ethnographies—and only secondarily methodologies treatises. Prior to around 1970, researchers in sociology and anthropology looked to such classics for inspiration rather than to specific methodological handbooks on “qualitative research.”

Wolcott’s memories seem to be corroborated by a search in contemporary scientific databases. A general search in all databases of the Web of Knowledge, Science Citation Index Expanded (which contains articles that date back to 1899 from all sciences), reveals that the term qualitative was widely used from 1900 but only in natural sciences such as chemistry. Even today, qualitative analysis remains an important subdiscipline in chemistry (working with the analysis and classification of chemical compounds) alongside the quantitative subdisciplines of this science. The first article that appears in a broad search is from 1900 and bears the title “On the Qualitative Separation of Nickel from Cobalt by the Action of Ammonium Hydroxide on the Ferricyanides” by Browning and Hartwell. If one excludes the natural and technical sciences, then the term qualitative appears in early psychological papers—for example, “A Qualitative Analysis of Tickling—Its Relation to Cutaneous and Organic Sensation,” published in 1908, and “Some Qualitative Aspects of Bitonal Complexes” from 1921, both appearing in the American Journal of Psychology . These texts belong to the psychology of perception and come quite close to physiology (or psychophysiology , as it was called). The term qualitative in the early 20th century was thus closely connected to natural science disciplines such as chemistry, physiology, and the psychology of perception and appeared much later in the social sciences as such. According to Karpatschof ( 2010 ), who studied the emergence of qualitative methods within the social sciences, the term was hardly used until 1970, which is a kind of historical take-off point, after which there was an exponential growth in the discourse of qualitative methods in the social sciences. This has continued to the present day, and we have recently witnessed a veritable boom of qualitative research in the human and social sciences, which is seen not only in the output of research publications that employ qualitative methods, but also especially in the numerous methodology books that are published every year. As an example, if one looks at most catalogs from academic publishing houses and scans the pages of new titles within disciplines such as sociology, the new qualitative research titles will often greatly outnumber the new titles within quantitative methodology.

The question then becomes, Why did a need arise around 1970 for qualitative research to define itself as such in the social sciences, often antagonistically in relation to what it is not (i.e., quantitative research)? Why at this particular point in time? After all, books employing interviewing and fieldwork had been published earlier in the 20th century but without invoking the qualitative–quantitative binary. And why do we find in recent decades a need to overcome this distinction again, witnessed, in particular, in the wave of so-called mixed methods? There are no simple answers to these questions, but it seems likely that the general growth in knowledge production in the latter half of the 20th century, with a new “knowledge economy” and increased significance of technoscientific knowledge, pushed researchers to identify with specific traditions of knowledge production. Karpatschof ( 2010 ) argued that social anthropologists have always used qualitative methods because they have, as a rule, studied “traditional societies,” whereas sociologists have more often used quantitative methods because they have studied modern or serialized societies with demographics that easily lend themselves to quantitative studies. We may speculate that qualitative research gained in importance after 1970 with the emergence of postmodernity, signaling a new dynamic, multiperspectival, and emergent social complexity that cannot easily be captured using quantitative methods (we will return to this idea when we address the social history of qualitative research). Also, with the disputes around positivism as a philosophy of science, which began in the middle of the century, a need arose to signal that one can work systematically and methodically without subscribing to the tenets of positivism, and here the term qualitative research came in handy. Another way of expressing this argument has been put forward by Jovanovic ( 2011 ), who argued that to fully understand the emergence and development of qualitative approaches, one must put the historical trajectory of the quantitative–qualitative divide under scrutiny. As Jovanovic pointed out, qualitative research is much more than just methods, procedures, and techniques. It is in fact an entire worldview. Qualitative research thus may entail an understanding of human beings and the world that is fundamentally different from quantitative research, and therefore a “plausible positioning of qualitative research in the history of social sciences and in its social context requires a historical reconstruction of the processes by which the quantitative–qualitative distinction has become an intellectual as well as a social tool” (Jovanovic, 2011 , p. 4). In conducting a reconstruction of the sociohistorical processes that laid the grounds for the emergence of modern science—a process that is labeled the quest for certainty —Jovanovic illuminated some of the very important processes in both the emergence of qualitative research and its reemergence in the late 1960s and 1970s. All in all, it was seemingly a mix of political and philosophical discussions that would drive the development of qualitative research forward, as we will see further reflected in the histories that follow.

The Internal History of Qualitative Research

There are many—at times conflicting—schools of thought, traditions, paradigms, and perspectives included under the heading of qualitative research (Brinkmann, 2018 ). Moreover, it seems as if the realm of what is defined as qualitative research is constantly expanding (Flick, 2002 ). Telling the internal history of qualitative research means articulating how the history looks to dedicated qualitative researchers from inside the field. We will unfold this history by emphasizing three philosophical foundations of qualitative research: (a) the German tradition of Verstehen (Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Gadamer) leading to different hermeneutic perspectives such as Geertz in anthropology, (b) the phenomenological tradition (Husserl) leading to different phenomenological research methods, and finally (c) the North American traditions of pragmatism, Chicago sociology, Goffman’s dramaturgical approach, symbolic interactionism, and ethnomethodology that in different ways remain important to current concerns in the social sciences. We will also briefly address ethnographic fieldwork as an approach that cuts across most of the paradigmatic differences in qualitative inquiry.

Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is the art of interpretation and thus is fundamental to much, if not all, qualitative research. Originally, with Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), hermeneutics was developed as a methodology for interpreting texts, notably biblical texts (see Brinkmann, 2005 , 2018 ). There was at the time a pressing need to find a way to understand the scriptures correctly. With Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) in the late 19th century, hermeneutics was extended to human life itself, conceived as an ongoing process of interpretation. Dilthey developed a descriptive psychology, an approach to understanding human life that was fundamentally different from how the natural sciences work. We explain nature through scientific activity, Dilthey said, but we must understand human cultural and historical life. A life, as the hermeneutic philosopher Paul Ricoeur said a century after Dilthey, “is no more than a biological phenomenon as long as it has not been interpreted” (Ricoeur, 1991 , p. 28). And qualitative researchers are (or should be, according to the hermeneutic approach to human science) in the business of understanding the interpretations that already operate in people’s lives, individually and collectively, which is in effect to interpret a range of interpretations (as we touch on in the next section, sociologist Anthony Giddens once referred to this as one aspect of a double hermeneutics ; Giddens, 1976 ).

The dichotomization of Erklären and Verstehen has been very influential in separating quantitative from qualitative research, with the implication that explanation is about bringing individual observations under a general law (this is known as the covering law model of scientific work; see Hempel, 1942 ), while understanding is something more particularistic that rests on the specific qualitative features of the situation in which someone acts. There is a difference, for example, between explaining the movements of objects in space by invoking laws of nature as articulated in physics and understanding why someone decided to do something at a particular moment in that person’s life. In the latter case, Dilthey would say, we must understand the particularities of that person’s life, and putative universal laws of human behavior are of little use. The situations and episodes studied by qualitative researchers are, like historical events, most often unique in the sense that they only happen once. For that reason, it is not possible to bring them under universal laws.

Martin Heidegger’s (1889–1976) Being and Time from the early 20th century is often cited as the work that inaugurated a shift from Dilthey’s life hermeneutics to what Heidegger would call ontological hermeneutics (Heidegger, 1927 ). The question of Schleiermacher’s methodological hermeneutics had been, How can we correctly understand the meaning of texts? The epistemologically oriented hermeneutics from Dilthey had asked, How can we understand our lives and other people? But ontological hermeneutics—or fundamental ontology , as Heidegger also called it (p. 34)—prioritizes the question, What is the mode of being of the entity who understands? (Richardson, Fowers, & Guignon, 1999 , p. 207). Being and Time aims to answer this question and can thus be said to be an interpretation of interpreting, or a philosophical anthropology, which has been formative in relation to much qualitative research in the hermeneutic tradition.

Heidegger’s name for the entity that understands is Dasein , and the being of Dasein is unlike the being of other entities in the universe. Physical entities such as molecules, tables, and chairs are things that have categorical ontological characteristics, whereas human beings, or Dasein , are histories or events and have what Heidegger called existentials as their ontological characteristics (Polkinghorne, 2004 , pp. 73–74). These are affectedness ( Befindlichkeit ; we always find ourselves “thrown” into situations where things already matter and affect us), understanding ( Verstehen ; we can use the things and episodes we encounter in understanding the world), and articulation or telling ( Rede ; we can to some extent articulate the meanings things have) (Dreyfus, 1991 ). In short, humans are creatures that are affected by what happens, can understand their worlds, and communicate with others; together, these features can be said to comprise an interpretative qualitative stance in human and social science research.

For Heidegger and later hermeneuticists such as Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) and the contemporary philosopher Charles Taylor, understanding is not something we occasionally do, for example, by following certain procedures or rules. Rather, understanding is, from the hermeneutic perspective, the very condition of being human (Schwandt, 2000 , p. 194). We always see things as something, human behavior as meaningful acts, letters in a book as conveying some meaningful narrative. In a sense, this is something we do, and hermeneutic writers argue that all such understanding is to be thought of as interpretation, and it is exactly this process that interpretative social science aims to engage in. To study culture is, in Clifford Geertz’s words, to study “a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life” (Geertz, 1973 , p. 89). When seeking to understand the cultural symbolic system, the qualitative researcher should engage in “thick description,” Geertz said, that captures the contextual features that render any individual action or event meaningful. The researcher interprets members of a culture, who already operate with more or less implicit self-interpretations of their own actions. This, however, should not be understood as implying that people normally make some sort of mental act in interpreting the world. Interpretation here is not like the mental act of interpreting a poem, for example. It is not usually an explicit, reflective process, but rather, in the Heideggerian tradition, is seen as something based on skilled, everyday modes of comportment (Packer, 2011 ; Polkinghorne, 2004 ). This also means that many hermeneutic qualitative researchers have been skeptic about “method” as the way to understanding other people (which is one goal of qualitative inquiry). Instead, they argue, we understand others by spending time with them and talking to them, and this cannot be put into strict methodological formulas.

The idea of reflexivity , which is central to much qualitative research, has also been articulated within hermeneutic philosophy. Interpretation depends on certain prejudices , as Gadamer famously argued, without which no understanding would be possible (Gadamer, 1960 ). Knowledge of what others are doing and of what our own activities mean “always depend[s] upon some background or context of other meanings, beliefs, values, practices, and so forth” (Schwandt, 2000 , p. 201). There are no fundamental “givens,” for all understanding depends on a larger horizon of nonthematized meanings. This horizon is what gives meaning to everyday life activities, and it is what we must engage with as we do qualitative inquiry—both as something that can break down and necessitate a process of inquiry and as something that we can reflexively try to make explicit in an attempt to attain a level of objectivity (in the sense of objectivity about subjectivity). The latter is often referred to by qualitative methodologists as making one’s preunderstandings or prejudices explicit. Gadamer said,

In fact history does not belong to us; we belong to it. Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society, and state in which we live. The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror. The self-awareness of the individual life is only a flickering in the closed circuits of historical life. That is why the prejudices of the individual, far more than his judgments, constitute the historical reality of his being . (Gadamer, 1960 , pp. 276–277)

Gadamer argues that this makes the condition of human and social science quite different from the one we find in the natural sciences “where research penetrates more and more deeply into nature” (Gadamer, 1960 , p. 284). In the human and social sciences, there can be no “object in itself” to be known (p. 285), because interpretation is an ongoing and open-ended process that continuously reconstitutes its object. The interpretations of social life offered by researchers in the human and social sciences are an important addition to the repertoire of human self-interpretation, and influential fields of description offered by human science, such as psychoanalysis, can even affect the way whole cultures interpret themselves. This means that “social theories do not simply mirror a reality independent of them; they define and form that reality and therefore can transform it by leading agents to articulate their practices in different ways” (Richardson et al., 1999 , p. 227). Like the pragmatists would say (see the section “North American Traditions” later in this chapter), social theories are tools that may affect and transform those agents and practices that are theorized. Thus, Giddens ( 1993 , pp. 9–13) used the term double hermeneutics to describe the idea that social science implies researchers interpreting the knowledge (or interpretations) of research participants and that the findings of social scientists (i.e., concepts and theories) continuously reenter and reshape the social worlds that they describe. Others, such as Kenneth Gergen ( 2001 ), have conceptualized this as generative theory , thus connecting hermeneutic ideas with contemporary forms of social constructionism within qualitative inquiry.

In short, hermeneutics is one of the most important philosophical traditions to have informed qualitative inquiry. Denzin and Lincoln ( 2011 , p. 13) simply referred to the many qualitative paradigms, ranging from constructivism and feminism to cultural studies and queer theory, as interpretative paradigms, thus stressing this legacy from hermeneutics.

Phenomenology

Phenomenology is, in one sense, a more specific philosophical tradition that informs qualitative inquiry, but, in another sense, it can be used to encompass almost all forms of qualitative research. Phenomenology in the general sense is the study of phenomena —in other words, of the world as it appears to experiencing and acting human beings. A phenomenological approach will insist on taking human experience seriously, in whichever form it appears. According to Amedeo Giorgi, a leading phenomenological psychologist who concentrates on phenomenology in the more specific sense, it is “the study of the structure, and the variations of structure, of the consciousness to which any thing, event, or person appears” (1975, p. 83).

As a philosophy, phenomenology was founded by Edmund Husserl around 1900; it was further developed as an existential philosophy by Martin Heidegger (who was also counted among the hermeneuticists discussed previously) and then in an existential and dialectical direction by Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The subject matter of phenomenology began with consciousness and experience and was expanded to include the human lifeworld and to take account of the body and human action in historical contexts by Merleau-Ponty and Sartre (see Brinkmann & Kvale, 2015 , on which the following is based). The goal in Husserlian phenomenology was to arrive at an investigation of essences or to describe the essential structures of human experience from a first-person perspective. Phenomenology was then a strict descriptive philosophy, employing the technique of reduction , which means to suspend one’s judgment as to the existence or nonexistence of the content of an experience. The reduction is today often pictured as a “bracketing,” an attempt to place the common sense and scientific foreknowledge about the phenomena within parentheses to arrive at an unprejudiced description of the essence of the phenomena (see Brinkmann & Kvale, 2015 ). So, a phenomenologist can study the experience of any human phenomenon (e.g., the experience of guilt) without taking a stand on the issue, whether the phenomenon is real, legitimate, or illusory (e.g., one can study guilt as an experienced phenomenon without discussing whether there is a reason to feel guilt in a given situation or whether it is correlated with this or that neurochemical process or physiological response). The subject’s experience is the important phenomenological reality.

The important concept of the lifeworld eventually became central to Husserl. He introduced the concept in 1936 in The Crisis of the European Sciences (Husserl, 1954 ) to refer to the intersubjective and meaningful world in which humans conduct their lives and experience significant phenomena. It is a prereflective and pretheorized world in which phenomena appear meaningful before they become subject to theoretical analysis. If the whole range of experienced phenomena did not appear in the lifeworld, there would be no reason to investigate them scientifically, because there would, in a sense, be nothing to investigate. For phenomenologists, there is thus a primacy of the lifeworld as experienced, since this is prior to the scientific theories we may formulate about it. This was well expressed by Merleau-Ponty:

All my knowledge of the world, even my scientific knowledge, is gained from my own particular point of view, or from some experience of the world without which the symbols of science would be meaningless. The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced, and if we want to subject science itself to rigorous scrutiny and arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by re-awakening the basic experiences of the world of which science is the second order expression. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945 , p. ix)

Using a metaphor, we can say that the sciences may give us maps, but the lifeworld is the territory or the geography of our lives. Maps make sense only on the background of the territory, where human beings act and live, and should not be confused with it. Phenomenologists are not against scientific abstractions or maps, but they insist on the primacy of concrete qualitative descriptions of experience—of that which is prior to maps and analytic abstractions.

Today, phenomenological approaches have branched out and proliferated in many directions within qualitative inquiry. There are specialized phenomenological approaches within psychology (Giorgi & Giorgi, 2008 ) and anthropology (Jackson, 1996 ), for example, and in sociology, phenomenology was introduced primarily through the writings of Alfred Schütz and, later, his students, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, whose approach heavily influenced some of the North American traditions mentioned in the following section.

North American Traditions

Apart from the characteristically Continental European traditions, a number of traditions developed on the North American continent during the 20th century that in important ways supplemented, consolidated, and expanded the focus from hermeneutics and phenomenology. Many of these at the time novel, theoretical perspectives are still very much alive on the American continent and elsewhere. These qualitatively inspired traditions that saw the light of day, particularly in the United States during the 20th century, are often described as microsociology, social psychology , or the sociologies of everyday life (see Jacobsen, 2009 ).

One of the most influential, significant, and lasting internal stories of qualitative research has its roots in the pragmatic philosophy that developed on the North American continent in the latter part of the 19th century and later spread also to the European continent. Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that is concerned with the practical outcomes of human action and that is therefore also concerned with the use value of science and the practical evaluation of “truth.” Truth, for the pragmatists, is always something that finds its expression in practical circumstances (an instrumental view of truth) and thus is not a preestablished, fixed, substantial, or sedimented dimension of knowledge. Contrary to representationalist theories of science, pragmatism is distinctly nonrepresentative; the purpose of scientific practice is not to represent reality as it is, but rather to allow humans to understand and control the world they are part of through knowledge. The key protagonists of pragmatism in the early years were Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead. Each contributed in his own way to the development of pragmatism, not as a coherent whole, but rather as a new perspective on science, democracy, and education. Specifically, pragmatism supports an empirical—as opposed to a theoretical or scholastic—perspective on science. It is in the practical utility of knowledge that science ultimately stands its test. As James ( 1907 ) once insisted,

A pragmatist turns his back resolutely and once and for all upon a lot of inveterate habits dear to professional philosophers. He turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns towards concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action and towards power.… It means the open air and possibilities of nature, as against dogma, artificiality and the pretence of finality in truth. (pp. 30–31)

Early on, pragmatists were particularly critical of the prevalence of behaviorist science, according to which human beings were seen as mechanically responding to stimuli from the outside. Instead, pragmatists proposed that humans are meaning-seeking subjects who communicate through the use of language and constantly engage in reflective interaction with others. According to pragmatic philosophers, human beings are therefore concerned with the situational, the practical, and the problem-solving dimensions of their lives. This also goes for social scientific endeavors. In his book How We Think , John Dewey ( 1910 ) developed a five-step research strategy or investigation procedure—sometimes also referred to as abduction (according to Peirce as a supplement to the approaches of deduction and induction)—according to which the investigator follows five steps toward obtaining knowledge. First, there is the occurrence of an unresolved situational problem—practical or theoretical—that creates genuine doubt. Second is a specification of the problem in which the investigator might also either systematically or more loosely collect data about the problem at hand. Third, the investigator—now equipped with a specification of the problem—by way of his creative imagination introduces a hypothesis or a supposition about how to solve the problem. Fourth, the proposed hypothesis is elaborated and compared to other possible solutions to the problem, and the investigator, based on reasoning, carefully considers the possible consequences of the proposed hypothesis. Finally, the hypothesis is put into practice through an experimental or empirical testing by which the investigator checks whether the intended consequences occur according to expectations and whether the problem is solved (Dewey, 1910 ). This research strategy thus begins with genuine puzzlement and ends with problem solving.

In general, pragmatists therefore have been concerned with what they term practical reasoning ; they are thus preoccupied with knowledge that has some practical impact in and on the reality in which it is used. Knowledge is active, not passive. Without privileging any specific part of the methodological toolbox, with its emphasis on abductive procedures, pragmatism has proved very useful, particularly in explorative qualitative research as a framework for practice- and problem-oriented investigation, and pragmatism has, for instance, inspired researchers working within the so-called grounded theory perspective (Glaser & Strauss, 1967 )—in fact, one of the first self-denoted and systematically described qualitative methodologies—in which the purpose is to create workable scientific knowledge that can be applied to daily life situations. In recent years, sociologists, philosophers, and others have begun to take up pragmatism after several years of absence from the intellectual agenda. There is thus mentioning of a “revival of pragmatism” in the new millennium (Sandbothe, 2000 ) that, for example, is evident in the works of Richard Rorty and Richard Sennett, just as the French sociologist Luc Boltanski and his colleagues have heralded a pragmatic turn within French social theory, and within German sociology Hans Joas has been one of the key exponents of pragmatist-inspired social science.

Pragmatism heavily influenced the founding of the discipline of sociology on the North American continent. The official “date of birth” of sociology is often regarded as the opening of the first sociology department at the University of Chicago in 1892. The Chicago school of sociology during the first decades of the 20th century was instrumental in developing the discipline in general, and “members” such as Robert E. Park, Florian Znaniecki, and William I. Thomas were particularly prominent in advancing a specifically qualitative stance in sociology. As such, and because of their inspiration from pragmatism, the Chicago sociologists were not keen on theoretical refinement in itself, believing sociology should be an empirical science and not a scholastic endeavor. As Park said, “We don’t give a damn for logic here. We want to know what people do!” Knowing “what people do” thus became a trademark of the Chicago sociologists, and a range of empirical studies from the early 20th century illustrate the prevalence of qualitative approaches and methods such as document analysis, interviews, and participant observation. The Chicago sociologists were keen to get out and study social life directly, often using participant observation. The purpose was to create conceptual apparatuses and theoretical ideas based on empirical material. Inspired by pragmatist notions about the use value of science, Robert E. Park wanted sociology through empirical research to be part of public discussions, debates, and politics as a crucial part of modern democratic society. According to him, sociologists should leave the library and their offices and go out and “get the seat of their pants dirty in real research,” as he once told his students (Park, as cited in Lindner, 1996 , p. 81). Moreover, some of the early Chicago sociologists—Jane Addams, for example—also pioneered social work and action research and wanted to use sociology to promote social reform. By using the city of Chicago (a city with a population size that increased 10-fold in less than 100 years) as an empirical laboratory for all sorts of investigations, the sociologists explored—and still explore—city life as a concrete environment for understanding more encompassing social changes and transformations. In general, the Chicago school has throughout the years been characterized by a distinct qualitative and ethnographic orientation, focusing on studying people in their natural surroundings (the city), being critical of nonempirical research and theory, and being driven by a desire to uncover and understand patterns of human interaction. As Martin Bulmer pinpointed,

[All the Chicago sociologists were] in some ways empiricists, keen upon the use of hypotheses and experimental verification.… Axioms, postulates, rational deductions, ideas and ideals are all deemed valuable when they can be made to function in actual experience, in the course of which they meet with constant modification and improvement.… All display the attitude of enquirers rather than of expositors of absolute knowledge; their most confident affirmations are expressed in a tone that shows that they do not regard them as final. (Bulmer, 1984 , p. 32)

Despite their preference for qualitative methods, Chicago sociologists have used any kind of material available for studying social life. Thus, there are different strands within the Chicago school: the human ecology strand, the (dis)organization strand, the social psychology strand, and the action research strand used especially within social work. Each of these strands prioritized different methodological approaches, theoretical understandings, and outcomes of research, but common to all has been an intense interest in qualitative empirical work. Some of the most prominent classic and today still-often-quoted studies conducted by Chicago sociologists during the early years were Harvey W. Zorbaugh’s The Gold Coast and the Slum (1929), Clifford R. Shaw’s The Jack-Roller (1930), Paul G. Cressey’s The Taxi-Dance Hall (1932), and The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918–1920) by William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki. Common to these otherwise methodologically different studies—using, respectively, participant observation, document analysis on letters and diaries, and interviewing and official statistics—were their interest in knowing what people do in particular situations and circumstances and uncovering the types of activities often taking place on the outskirts of society: deviance, crime, subcultures, and the like. In the first half of the 20th century, Chicago sociology thus functioned as a pioneer in promoting a distinctly qualitative mentality that was later superseded by other institutions (Harvard and Columbia) and other methodological preferences but today remains a vital force in American sociology.

Building on the insights from the early Chicago school of sociology (often referred to as the first generation of Chicago sociology ), several sociologists and social anthropologists—some of whom were themselves students of the early Chicagoans—during the 1940s and onward began to develop the idea of symbolic interactionism , sometimes more broadly described as interactionism . What began as a distinctly North American project later spread to the European continent. Some of the early proponents of symbolic interactionist social science with a strong emphasis on qualitative methods were Charles H. Cooley, Everett C. Hughes, Erving Goffman, Howard S. Becker, Herbert Blumer, and Norman K. Denzin—with Blumer responsible for originally coining the term symbolic interactionism , which he admitted was a “barbarous neologism” (Blumer, 1969 ). Symbolic interactionism often refers to the social philosophy of George Herbert Mead as the founding perspective, which was later developed, refined, and sociologized by others. Mead was a central force in the development of pragmatism. Symbolic interactionism is based on an understanding of social life in which human beings are seen as active, creative, and capable of communicating their definitions of situations and meanings to others. According to Blumer, there are three central tenets of symbolic interactionism: (a) humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them, (b) the meaning of such things is derived from or arises out of the social interaction that one has with one’s fellows, and (c) these meanings are handled in and modified through an interpretive process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters (Blumer, 1969 , p. 2). Symbolic interactionists are concerned with how humans create meaning in their everyday lives and in how, as the term symbolic interaction indicates, this meaning is created and carved out through interaction with others and by use of various symbols to communicate meaning. As Blumer stated on the methodological stance of symbolic interactionism,

Symbolic interactionism is a down-to-earth approach to the scientific study of human group life and human conduct. Its empirical world is the natural world of such groups and conduct. It lodges its problems in this natural world, conducts its studies in it, and derives its interpretations from such naturalistic studies. If it wishes to study religious cult behavior it will go to actual religious cults and observe them carefully as they carry on their lives. If it wishes to study social movements it will trace carefully the career, the history, and the life experiences of actual movements. If it wishes to study drug use among adolescents it will go to the actual life of adolescents to observe and analyze such use. And similarly with respect to other matters that engage its attention. Its methodological stance, accordingly, is that of direct examination of the empirical social world. (Blumer, 1969 , p. 47)

Blumer argued for the development of sensitizing concepts —as opposed to definitive concepts —to capture social life theoretically; such concepts “[give] the user a general sense of reference and guidance in approaching empirical instances” (Blumer, 1954 , p. 7). Symbolic interactionism does, per definition, not privilege any specific methods or research procedures—anything capable of capturing human meaning making through symbolic interaction in everyday life and capable of providing sensitizing concepts will do. However, historically, because of its close association with Chicago sociology, symbolic interactionists have primarily worked with a variety of qualitative methods and used them to discover, represent, and analyze the meaning-making processes involved in human interaction in a variety of contexts. Although a branch of symbolic interactionism under the auspices of Manford Kuhn began to develop at the University of Iowa (the Iowa school, as opposed to the Chicago school of Blumer and others) that prioritized more positivistic aspirations and used quantitative methods and experimental research designs, symbolic interactionism is to a large degree associated specifically with qualitative research, privileging the careful observation (and particularly participant observation) of social life in concrete and often naturally occurring circumstances (Manis & Meltzer, 1978 ). Today, symbolic interactionism is still very much alive and kicking—through conferences, book series, and a journal devoted to studies in symbolic interaction—and is an active part of American sociology and elsewhere, although the originality and initially provocative ideas of the pioneering protagonists of symbolic interactionism have gradually waned throughout the years.

One of the main proponents of interactionism was Erving Goffman, who throughout his career, which began at the University of Chicago in the early 1950s, gradually developed a perspective to study the minutiae of social life that remains one of the most quoted and used within contemporary social research. Goffman in many ways personified qualitative social science in the mid-20th century because of his particular topics of interest as well as his specific means of investigating them. Goffman’s main preoccupation throughout his career was to tease out the many miniscule and often overlooked rituals, norms, and behavioral expectations of the social situations of face-to-face interaction between people in public and private places—something that at the time was often regarded with widespread skepticism by more rigorously oriented social researchers. This was indeed a time when the center of intellectual development and priority within the social sciences on the American continent had gradually shifted from the University of Chicago in the earlier parts of the 20th century to Harvard University and Columbia University at mid-century with a concomitant shift from qualitative and particularly ethnographic methods to much more experimental, quantitative, and statistical methods. Not surprisingly, Goffman is often described as a maverick with his impressionistic and to some extent obscure approach to research methodology and ways of reporting his findings. Like one of his main sources of inspiration, Georg Simmel, Goffman keenly used the essay as a privileged means of communicating research findings, just as other literary devices such as sarcasm, irony, and metaphors were part and parcel of his methodological toolbox. Goffman was particularly critical of the use of many of the methods prevalent and valorized in sociology at his time. For instance, against the preference for statistical variable analysis and the privilege of quantitative methodology, he once stated,

The variables that emerge tend to be creatures of research designs that have no substance outside the room in which the apparatus and subjects are located, except perhaps briefly when a replication or a continuity is performed under sympathetic auspices and a full moon. Concepts are designed on the run in order to get on with setting things up so that trials can be performed and the effects of controlled variation of some kind or another measured. The work begins with the sentence “we hypothesize that …,” goes on from there to a full discussion of the biases and limits of the proposed design, reasons why these aren’t nullifying, and culminates in an appreciable number of satisfyingly significant correlations tending to confirm some of the hypotheses. As though the uncovering of social life were that simple. Fields of naturalistic study have not been uncovered through these methods. Concepts have not emerged that re-ordered our view of social activity. Understanding of ordinary behavior has not accumulated; distance has. (Goffman, 1971 , pp. 20–21)

Instead, Goffman opted for an unmistakable and distinctive qualitative research strategy aimed at charting the contours and contents of the all too ordinary and ever-present but nevertheless scientifically neglected events of everyday life. His work was characterized by an apparent methodological looseness that consciously and stylistically downplayed the importance of his own findings, but covered over the fact that his work revealed heretofore empirically uncharted territory. Many of the titles of his books thus contained consciously diminutive subtitles such as “reports,” “essays,” or “microstudies” that gave the impression, however mistaken, that it should not be taken too seriously. Goffman willingly admitted the following about what others might have regarded as a dubious research strategy:

Obviously, many of these data are of doubtful worth, and my interpretations—especially some of them—may certainly be questionable, but I assume that a loose speculative approach to a fundamental area of conduct is better than a rigorous blindness to it. (Goffman 1963 , p. 4)

In his work, Goffman relied heavily on all sorts of empirical material. He conducted interviews with housewives; he explored an island community through in-depth ethnography; he investigated the trials and tribulations of patient life at a psychiatric institution by way of covert participant observation; he performed the role as a dealer in a Las Vegas casino to document and tease out the gambling dimensions of human interaction; he listened to, recorded, and analyzed radio programs; and he more or less freely used any kind of qualitative technique, official and unofficial, to access the bountiful richness of social life. Despite his reliance on a varied selection of empirical input (or what he termed “slices of social life”), throughout his career, Goffman gradually developed and refined a unique research methodology by way of various metaphors intended to capture and highlight specific features of everyday life interaction. Goffman’s perspective on qualitative research therefore is often referred to as dramaturgy because his main and most popular metaphor was the theatrical analogy in which he—in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life —in detail described social interaction as if it was a performance made by actors on a scene (Goffman, 1959 ).

However, Goffman’s metaphorical cornucopia was much more than mere dramaturgy. He also invented and refined other metaphorical schemas: the ritual metaphor (looking at social life as if it was one big ceremonial event), the game metaphor (investigating social life as if it was inhabited by conmen and spies), and the frame metaphor (concerned with showing how people always work toward defining and framing social situations to make them meaningful and understandable). All these different metaphors concentrated on the same subject matter—patterns of human interaction, or, put another way, social life at the micro level—and each metaphor spawned a spectacular number of analytical terms and sensitizing concepts, many of which today are household concepts in the social sciences (just think of stigma, impression management, labeling , or framing ). Moreover, they served as useful devices in which to embed the aforementioned varied empirical material, thereby giving it shape, meaning, and substance. Goffman’s perspective later inspired new generations of sociologists in particular and qualitative researchers in general who have used him and his original methodology and colorful concepts to study a variety of conventional as well as new empirical domains such as tourist photography, mobile phone communication, and advertising (see, e.g., Jacobsen, 2010 ).

Ethnomethodology is another important tradition in the internal history of qualitative research that simultaneously builds on and extends the perspective provided by pragmatism, interactionism, and the dramaturgical work of Goffman. Like Goffman, ethnomethodologists take an interest in studying and unveiling the most miniscule realm of human interaction, and they rely on the collection of empirical data from a variety of sources in the development of their situationally oriented sociology. Ethnomethodology was initially a project masterminded by the American sociologist Harold Garfinkel, who in Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967) outlined the concern of ethnomethodology as the study of the “routine actions” and the often-unnoticed methods of meaning making used by people in everyday settings (hence the term ethnomethodology , meaning “folk methods”). These routine activities and the continuously sense-making endeavors were part and parcel of the quotidian domain of everyday life (described by Garfinkel, in the characteristically obscure ethnomethodological terminology, as the “immortal ordinary society”) that rest on common-sense knowledge and practical rationality. Inspired by the phenomenological sociology of Alfred Schütz as well as to some extent the functionalism of Talcott Parsons, Garfinkel concerned himself with a classic question in sociology: How is social order possible? But instead of proposing abstract or philosophical answers to this question or proposing “normative force” as the main arbiter between people, Garfinkel—as a kind of “phenomenological empiricism” (Heap, 1980 )—set out empirically to discover and document what people do when they encounter each other. True to the general pragmatist and interactionist perspective, ethnomethodologists rely on an image of human actors as knowledgeable individuals who, through such activities as indexicality , the etcetera principle , and accounts , in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s terminology, “know how to go on.” Social reality and social order are therefore not static or pregiven—rather, they are the active outcome or “accomplishment” of actors’ local meaning making amid sometimes bewildering, confusing, and chaotic situations. As Garfinkel stated on the purpose and procedures of ethnomethodology, phrased in typical tortuous ethnomethodological wording,

Ethnomethodological studies analyze everyday activities as members’ methods for making those same activities visibly-rational-and-reportable-for-all-practical-purposes, i.e. “accountable,” as organizations of commonplace everyday activities. The reflexivity of that phenomenon is a singular feature of practical actions, of practical circumstances, of common sense knowledge of social structures, and of practical sociological reasoning.… I use the term “ethnomethodology” to refer to the investigation of the rational properties of indexical expressions and other practical actions as contingent ongoing accomplishments of organized artful practices of everyday life. (Garfinkel, 1967 , pp. vii, 11)

According to ethnomethodologists, there are many methods available to tease out the situational and emerging order of social life that is based on members’ methods for making activities meaningful. Ethnomethodology is, however, predominantly a qualitative tradition that uses typical qualitative methods such as interviews and observation strategies for discovering and documenting what goes on when people encounter everyday life, but they also like to provoke our ingrained knowledge of what is going on. Thus, in classic Durkheimian-inspired fashion, one particularly opportune ethnomethodological way to find out what the norms and rules of social life really are and how they work is to break them. For example, Garfinkel invented the breaching experiments aimed at provoking a sense of disorder in the otherwise orderly everyday domain to see what people do to restore the lost sense of order. Of these breaching experiments or incongruence procedures —which Garfinkel asked his students to perform—he wrote,

Procedurally it is my preference to start with familiar scenes and ask what can be done to make trouble. The operations that one would have to perform in order to multiply the senseless features of perceived environments; to produce and sustain bewilderment, consternation and confusion; to produce the socially structured affects of anxiety, shame, guilt and indignation; and to produce disorganized interaction should tell us something about how the structures of everyday activities are ordinarily and routinely produced and maintained. (Garfinkel, 1967 , pp. 37–38)

Garfinkel, his colleagues, and students throughout the years performed a range of interesting studies—of courtroom interaction, jurors’ deliberations, doctors’ clinical practices, transsexuals’ attempts at “passing” in everyday life, piano players’ development of skills and style, medical staffs’ pronunciation of patients’ deaths, police officers’ craft of peace keeping, pilots’ conversation in the cockpit—aimed at finding out how everyday life (and particularly work situations) is “ordinarily and routinely produced and maintained” (Garfinkel, 1967 , p. 38) by using not only breaching experiments, but also less provocative methods. Later, ethnomethodology bifurcated into a conversation analysis strand on the one hand and what has been termed conventional ethnographical ethnomethodology on the other. Common to both strands has been a concern with uncovering the most meticulous aspects of human interaction—nonverbal and verbal. Just as Garfinkel studied the natural patterns of interaction in natural settings (the living room, the courtroom, the clinic, or elsewhere), so conversation analysts studied natural language (but also professional jargon) as used by people in ordinary circumstances. For instance, conversation analysts, such as Harvey Sacks and Emanuel Schegloff, intimately studied and analyzed the minutiae of turn-takings, categorizations, and sequences of verbal communication to see how people, through the use of language, create meaning and a coherent sense of what is going on. Characteristic of both strands of ethnomethodology is the strong reliance on qualitative research methods aimed at capturing and describing in detail the situational and emerging character of social order. In fact, ethnomethodologists strongly oppose positivistic research procedures aimed at producing universal “truths” or uncovering “general laws” about society and instead opt for a much more mundane approach to studying the locally produced orders and thoroughly episodic and situational character of social life (see, e.g., Cicourel, 1964 ). In a typical provocative respecification of Schütz’s classic dictum, Garfinkel thus suggested that we are all sociologists, because we constantly search for meaning. The means and methods of inquiry of professional sociologists are thus not all that different from the various ways ordinary people in everyday life observe, inquire, or talk to one another. This is a principle shared with the hermeneutic strand, which was addressed earlier.

Most of the North American traditions mentioned here can be covered by the label of creative sociologies (Morris, 1977 ), first, because they regard human beings as creative actors capable of and concerned with creating meaning in their lives, and second, because they emphasize creative qualitative approaches to capture and analyze those lives. As Monica B. Morris recapitulated on these creative sociologies,

The basic assumption underlying the “creative” approaches to sociology are: that human beings are not merely acted upon by social facts or social forces; that they are constantly shaping and “creating” their own social worlds in interaction with others; and that special methods are required for the study and understanding of these uniquely human processes. (Morris, 1977 , p. 8)

These “special methods” have predominantly been varieties of qualitative methods. Common to most of the North American creative sociologies is also a distinct microsociological orientation aimed at mapping out and analyzing the distinctly quotidian dimensions of social life and society. Besides the various traditions that we have chosen to delineate as part of the internal story of qualitative research, we can also mention the important insights from social semiotics, existentialism, critical everyday life sociology, cultural studies, sociology of emotions, interpretive interactionism, and more recently actor-network theory, which, however, will not be presented here.

A final tradition that can be mentioned, but that we will not analyze in detail, is the tradition originating with structuralism in the first half of the 20th century—the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the structural anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss, for example, which eventually developed into poststructuralism in the latter half of the century in the hands of figures such as Michel Foucault, a French philosopher and historian of ideas, who is among the most referenced authors in the social sciences as a whole. Structuralism was based on the idea that language is a system of signs whose meaning is determined by the formal relations between the signs (and not with reference to “the world”), and poststructuralism pushed this idea further by arguing that the system is constantly moving and in flux, which is why, as Jacques Derrida (the leading exponent of deconstruction) would say, meaning is endlessly “deferred.” In relation to qualitative research, we should say that Foucault (and to a lesser extent Derrida) was a significant inspiration for many forms of discourse analysis, which today exist in many variants. One variant is heavily inspired by Foucault and an awareness of power relations in social worlds (e.g., Arribas-Ayllon & Walkerdine, 2008 ), while discursive psychology, as another variant, is not closely associated with Foucault or poststructuralism, but originates in the aforementioned ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (Sacks, Schlegoff), which was mentioned earlier (see Peräkylä & Ruusuvuori, 2011 ).

Ethnography

Before concluding this internal history, it is appropriate to note the early trade of anthropological and sociological ethnography, which cuts across the philosophical paradigms discussed previously. In anthropology, Bronislaw Malinowski, who held the first chair in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, is, together with Franz Boas, one of the founders of American cultural anthropology, considered a pioneer of ethnographic fieldwork. Contrary to the armchair anthropology and “anthropology of the verandah” conducted by earlier members of the discipline, and thus in a situation in which there was practically no professional discourse on fieldwork practice and experiences, Malinowski insisted on and practiced fieldwork methods of the kind that are performed by today’s ethnographers. Conducting his famous study of the culture of the Trobriand Islanders, he stayed and lived among the natives for a period of almost 3 years. Inspired partly by psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, Malinowski conceptualized culture as a kind of toolbox containing the specific tools and means that people use to satisfy their needs. This functionalistic understanding had certain methodological implications. To obtain an adequate understanding of the culture under scrutiny and the functional meaning of its various elements, Malinowski introduced at least three important principles that still appear among the most important requirements of anthropological fieldwork. First, the researcher should live in the community and among the people who are being studied; second, the researcher should learn the specific language of the community and not rely on interpreters, who might add a distance between researcher and community; third, researchers should participate and observe at the same time (participant observation) (Kristiansen & Krogstrup, 2012 ).

In contemporary textbooks on anthropological fieldwork methods, Malinowski’s study among the Trobriand Islanders is mentioned as a paradigm example, and generations of anthropological scholars have conducted fieldwork employing the principles laid out by Malinowski in the first decades of the 20th century. And, as indicated earlier in this chapter, anthropological fieldwork methods have been embraced by scholars from many other social science disciplines, especially sociology. The important point to be learned here is not necessarily the specific principles of ethnographic research per se, but the idea that ethnographic fieldwork should be considered among the important roots of qualitative research and thus that the development of ethnographic fieldwork by pioneers such as Malinowski and Boas in anthropology and Robert E. Park, Ernest Burgess, and Nels Anderson in (Chicago) sociology was triggered by a conception of the world as culturally pluralistic and diversified, which in turn called for the development and refinement of methods and procedures suited for grasping pluralities of the contemporary social world.

The Marginalizing History of Qualitative Research

Following this tour de force through the internal history of qualitative research focusing on intellectual forerunners, theoretical paradigms, and methodological developments, let us turn to another way of describing the rise of qualitative research. It is difficult to understand current discussions in qualitative journals and handbooks without taking into account a widespread experience of not only studying the marginalized (something qualitative researchers often take pride in doing), but also qualitative researchers themselves being marginalized as a research community. Several decades ago, Fritz Machlup ( 1956 ) insisted that the social sciences as a whole suffered from an inferiority complex because the knowledge they could provide lacked the accuracy, lawlike character, value freedom, and rigor of “real” science (such as natural science). Although this might be nothing less than a caricature of the social sciences in general and qualitative research in particular, perhaps qualitative sociologists, in this respect, may have suffered from an even more strongly felt inferiority complex than, for example, their colleagues working with statistics, surveys, or quantitative data analysis because qualitative sociology—almost per definition—has been seen by others and sometimes also by its own proponents as being opposed to the principles of “real science.” As Stephen Jay Gould once asked, “Why do we downgrade … integrative and qualitative ability, while we exalt analytical and quantitative achievement? Is one better, harder, more important than the other?” (Gould, as cited in Peshkin, 1993 , p. 23). There is little doubt that during the decades of the mid-20th century, qualitative research lived a rather shadowy and marginalized existence and was regarded with some suspicion (Mottier, 2005 ). These were the decades of the orthodox consensus (Giddens, 1976 ) within the social sciences, relying heavily on positivistic research methods, a behaviorist image of humans, and a general functionalist theoretical foundation. Only later did we witness a revival or renaissance of qualitative research (Gobo, 2005 ). However, there is also little doubt that some qualitative researchers—for example, Goffman—consciously sought out such a marginalized position vis-à-vis prevailing positivistic research methods that in many ways not only gradually helped change the game regarding the validity or applicability of certain research methods, but also made some qualitative researchers almost immune to critique from colleagues working within more quantitative or statistical traditions. As reported by Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, “qualitative researchers are called journalists or soft scientists. Their work is termed unscientific or only exploratory or subjective. It is called criticism, and not theory, or it is interpreted politically, as a disguised version of Marxism or secular humanism” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011 , p. 7). While there is some truth to this, we believe that much of the marginalization history of qualitative research is based on a myth. For example, the classical positivists, as Michell ( 2003 ) demonstrated, were not against qualitative research, so when qualitative researchers distance themselves from positivism, they most often construct a straw man and rarely, if ever, go back and read what early positivists such as Comte, Schlick, or Carnap had to say about research and human experience.

Brinkmann and Kvale ( 2015 ) even asked if the time has come to rehabilitate the classical positivists, perhaps for qualitative researchers to counter the marginality myth. It is noteworthy that Auguste Comte (1798–1857) was responsible for founding both positivist philosophy and the science of sociology. His positivist philosophy reacted against religious dogma and metaphysical speculation and advocated a return to observable data. Émile Durkheim was another early sociologist who was influenced by positivist sociology and gave penetrating qualitative analyses of social phenomena. Positivism had in general a significant influence on culture and the arts of the 19th century, inspiring a move from mythological and aristocratic themes to a new realism, depicting in detail the lives of workers and the bourgeoisie (for some of this history, particularly in the British context, see Dale, 1989 ). In histories of music, Bizet’s opera Carmen , featuring the lives of cigarette smugglers and toreadors, has been depicted as inspired by positivism, and Flaubert’s realistic descriptions of the life of Madame Bovary can likewise be considered a positivist novel. Impressionist paintings sticking to the immediate sense impressions, in particular the sense data of pointillism, also drew inspiration from positivism. The founder of phenomenological philosophy, Husserl, was even led to state that if positivism means being faithful to the phenomena, then we, the phenomenologists, are the true positivists!

It is no doubt true that many qualitative researchers have felt marginalized because of what they feel is a threat from the positivist philosophy of science. But if one goes back to Comte, and even to 20th-century “logical positivists” like Carnap and Schlick, one finds a surprisingly great methodological tolerance instead of the oft-insinuated hostility toward qualitative methods (Michell, 2003 ). The threat to qualitative methods has come not from a philosophy of science, but from research bureaucracies and funding agencies, witnessed, for example, in the recent movement toward “evidence-based practice” in the professions, which impend on the possibilities of conducting qualitative studies. As we will argue in the next section with reference to Latour ( 2000 ), it seems clear that the natural sciences are full of qualitative studies, which is further indication that qualitative researchers have no reason to feel inferior or marginalized in relation to their peers, who employ methods normally associated with the natural sciences.

The Repressed History of Qualitative Research

As we have seen in the internal history of qualitative research, in some disciplines such as sociology, qualitative approaches have been “out in the open” for decades and remain so today. However, for other disciplines the situation has been quite different, and it is this that we wish to highlight by briefly telling what we call the repressed history of qualitative research. This analysis pertains to psychology in particular, but it may also be relevant for other disciplines. Psychology was born as a science, it is said, in 1879 when Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychological laboratory in Leipzig. Wundt then began to conduct psychological experiments, but he also inaugurated the tradition of Völkerpsychologie , a cultural-historical approach of studying human life through customs, myths, and symbols, somewhat along the lines suggested by Dilthey in the hermeneutic tradition addressed previously. So Wundt initiated both a tradition of experimental psychology, which has since become the mainstream approach, using quantitative measures, and a long qualitative tradition in psychology. The qualitative tradition, however, has been forgotten by the official journals and handbooks of psychology to an extent that makes it resemble repression.

The case is that many “founding fathers” in psychology who today are not particularly associated with qualitative research in fact based their work on exactly that. It has likely been seen as embarrassing to textbook writers to include such figures as Freud and Piaget among qualitative researchers, since qualitative research has not figured among the respectable methods of the science of psychology. Psychology has been described by Sigmund Koch as unique among the sciences in having decided on its methods before defining its subject matter (see Robinson, 2001 ). Psychology has had, as its subject matter, something almost as elusive as the soul (i.e., the mind, which is an entity that psychologists have never been able to agree on). It has been defined as inner experience, outer behavior, information processing, brain functioning, a social construction, and many other things. But instead of agreeing on the subject matter of their discipline, the majority of psychologists have, since the mid-20th century, constructed their science as a science of numbers in an attempt to emulate the natural sciences. There is something like a “physics envy” running through the history of psychology and related disciplines, which has implied an exorcism of qualitative research. The reader can try for him- or herself to locate a standard textbook from psychology and check whether qualitative research is mentioned. The chance is very high that qualitative methods are not mentioned at all. Bruno Latour, an anthropologist who has entered into and observed research behavior in natural science laboratories, concludes laconically, “The imitation of the natural sciences by the social sciences has so far been a comedy of errors” (Latour, 2000 , p.14). It is a comedy of errors chiefly because the natural sciences do not look at all like it is imagined in psychology and the social sciences. The natural sciences like physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, and geology are built not around statistics, but often around careful qualitative descriptions of their subject matters. It can even be argued that such fields as paleontology rest on interpretative methods (Rorty, 1982 ). Anatomy and physiology are qualitative disciplines in large parts, describing the workings of the body, and it can—without stretching the concept too far—be argued that Darwin was a qualitative researcher, adept at observing and interpreting the natural world in its qualitative transformations.

If this analysis is valid, it means that qualitative research in psychology—as in most, if not all, human and social sciences—looks much more like natural science than is normally imagined and is much older than usually recognized. Here we can mention not just Wundt’s cultural psychology, but also William James’s study of religious experience, Freud’s investigations of dreams and his clinical method more broadly, Gestalt psychologists’ research on perception, Piaget’s interviews with children, Bartlett’s studies of remembering, and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body. These are routinely addressed in psychological textbooks—after all, they have all been formative of the discipline—but their qualitative research methods are almost always neglected or repressed. The history of interviewing as a qualitative research method is closely connected to the history of psychology (especially in its clinical and therapeutic variants), and some of this history is told in this book’s chapter on qualitative interviewing. Suffice it here to say that interviewing became a method in the human and social sciences with Freud’s psychoanalysis around 1900, and we refer the reader to the interview chapter for the details. Although Freud’s status as a theorist of the mind has been much debated in recent years, perhaps his main contribution—simultaneously using the conversation as a knowledge-producing instrument and a “talking cure”—remains as relevant as ever. This makes it even stranger that Freud and the other psychological pioneers have been repressed as qualitative psychologists from the mainstream of the discipline. It is hard to imagine that psychology and similar sciences could have achieved their relatively high impact on society had they not employed what we call qualitative methods to zoom in on significant aspects of human and social life.

The Social History of Qualitative Research

Like all forms of social science, qualitative research exists in social, economic, cultural, and historical contexts and must be understood in relation to these contexts. Taking this as a point of departure, it makes good sense that qualitative research experienced a renaissance from the late 1960s onward. On the basis of a somewhat Western-biased or ethnocentric worldview, the 1960s can be considered a starting point for some major changes in life forms, social institutions, and the whole social fabric of society. As Gordana Jovanovic ( 2011 ) argued, the legitimacy of some of the apparently solid social institutions such as the marriage and the family were questioned, and a more pluralistic and differentiated picture began to appear in terms of social groups, and new social movements making claims in favor of the environment, global peace, and women’s and student’s rights emerged. Together with the already existing critique of positivism and a universal rational method put forward by scholars such as Paul K. Feyerabend ( 1975 ), these changes, Jovanovic argued, spurred the belief that traditional natural science and causally oriented research models were inadequate in terms of studying and understanding these new forms of social life. Therefore, there was a need to develop approaches that could uncover the meanings and nature of the unexpected and apparently provocative, disturbing, and oppositional social phenomena:

In these altered social circumstances, in which views concerning both science and the position of science had changed, it became possible to pose different research questions, to shift the focus of research interests, to redefine the research situation and the role of its participants—in a word, conditions were created for what histories of qualitative methods usually describe as the “renaissance” of qualitative research. (Jovanovic, 2011 , p. 18)

In other words, changes in life forms, worldviews, and cultural practices were constituent of the reemergence of qualitative research on the scientific scene in the 1960s and 1970s. And as we have touched on earlier in this chapter (see the section “The Internal History of Qualitative Research”), to some extent this reemergence of qualitative research (at least among some of the early Chicagoans) has been associated with emancipation and with a practical use of social and human science knowledge in favor of underprivileged groups in society. Such history writing, however, unveils only one specific aspect of the interconnectedness of qualitative research on the one hand and the social fabric on the other.

The social history of qualitative research has not yet been written, but it should also approach its development in another way, namely, as deeply related to management and industrial organizations (cf. the famous Hawthorne study that involved interviews with thousands of workers with the aim of increasing productivity) and also advertisements and commercial research (focus groups, consumer interviews, etc.). From a Foucauldian perspective, qualitative research did not just spring from the countercultural and emancipatory movements of the 1960s and 1970s but may also have become part of the soft and hidden forms of power exertion in the confessional “interview society” (Atkinson & Silverman, 1997 ), and—contrary to its self-understanding—qualitative research may often function as a tool in the hands of the powerful (cf. the use of focus groups for marketing and political purposes).

As discussed by Brinkmann and Kvale ( 2005 ), the focus of the economies of Western societies has shifted from efficient production of goods to customers’ consumption of the goods produced. What is important is no longer to make products as stable and unfailing as possible, but rather to make markets by influencing buyers through marketing. Henry Ford is supposed to have said that customers could get the Model T in any color they wanted, as long as they preferred black, but in today’s post-Fordist economy, such standardization is clearly outdated. What is important today is not just the quality of the product, but also, especially, its style, the story behind it, the experiences it generates, and what it reveals about the owner’s self—in short, its hermeneutic qualities. Products are sold with inbuilt planned obsolescence, and advertisements work to change customers and construct their desires continually for new products to find new markets. Softer, more concealed forms of power gradually replace the bureaucratic structures of industrial society with its visible hierarchies and governance through reward and punishment.

To begin writing the recent social history of qualitative research, we may note how, in consumer society, soft qualitative research has been added to the repertoire of social science methodologies, often superseding the bureaucratic forms of data collection in standardized surveys and quantitative experiments. While a textbook on quantitative methodology may read like a manual for administrators and engineers, qualitative guidebooks read more like manuals for personnel counselors and advertisers, stressing emotions, empathy, and relationships. Although qualitative methods are often pictured as progressive and even emancipatory, we should not overlook the immersion of these methods in a consumer society, with its sensitivity toward experiences, images, feelings, and lifestyles of the consumers (Kvale, 2008 ). The qualitative interview, for example, provides important knowledge for manipulating consumers’ desires and behavior through psychologically sophisticated advertising. One of the most significant methods of marketing in consumer society is—not surprisingly—qualitative market research. Almost 2 decades ago, it already accounted for $2 billion to $3 billion worldwide (Imms & Ereaut, 2002 ), and according to one estimate, 5% of all British adults have taken part in market research focus groups. Although a major part of qualitative interviewing today takes place within market research, the extensive use of qualitative research interviews for consumer manipulation is hardly taken into account in the many discussions of qualitative research and its emancipatory nature.

Concluding the sketchy social history of qualitative research, we may return to the sociology department at the University of Chicago, which has been mentioned already as an important institution in terms of nurturing qualitative research in a variety of forms from the late 1920s. We have not, however, reflected on the sociohistorical conditions that might explain why the emergence of qualitative research approaches emerged exactly here at this specific time. In our view, there seem to be at least two answers to this admittedly complex question. First, the sociology department was initially uniquely crowded with intellectuals who were influenced by pragmatic and interactionist thought, by Continental (particularly German) thinking stressing description and understanding before causal explanation, and also by journalism, ecology models, and essayistic writing. At the same time, there was a strong spirit of wanting to link sociological research with engagement in social issues and social reform (Abbott, 1999 ; Bulmer, 1984 ). Second, the early Chicagoans’ initial interest in immigrants, patterns of urban development, crime, and the general social dynamics of city life stimulated scholars such as Thomas, Znaniecki, Park, and Burgess to develop and employ research strategies that were different from the quantitative ones (see Jørgensen & Smith, 2009 ). One might say that the study of the complexity of new city life craved methodological considerations and research strategies that made the qualitative perspective come in handy. Thus, to understand and grasp the cultural complexities of immigrant communities, the social worlds of marginalized people, and the segmentation of cities in distinctive zones, these researchers were somehow bound to employ and advance qualitative methods and techniques such as biographical research, fieldwork, and mapping.

The Technological History of Qualitative Research

Qualitative research indeed depends on human beings observing, interacting with, and talking to each other, but its history has also been driven by technological developments. It is difficult to imagine qualitative research as we know it today without the invention of the portable tape recorder, and later, digital recording devices, and also the whole range of software that enables computer-assisted analyses of qualitative materials. The development of these technologies has created new opportunities and possibilities for researchers in regard to collecting, managing, and analyzing qualitative data (Schwandt, 2001 , p. 27). However, not only have qualitative researchers adopted and made direct use of different technological devices in the research process, but also technological advances have spurred new qualitative approaches and methods. The technological history of qualitative research, we contend, is thus a history of researchers making use of technological artifacts not specifically or purposely developed for qualitative research, of revising their methods in response to technological innovation, and of the development of technologies specifically designed for research purposes. We briefly summarize this technological history by examining the ways that technological innovations have transformed and developed both the collection and the analysis of qualitative data.

Data Collection

Just as technological inventions have affected the general history of humanity in a variety of ways, technological innovations have triggered a number of major changes or shifts in the history of qualitative research and methodology. The first, and admittedly trivial, technologically driven shift was brought about by advances in transportation technology. In the very early days of anthropology (i.e., before Malinowski’s groundbreaking work in the Trobriand Islands), anthropologists typically relied on secondhand materials gathered by others, such as documents, travel logs, and reports written by colonial officials, missionaries, participants in scientific expeditions, or traveling salesmen. Unsurprisingly, this production of knowledge about cultures and social groups (later known as armchair research ) without ever meeting or interacting with them was later criticized for lacking authenticity and thus for drawing conclusions on the basis of insufficient or inadequate data (Markle, West, & Rich, 2011 ). However, as transportation technology improved and made long-distance traveling easier and affordable, anthropologists began to travel around the globe and to practice what has become known as fieldwork, thus immersing themselves in the lives of the people under study, interacting with them, and taking part in their practices and producing data onsite. In some cases, these traveling scholars brought with them new technologies, such as travel typewriters, and typed field notes while staying in the field. At this early stage of qualitative research, qualitative researchers invested massive energy in recording data. Researchers conducting interviews or doing observations often made handwritten summaries of interviews or conversations or wrote detailed field notes in their notebooks. At this point, a great deal of the researcher’s work consisted of making records of his or her experiences in the field or simply producing data and making them storable.

This situation was dramatically changed by the invention and use of audio recorders. The introduction of these devices in the practice of qualitative research also constitutes a substantial methodological advance since they made it possible for researchers to collect and record information from observations or from interviews simultaneously. Being able to record information as an integrated part of the data-gathering process enabled researchers to collect larger piles of data and to dedicate more efforts to the process of analysis. Furthermore, the fact that researchers could record conversations with participants, have them transcribed, and thus be able to return to them as they actually appeared constituted a major methodological progress. The process of making transcripts, and the following reading and rereading, enabled researchers to familiarize themselves with the data in a completely new way (Gibbs, Friese, & Mangabeira, 2002 ). The making of transcripts gradually has become conceived of as an integral part of the qualitative research process since the intense listening to recordings makes the researcher aware of subtle and taken-for-granted dimensions in the participant’s talk that researchers without recordings “would routinely fail to notice, fail to remember, or be unable to record in a sufficient detail by taking hand-written notes as it happened” (Rapley, 2007 , p. 50).

In a somewhat similar way, photographic technology has had an impact on qualitative research. The use of photography as an aspect of qualitative research goes back to the early works of Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead ( 1942 ) and their photographic ethnography of Balinese character. Bateson and Mead’s photographic report has achieved landmark status among anthropologists and, although their innovative work was greeted with some puzzlement (Jacknis, 1988 ), the use of photographs has become popular not only within a special branch of anthropology but also among a much broader community of qualitative researchers working within the field of visual methods (see Collier & Collier, 1986 ; Harper, 2012 ; Pink, 2007 ).

Still another shift was brought about by video recording and analysis (Gibbs et al., 2002 ). Digital technologies have opened up new ways of collecting, managing, and analyzing qualitative data. The use of video recordings has been employed within a broad field of qualitative studies, and since it allows the researcher to reobserve situations over and over again and thus discover new facets and aspects of their structure and processes, this technology appears among the standard data-collecting techniques in qualitative research. The most recent qualitative methodological innovations have been catalyzed by the development of the Internet. Not only has the Internet made it possible to collect data in new ways, but also it has created new forms of sociability, which in turn have catalyzed the development of existing qualitative methods.

The e-interview represents one such example of how modern information and communication technology have spurred innovative data-collecting processes. e-Interviewing may be found in a variety of forms, but basically entails a researcher and a research participant (or a group of participants) communicating through a sequence of emails involving questions and answers. As such, e-interviewing appears similar to conventional email communication and thus is quite different from face-to-face interviewing, where interviewer and interviewee interact directly in a real-time social encounter. Obviously (and to some extent similar to telephone interviewing, which is another technologically facilitated data-collection technique), such Internet-based data collection has some advantages: It is cost-effective since it eliminates travel and transcription expenses, it makes it possible to interview people who would not have agreed to participate in a face-to-face interview, and it may provide opportunities for accessing data that would have been difficult to obtain through direct face-to-face interaction (Bampton & Cowton, 2002 ). Thus, some qualitative researchers, such as Holge-Hazelton ( 2002 ), have found that, on the one hand, in researching sensitive and personal topics using e-interviews, there was a remarkable lack of inhibition among participants because rapport was quite easy to establish. On the other hand, because it is a distanced, asynchronous form of interaction, the e-interview provides no access to the nonverbal and tacit signs that are highly valuable in terms of managing the interview process and thus in improving the quality of data collecting (Bampton & Cowton, 2002 ).

Whereas technological innovations and new devices have been adapted by social scientists, thereby facilitating the use of well-established research strategies and methods, technological inventions do also lead to or mediate new forms of social life, which in turn may call for a rethinking of common textbook methods. One illustrating example is found within ethnography. Traditional ethnographic techniques cover a variety of procedures that may assist researchers in their face-to-face dealings with people, be it individual human beings or groups of people. However, as more and more social interactions unfold on the Internet or are otherwise mediated by information technologies, ethnographers and other qualitative researchers have been urged to adapt their strategies to the nature of these rapidly developing online social worlds.

Robert V. Kozinets is a pioneer in the field of adapting traditional ethnography procedures (of entrée, collecting data, making valid interpretations, doing ethical research, and providing possibilities for participant’s feedback). Extending the strengths of ethnographic methods to series of qualitative studies of online communities, he coined the term netnography to grasp the special trade of ethnographic study on online communities. In the words of Kozinets ( 2002 , p. 62), this approach “is a new qualitative research methodology that adapts ethnographic research techniques to study the cultures and communities that are emerging through computer-mediated communications.” Netnography, then, exemplifies how technology affects the nature of social life and how, in turn, qualitative researchers adapt to new and emerging forms of sociability by rethinking and extending well-established techniques and procedures. Netnographies have been conducted in a variety of online communities to grasp their specific meanings and symbolisms. One recent example is O’Leary and Carroll’s study ( 2012 ) of online poker subcultures in which netnography proved to be a useful and cost-effective method of providing insight into the social ecosystem of online poker gamblers and specific attitudes pertaining to this community.

Data Analysis

Not long ago, management and analysis of qualitative data typically involved (and often still does) an overwhelming amount of paperwork. Qualitative researchers buried themselves in their handwritten field notes, interview transcripts, or other documents. Trawling systematically through their material, researchers marked chunks of data and organized these bites of data in more or less complicated index systems, drew models of emerging analytical patterns, discovered data that challenged the emerging conceptual framework, and ended up, in most cases, with a final report, dissertation, or research paper. For today’s qualitative researchers, this caricature lacks an important dimension: the computer, and often also various types of data analysis software.

As pointed out by Raymond Lee and Nigel Fielding ( 2004 ), the launch of the first generations of word-processing programs was a great help to most qualitative researchers. These programs made it possible to store, edit, systematize, and modify collected materials in a far more effective and less time-consuming way. Qualitative researchers no longer had to make large piles of photocopies in which chunks of text were marked or cut out and placed in separate holders since the new word-processing packages provided very useful searching, copying, cutting, and pasting facilities. Similarly, conventional database programs (such as Microsoft Access) found their way into the realm of qualitative research, supporting the analysis of interviews and other qualitative materials (Meyer, Gruppe, & Franz, 2002 ).

In the early 1980s, the first generation of qualitative analysis programs was introduced (Weitzman, 2000 , p. 804). These types of programs, which have later been referred to as computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS, Lee & Fielding, 1995 ), facilitated direct coding of the data and subsequent searches in the coded material. Later versions of these first generations of CAQDAS allowed for quick assessments of overlapping or interrelating concepts and retrieval of data on specific themes from participants with assigned specific attribute values (Lee & Fielding, 2004 ). Such facilities support the more sophisticated and conceptual work of qualitative research since they enable the systematic investigation of emergent patterns and relationships in the data. These later generations of programs that assist more complex and interpretive analytic tasks have been termed theory builders since they contain tools and procedures that support the development of theoretical schemes and conceptual frameworks. Some of these programs also support collaborative qualitative research processes, allowing members of a research team to merge their analytic work in an integrated project and, similarly, to assess quality measures such as intercoder reliability. Furthermore, some packages support the integration of various kinds of digitized qualitative data such as photographs, video recordings, and rich text files, and some also contain tools for coding not only in textual data, but also directly in digitized speech and video recordings.

The introduction of computer technology in the processes of collecting, managing, and analyzing qualitative data has triggered important discussions in the research community on the nature of qualitative research and on the limitations and potentials offered by these new technologies. A core issue in these debates has been the possible (and perhaps nonreflected) ways that technology impacts the practice of qualitative research and analysis (Buston, 1997 ). On the one hand, in terms of data analysis software, technological skeptics have expressed concern that most software packages stimulate a specific (code-based) analytic strategy (Seidel, 1991 )—that the widespread use of CAQDAS eventually may result in an unhappy homogenization and convergence toward a certain type of analysis and even toward a new kind of data management orthodoxy (Barry, 1998 ; Coffey, Holbrook, & Atkinson, 1996 ; Welsh, 2002 ); that use of computers and software packages creates a distance between researcher and data and prevents the researcher from immersing him- or herself in the data (Roberts & Wilson, 2002 ); and finally that many software packages are somewhat incompatible with the ambiguous nature of qualitative data and thereby pose a threat to the holistic nature of qualitative research (Kelle, 1995 ; Mason, 2002 ; Weaver & Atkinson, 1994 ). On the other hand, technological optimists (e.g., Richards & Richards, 1998 ) do not neglect the potential pitfalls of nonreflexive use of CAQDAS, but emphasize how software packages enable management and analysis of large pools of qualitative data and that CAQDAS provides procedures for rigorous and transparent analytic work and thus potentially for enhancing the quality of qualitative research. Similarly, optimists also argue that, although the quantitative tools in analysis software may be used recklessly, sensible use may provide the researcher with a quick and thought-stimulating overview of characteristic patterns or indicate possible relations or hypotheses to be explored. The powerful search engines at the heart of most CAQDAS packages are also effective tools for improving the validity of analysis, which is also the case concerning the visualizing or model-building facilities with direct data access. Although this somewhat exaggerated polarization between technological skeptics and optimists is grounded in the nature and specific features of the available software packages, the different positions often also reflect more fundamental differences in terms of qualitative methodology approaches. Researchers within the phenomenological tradition who emphasize the subjective understanding and interpretation of behavior and verbalizations often tend to view CAQDAS more negatively than qualitative researchers working within the paradigm of grounded theory, content analysis, or other approaches that may profit from the coding and quantification tools available in many programs (Berg, 2003 , p. 266).

From this technological history, it appears that technological advances have transformed and advanced key elements in the practice of qualitative research (i.e., collecting, managing, and analyzing data). Technological developments (sometimes carried out by qualitative researchers themselves in collaboration with technicians and computer engineers) have broadened the methodological repertoire of qualitative researchers and have brought about new ways of gathering, managing, and analyzing data. Thus, technological innovations have changed and transformed the practical tasks of qualitative research as well as its scope and potentials. As a result of technological development, qualitative researchers today spend less time recording and producing data than they did a few decades ago, just as new ways of working with and looking at data became possible with the launch of analysis software and as audio and video recordings enabled the researcher to store and return to situations as they originally appeared. The technological history of qualitative research thus reminds us that qualitative researchers continually reflect on and adjust their methods not only to fit the actual phenomenon under study, but also to fit a broader milieu of cultural factors such as technological innovations (Markle et al., 2011 ).

Concluding Thoughts about the Future

It would be no exaggeration to conclude that, during the past decades, the broad church of qualitative research has reached a strong position within the human and social sciences. As our six histories have suggested, social, cultural, material, intellectual, and technological changes have spurred the emergence of new qualitative methods and innovations of well-known and celebrated approaches. Furthermore, strong efforts to describe and delineate qualitative procedures and research guidelines (in textbooks and qualitative curricula at universities) within the variety of approaches from grounded theory, content analysis, interaction process analysis, discourse analysis, and others have contributed to the relative success and widespread acceptance of qualitative research as “real science” in the research community as well as in the public sphere. As qualitative researchers, we welcome this situation. However, it might be fruitful to consider the possible, often neglected side effect of this “scientification” of qualitative research. Many years ago, Valerie Janesick warned qualitative researchers against the pitfall that cultivating and outlining procedures of qualitative methods could result in researchers losing sight of the subject matter and thus gradually undermining the potential of qualitative research. Like others, she referred to this tendency as methodolatry that she designated

a combination of method and idolatry, to describe a preoccupation with selecting and defending methods to the exclusion of the actual substance of the story being told. Methodolatry is the slavish attachment and devotion to method that so often overtakes the discourse in the education and human service fields. (Janesick, 1994 , p. 215)

Whether methodolatry in the qualitative research community is interpreted as an expression of some sort of physics envy among qualitative researchers or as an adjustment of qualitative research to the public demand for evidence-based knowledge (which often is confused with positivist and experimental studies), the consequences of such qualitative methodological fetishism might be detrimental for qualitative research. Psychologist Kerry Chamberlain has discussed how privileging questions of method over all other important questions pertaining to the research process deprives qualitative research of its distinctive characteristics as a creative, flexible, interpretive enterprise with a strong critical potential. If qualitative research is confused with categorizing and illustrating talk, instead of interpreting and theorizing the contents of it, and if qualitative researchers uncritically adopt conceptions of validity and reliability from positivism and fail to acknowledge the ideological base of the trade, we will compromise essential aspects of our historical legacy (Chamberlain, 2000 ) and perhaps even the raison d’ être of qualitative research.

We make no claim that methodolatry is standard among qualitative researchers. However, we have registered that discussions of such tendencies have emerged within several subfields of qualitative research. Some (e.g., Steiner 2002 ) have even concluded that the majority of qualitative research could be characterized as scientistic because of its concern with generalizability, objectivity, and rationality. Others have used George Ritzer’s ( 2008 ) McDonaldization thesis to argue that we are witnessing a McDonaldization of qualitative research. According to Ritzer, the cultural process of McDonaldization is characterized by efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control—all of which seem to favor standardized methodologies in qualitative research. Nancarrow and colleagues concluded the following about the impact of McDonaldization on qualitative research:

Just as McWorld creates “a common world taste around common logos, advertising slogans, stars, songs, brand names, jingles and trademarks” [ … ], the qualitative research world also seems to be moving towards a common world taste for an instantly recognisable and acceptable research method that can be deployed fast. (Nancarrow, Vir, & Barker, 2005 , p. 297)

With this risk in mind, we find it appropriate to remind ourselves of the core values and characteristics of qualitative research. Privileging method over the subject matter of research and developing rigid methodological straitjackets will not bring qualitative research closer to “the royal road of scientificity” (Lather, 2005 , p. 12), but rather the opposite. Only by reminding ourselves of our historical legacy and embracing the unpredictable, flexible, and messy nature of qualitative research can we practice, develop, and fertilize our trade.

Taking a look into the future of qualitative research necessarily involves a reflection on the possible lines of development within the field of computer-assisted qualitative research. Since technological advances keep a steady pace and since qualitative researchers continuously seek out the potential of newly available research technologies, innovations that strengthen the nature and widen the scope of qualitative research are to be expected. In the early 2000s, it was still considered an open question whether the development of voice-recognition software could lead to computer-supported interview transcription (Flick, 2002 , p. 17). At present, however, some voice-recognition software packages have transcription modes and speech-to-text modes that support the transformation of (certain kinds) of talk into text. Although the speech-to-text software still needs some improvement to free research assistants or secretaries from the work of transcription, reaching this goal is not at the forefront of the innovative efforts put forward by the proponents of computer-facilitated qualitative research. The cutting-edge developments of CAQDAS seem to point in new and interesting directions. One emerging and promising field is the integration of geographical information systems with the use of CAQDAS. Qualitative researchers such as Fielding and Cisneros ( 2009 ) and Verd and Porcel ( 2012 ) described how data from a geographical information system could be integrated in software packages supporting qualitative analysis. Thus, Verd and Porcel applied a form of qualitative geographical information system in a study of an urban transformation project in the city of Barcelona to investigate the social production of urban space. And in addition to opening a completely new strand of qualitative urban research (or perhaps, more correctly, revitalizing the urban sociology of the early Chicagoans by adding new data and technologies) that stimulates a new form of sensitivity toward the spatial dimensions of the social world, such creative synthesis of geographical information system technology and CAQDAS has added new concepts to the vocabulary of qualitative research, such as geocoding or georeferencing, or “the type of information processing that consists in the geographical localization and placing of qualitative material such as photographs, field notes, text fragments of documents and any other information” (Verd & Porcel, 2012 , para. 14). The CAQDAS trend in qualitative research can be seen as being aligned with the scientistic push for standardization, but it can also be looked at in a more balanced way. Although uncritical use of CAQDAS admittedly might fuel processes of methodolatry (stimulating the technical side over the interpretive side), there still seems to be strong potential in using CAQDAS to strengthen the qualitative investigation of some forms of audiovisual data (such as video data) or data sources (geographical and spatial) that until recently have been used primarily by quantitative social researchers. The fruitful mixing of qualitative analysis software with seemingly nonqualitative data rests on the creative and imaginative work of qualitative researchers that dare challenge traditional conceptions such as the sharp demarcations of qualitative and quantitative research. This might be an example of a more general development related to the whole mixed methods movement.

Other contemporary qualitative researchers argue that we must move in the opposite direction of methodolatry. The traditions that are prevalent in the different editions of The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research , edited by Denzin and Lincoln, favor a more political, even activist, attitude to qualitative research, which is based on ethical values of care and community (rather than validity and reliability) and employs aesthetic means (e.g., borrowed from literature and the arts) to favor social justice. Today, the tension between those on the one hand, who seek to use qualitative methods to do “normal science” (in a Kuhnian sense) and employ standardized formats to communicate their findings, and those on the other hand, who experiment with non- and even antimethodological approaches (e.g., drama, poetry, autoethnography), is central to the field of qualitative research. The time might have come to ask if there is anything that holds the many practices together that go by the name qualitative research—other than the name itself. Some scholars give a negative answer and go so far as to argue that we are—or should be—in a position of “post” qualitative research (St. Pierre, 2011 ), meaning that the term has lost its rhetorical force and simply freezes inquiry rather than setting our thinking free. Others (e.g., Hammersley, 2011 ) found that the current fragmentation and experimentation in qualitative research risks rendering qualitative research redundant in the eyes of society. A field with so much inner tension might not be taken seriously.

Our goal in this context is not to settle this discussion once and for all. As the historical contributions presented in this chapter demonstrate, qualitative research represents a range of rich and vibrant approaches to the study of human lives and social phenomena. As we have seen in this chapter, the term itself—qualitative research—is barely 100 years old, and we are confident that if the term is no longer useful, then researchers of the future will have to invent other concepts to designate the process of studying our social and personal worlds. That it is worthwhile and necessary to study ourselves as human beings, with all the qualitative characteristics of our experiences and actions, seems to be as true as ever. And the fact that the landscape of qualitative research is extremely variegated might not be too surprising given the complexities of the subject matter.

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Qualitative Research Topics & Ideas For Students

Do you have difficulty finding a qualitative research title for your project? If you are, you need not worry because you are not alone. However, there are many unique qualitative titles you can explore for your research. You just need a few qualitative research title examples to get you started. Qualitative research is focused on data obtained through a researcher’s first-hand observations, natural setting recording, artifacts, case studies, documents, questionnaires, and interviews. The findings in qualitative research are usually non-numerical. Also, it is common in humanities and social sciences. This post provides over 100 qualitative research topics you can consider.

• The Best Qualitative Research Topics That Impress the Teacher

Exceptional Qualitative Research Topics In Social Science

Qualitative research title examples for students, fantastic examples of qualitative research titles, good topics to start for qualitative research, qualitative research topics in education, quick examples of qualitative research topics, qualitative research topics in the philippines, qualitative researches topics about humanity & social science, great choices of qualitative research title examples, qualitative research topics for students to think about, our examples of the best qualitative research topics that impress the teacher.

An excellent research topic will help you earn a good grade. Consider any example of a qualitative research title from the following options:

• The impacts of social media on physical social engagement in society
• The benefits of treating mental disorders with medication
• The effects of Gender-Based Violence on women’s social lives in rural areas
• The decline of academic pursuit in third-world countries
• Sexual workers: the stigma they experience
• How has the promotion of feminist values influenced workplaces?
• Free education: its impact in third-world countries
• What is the correlation between education and success?
• Ableism: its effects on disabled people in society
• Food insecurity in third-world nations

The topic of your research paper can influence how easily you can conduct your study and draw conclusions.

Here are fantastic examples of qualitative research titles:

• Female harm: how it is influenced by culture
• The socioeconomic impacts of free education
• The link between food insecurity and poor performance in schools
• Alcoholism among college students: a critical study
• How to mitigate child labor in our society
• The root causes of child labor in Latin America
• The stigma of living with transmissive medical conditions
• The root cause of the stigma of people living with disabilities
• How to identify depression in small children
• Signs of autism in kids below two years old

Choosing a qualitative research topic is not a task you should take lightly because it can influence your performance. Here are some noteworthy qualitative research titles examples:

• Basic patient care policies in developing nations
• The impacts of alcoholism on education
• Adult learning: what does it entail?
• Homeschooling: Is it the latest trend after the pandemic?
• Does computer literacy influence the quality of education kids enjoy?
• How to effectively teach students with learning disabilities
• The relationship between poor education systems and crime rates in third-world countries
• Student bullying: the psychological impacts
• Should high school students go through university preparedness programs?
• research writing in high schools: its significance

Are you looking for qualitative research topic examples to start your study? Below are some creative examples to consider:

• Remote tests: are they as effective as in-class tests?
• The value of social activities in academic institutions
• Why should healthcare be free in all countries?
• The implications of racist laws on society
• The reception of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments
• What is the difference between foreign policies in first-world and third-world nations?
• Racism and Colorism: what is the difference?
• Dissecting the causes of low voter turnouts in the 21 st century
• The challenges of social media on kid’s brain development
• The inclusion of black women in American politics and its impacts

When competing with several brilliant minds, a good research topic can do you greatly. The following qualitative research examples titles are a great place to start:

• Should school uniforms be discarded for high schoolers?
• The need for equal representation in global politics
• The implications of police brutality on politics
• The role of parental care in foster kids
• The distinction between Islamic values and Christian values
• The correlation between political instability and migration
• Sex trafficking and violence against women: what is the link?
• How can global governments eradicate homelessness?
• Fraternities and sororities: are they still relevant?
• The role of literature in promoting societal changes

Qualitative research is popular in the education field and other social sciences. Choose a qualitative research title example on the subject of education from the following list:

• Effectively introducing foreign languages in the high school curriculum
• How can teachers help students with disabilities improve their learning?
• The link between social activities and comprehension among students
• Research writing in high schools: is it necessary?
• How has virtual learning influenced teacher-student relationships?
• The implications of allowing smartphones in classes
• Should all schools introduce sign language lessons in their curriculum?
• Student loans: their impacts on black students
• The impacts of race on college acceptance rates
• Poverty and education: what is the link?
• Ethnic and socioeconomic causes of poor school attendance in developing worlds
• Various teaching methods and their efficiency
• Efficient teaching methods for children below two years
• Why do students perform better in humanities than in sciences?
• The difference between college acceptance and completion in most nations
• Remote learning in developing countries
• What are the best ways of approaching bullying in schools?
• How do teachers promote inequality among students?
• Does social class influence academic performance negatively or positively?
• How do teachers shape their students’ personalities?

Coming up with a qualitative research title can be hard because of the numerous subject areas and the issue of uniqueness. Therefore, we have prepared the following qualitative title examples for you:

• How to promote oral learning in classrooms
• Political instability in developing countries: its economic impacts
• The impacts of weather on social activities
• Boredom and poor-decision making: the connection
• Exploring the connection between attachment types and love languages
• Socioeconomic impacts of instability on a country
• How does social media impact the perception of reality
• Reality TV shows: are they a true reflection of reality?
• How culture applies to different age groups
• Is social media influencing the loss of cultural values?

You can base your research topic on a specific region or nation, like the Philippines. A sample qualitative research title can get you started. You can pick a sample qualitative research title from the ideas below:

• Why are so many Philippines residents migrating to America?
• The impact of politics on migration in the Philippines
• How has violence led to food insecurity in rural areas in the Philippines?
• The Philippine education system: an overview
• How cultural norms influence social activities in the Philippines
• Gender roles in the Philippines society
• How popular Filipino cultures have served as agents of social change in the nation
• The link between male dominance and GBV in the Philippines
• Barriers to clean hygiene in health centers in the Philippines
• The spread of COVID in rural areas in the Philippines

Most top performers in research subjects attribute their success to choosing the best title for qualitative research. Here are some qualitative research topics about humanities and social science to promote good performance:

• The impact of poor market rivalry on supply and demand
• The role of parents in shaping kids’ morals
• Is social media the root cause of poor societal morals?
• How does alcohol impact a person’s normal behavior?
• How often should adults engage in sporting activities?
• Children’s eating habits and their influences
• Low socioeconomic backgrounds and their impacts on self-esteem
• The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world’s views on viral diseases
• How can school-going kids manage depression
• Causes of mental challenges among school-going kids

Finding a good topic for qualitative research is a critical task that requires a lot of thought and research. However, we have simplified the process with the following qualitative topic ideas:

• Pop music and erratic youth behavior: is there a link?
• How do public figures influence cultures?
• Ideas for improving healthcare in developing nations
• Possible solutions for alleviating the food crisis in developing nations
• New ways of mitigating viral diseases
• Social media trends among the elderly
• Quarantine as a mitigation approach for infectious diseases
• Promoting social justice in patriarchal societies
• Worrying trends among the young population
• Emerging marketing trends in 2023

Qualitative research for college and high school students helps improve reading, writing, and intellectual skills. Here are some qualitative research examples and topic ideas for students :

• How to detect and prevent natural disasters beforehand
• Can the whole world have the same education system?
• What is the most effective therapy for patients recuperating from brain surgery?
• Possible solutions for promoting ethical practices in telehealth
• Can addicts overcome addiction without therapy?
• The latest technology trends and their impacts?
• How can global governments promote mental health awareness?
• Have smartphones caused reduced attention spans among users?
• Sexual violence in rural areas
• The introduction of Islam in African nations

We Are Here for You

Qualitative research is an investigative analysis of intangible or inexact data, mostly non-numerical. The title of qualitative research you choose will guide your entire research process and influence its conclusions. Do you need a paper or an example of a research title qualitative topic? Our expert team is ready to write it for you.

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StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2024 Jan-.

StatPearls [Internet].

Qualitative study.

Steven Tenny ; Janelle M. Brannan ; Grace D. Brannan .

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Last Update: September 18, 2022 .

• Introduction

Qualitative research is a type of research that explores and provides deeper insights into real-world problems. [1] Instead of collecting numerical data points or intervene or introduce treatments just like in quantitative research, qualitative research helps generate hypotheses as well as further investigate and understand quantitative data. Qualitative research gathers participants' experiences, perceptions, and behavior. It answers the hows and whys instead of how many or how much. It could be structured as a stand-alone study, purely relying on qualitative data or it could be part of mixed-methods research that combines qualitative and quantitative data. This review introduces the readers to some basic concepts, definitions, terminology, and application of qualitative research.

Qualitative research at its core, ask open-ended questions whose answers are not easily put into numbers such as ‘how’ and ‘why’. [2] Due to the open-ended nature of the research questions at hand, qualitative research design is often not linear in the same way quantitative design is. [2] One of the strengths of qualitative research is its ability to explain processes and patterns of human behavior that can be difficult to quantify. [3] Phenomena such as experiences, attitudes, and behaviors can be difficult to accurately capture quantitatively, whereas a qualitative approach allows participants themselves to explain how, why, or what they were thinking, feeling, and experiencing at a certain time or during an event of interest. Quantifying qualitative data certainly is possible, but at its core, qualitative data is looking for themes and patterns that can be difficult to quantify and it is important to ensure that the context and narrative of qualitative work are not lost by trying to quantify something that is not meant to be quantified.

However, while qualitative research is sometimes placed in opposition to quantitative research, where they are necessarily opposites and therefore ‘compete’ against each other and the philosophical paradigms associated with each, qualitative and quantitative work are not necessarily opposites nor are they incompatible. [4] While qualitative and quantitative approaches are different, they are not necessarily opposites, and they are certainly not mutually exclusive. For instance, qualitative research can help expand and deepen understanding of data or results obtained from quantitative analysis. For example, say a quantitative analysis has determined that there is a correlation between length of stay and level of patient satisfaction, but why does this correlation exist? This dual-focus scenario shows one way in which qualitative and quantitative research could be integrated together.

Examples of Qualitative Research Approaches

Ethnography

Ethnography as a research design has its origins in social and cultural anthropology, and involves the researcher being directly immersed in the participant’s environment. [2] Through this immersion, the ethnographer can use a variety of data collection techniques with the aim of being able to produce a comprehensive account of the social phenomena that occurred during the research period. [2] That is to say, the researcher’s aim with ethnography is to immerse themselves into the research population and come out of it with accounts of actions, behaviors, events, etc. through the eyes of someone involved in the population. Direct involvement of the researcher with the target population is one benefit of ethnographic research because it can then be possible to find data that is otherwise very difficult to extract and record.

Grounded Theory

Grounded Theory is the “generation of a theoretical model through the experience of observing a study population and developing a comparative analysis of their speech and behavior.” [5] As opposed to quantitative research which is deductive and tests or verifies an existing theory, grounded theory research is inductive and therefore lends itself to research that is aiming to study social interactions or experiences. [3] [2] In essence, Grounded Theory’s goal is to explain for example how and why an event occurs or how and why people might behave a certain way. Through observing the population, a researcher using the Grounded Theory approach can then develop a theory to explain the phenomena of interest.

Phenomenology

Phenomenology is defined as the “study of the meaning of phenomena or the study of the particular”. [5] At first glance, it might seem that Grounded Theory and Phenomenology are quite similar, but upon careful examination, the differences can be seen. At its core, phenomenology looks to investigate experiences from the perspective of the individual. [2] Phenomenology is essentially looking into the ‘lived experiences’ of the participants and aims to examine how and why participants behaved a certain way, from their perspective . Herein lies one of the main differences between Grounded Theory and Phenomenology. Grounded Theory aims to develop a theory for social phenomena through an examination of various data sources whereas Phenomenology focuses on describing and explaining an event or phenomena from the perspective of those who have experienced it.

Narrative Research

One of qualitative research’s strengths lies in its ability to tell a story, often from the perspective of those directly involved in it. Reporting on qualitative research involves including details and descriptions of the setting involved and quotes from participants. This detail is called ‘thick’ or ‘rich’ description and is a strength of qualitative research. Narrative research is rife with the possibilities of ‘thick’ description as this approach weaves together a sequence of events, usually from just one or two individuals, in the hopes of creating a cohesive story, or narrative. [2] While it might seem like a waste of time to focus on such a specific, individual level, understanding one or two people’s narratives for an event or phenomenon can help to inform researchers about the influences that helped shape that narrative. The tension or conflict of differing narratives can be “opportunities for innovation”. [2]

Research Paradigm

Research paradigms are the assumptions, norms, and standards that underpin different approaches to research. Essentially, research paradigms are the ‘worldview’ that inform research. [4] It is valuable for researchers, both qualitative and quantitative, to understand what paradigm they are working within because understanding the theoretical basis of research paradigms allows researchers to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the approach being used and adjust accordingly. Different paradigms have different ontology and epistemologies . Ontology is defined as the "assumptions about the nature of reality” whereas epistemology is defined as the “assumptions about the nature of knowledge” that inform the work researchers do. [2] It is important to understand the ontological and epistemological foundations of the research paradigm researchers are working within to allow for a full understanding of the approach being used and the assumptions that underpin the approach as a whole. Further, it is crucial that researchers understand their own ontological and epistemological assumptions about the world in general because their assumptions about the world will necessarily impact how they interact with research. A discussion of the research paradigm is not complete without describing positivist, postpositivist, and constructivist philosophies.

Positivist vs Postpositivist

To further understand qualitative research, we need to discuss positivist and postpositivist frameworks. Positivism is a philosophy that the scientific method can and should be applied to social as well as natural sciences. [4] Essentially, positivist thinking insists that the social sciences should use natural science methods in its research which stems from positivist ontology that there is an objective reality that exists that is fully independent of our perception of the world as individuals. Quantitative research is rooted in positivist philosophy, which can be seen in the value it places on concepts such as causality, generalizability, and replicability.

Conversely, postpositivists argue that social reality can never be one hundred percent explained but it could be approximated. [4] Indeed, qualitative researchers have been insisting that there are “fundamental limits to the extent to which the methods and procedures of the natural sciences could be applied to the social world” and therefore postpositivist philosophy is often associated with qualitative research. [4] An example of positivist versus postpositivist values in research might be that positivist philosophies value hypothesis-testing, whereas postpositivist philosophies value the ability to formulate a substantive theory.

Constructivist

Constructivism is a subcategory of postpositivism. Most researchers invested in postpositivist research are constructivist as well, meaning they think there is no objective external reality that exists but rather that reality is constructed. Constructivism is a theoretical lens that emphasizes the dynamic nature of our world. “Constructivism contends that individuals’ views are directly influenced by their experiences, and it is these individual experiences and views that shape their perspective of reality”. [6] Essentially, Constructivist thought focuses on how ‘reality’ is not a fixed certainty and experiences, interactions, and backgrounds give people a unique view of the world. Constructivism contends, unlike in positivist views, that there is not necessarily an ‘objective’ reality we all experience. This is the ‘relativist’ ontological view that reality and the world we live in are dynamic and socially constructed. Therefore, qualitative scientific knowledge can be inductive as well as deductive.” [4]

So why is it important to understand the differences in assumptions that different philosophies and approaches to research have? Fundamentally, the assumptions underpinning the research tools a researcher selects provide an overall base for the assumptions the rest of the research will have and can even change the role of the researcher themselves. [2] For example, is the researcher an ‘objective’ observer such as in positivist quantitative work? Or is the researcher an active participant in the research itself, as in postpositivist qualitative work? Understanding the philosophical base of the research undertaken allows researchers to fully understand the implications of their work and their role within the research, as well as reflect on their own positionality and bias as it pertains to the research they are conducting.

Data Sampling 

The better the sample represents the intended study population, the more likely the researcher is to encompass the varying factors at play. The following are examples of participant sampling and selection: [7]

• Purposive sampling- selection based on the researcher’s rationale in terms of being the most informative.
• Criterion sampling-selection based on pre-identified factors.
• Convenience sampling- selection based on availability.
• Snowball sampling- the selection is by referral from other participants or people who know potential participants.
• Extreme case sampling- targeted selection of rare cases.
• Typical case sampling-selection based on regular or average participants. 

Data Collection and Analysis

Qualitative research uses several techniques including interviews, focus groups, and observation. [1] [2] [3] Interviews may be unstructured, with open-ended questions on a topic and the interviewer adapts to the responses. Structured interviews have a predetermined number of questions that every participant is asked. It is usually one on one and is appropriate for sensitive topics or topics needing an in-depth exploration. Focus groups are often held with 8-12 target participants and are used when group dynamics and collective views on a topic are desired. Researchers can be a participant-observer to share the experiences of the subject or a non-participant or detached observer.

While quantitative research design prescribes a controlled environment for data collection, qualitative data collection may be in a central location or in the environment of the participants, depending on the study goals and design. Qualitative research could amount to a large amount of data. Data is transcribed which may then be coded manually or with the use of Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software or CAQDAS such as ATLAS.ti or NVivo. [8] [9] [10]

After the coding process, qualitative research results could be in various formats. It could be a synthesis and interpretation presented with excerpts from the data. [11] Results also could be in the form of themes and theory or model development.

Dissemination

To standardize and facilitate the dissemination of qualitative research outcomes, the healthcare team can use two reporting standards. The Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research or COREQ is a 32-item checklist for interviews and focus groups. [12] The Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR) is a checklist covering a wider range of qualitative research. [13]

Examples of Application

Many times a research question will start with qualitative research. The qualitative research will help generate the research hypothesis which can be tested with quantitative methods. After the data is collected and analyzed with quantitative methods, a set of qualitative methods can be used to dive deeper into the data for a better understanding of what the numbers truly mean and their implications. The qualitative methods can then help clarify the quantitative data and also help refine the hypothesis for future research. Furthermore, with qualitative research researchers can explore subjects that are poorly studied with quantitative methods. These include opinions, individual's actions, and social science research.

A good qualitative study design starts with a goal or objective. This should be clearly defined or stated. The target population needs to be specified. A method for obtaining information from the study population must be carefully detailed to ensure there are no omissions of part of the target population. A proper collection method should be selected which will help obtain the desired information without overly limiting the collected data because many times, the information sought is not well compartmentalized or obtained. Finally, the design should ensure adequate methods for analyzing the data. An example may help better clarify some of the various aspects of qualitative research.

A researcher wants to decrease the number of teenagers who smoke in their community. The researcher could begin by asking current teen smokers why they started smoking through structured or unstructured interviews (qualitative research). The researcher can also get together a group of current teenage smokers and conduct a focus group to help brainstorm factors that may have prevented them from starting to smoke (qualitative research).

In this example, the researcher has used qualitative research methods (interviews and focus groups) to generate a list of ideas of both why teens start to smoke as well as factors that may have prevented them from starting to smoke. Next, the researcher compiles this data. The research found that, hypothetically, peer pressure, health issues, cost, being considered “cool,” and rebellious behavior all might increase or decrease the likelihood of teens starting to smoke.

The researcher creates a survey asking teen participants to rank how important each of the above factors is in either starting smoking (for current smokers) or not smoking (for current non-smokers). This survey provides specific numbers (ranked importance of each factor) and is thus a quantitative research tool.

The researcher can use the results of the survey to focus efforts on the one or two highest-ranked factors. Let us say the researcher found that health was the major factor that keeps teens from starting to smoke, and peer pressure was the major factor that contributed to teens to start smoking. The researcher can go back to qualitative research methods to dive deeper into each of these for more information. The researcher wants to focus on how to keep teens from starting to smoke, so they focus on the peer pressure aspect.

The researcher can conduct interviews and/or focus groups (qualitative research) about what types and forms of peer pressure are commonly encountered, where the peer pressure comes from, and where smoking first starts. The researcher hypothetically finds that peer pressure often occurs after school at the local teen hangouts, mostly the local park. The researcher also hypothetically finds that peer pressure comes from older, current smokers who provide the cigarettes.

The researcher could further explore this observation made at the local teen hangouts (qualitative research) and take notes regarding who is smoking, who is not, and what observable factors are at play for peer pressure of smoking. The researcher finds a local park where many local teenagers hang out and see that a shady, overgrown area of the park is where the smokers tend to hang out. The researcher notes the smoking teenagers buy their cigarettes from a local convenience store adjacent to the park where the clerk does not check identification before selling cigarettes. These observations fall under qualitative research.

If the researcher returns to the park and counts how many individuals smoke in each region of the park, this numerical data would be quantitative research. Based on the researcher's efforts thus far, they conclude that local teen smoking and teenagers who start to smoke may decrease if there are fewer overgrown areas of the park and the local convenience store does not sell cigarettes to underage individuals.

The researcher could try to have the parks department reassess the shady areas to make them less conducive to the smokers or identify how to limit the sales of cigarettes to underage individuals by the convenience store. The researcher would then cycle back to qualitative methods of asking at-risk population their perceptions of the changes, what factors are still at play, as well as quantitative research that includes teen smoking rates in the community, the incidence of new teen smokers, among others. [14] [15]

Qualitative research functions as a standalone research design or in combination with quantitative research to enhance our understanding of the world. Qualitative research uses techniques including structured and unstructured interviews, focus groups, and participant observation to not only help generate hypotheses which can be more rigorously tested with quantitative research but also to help researchers delve deeper into the quantitative research numbers, understand what they mean, and understand what the implications are.  Qualitative research provides researchers with a way to understand what is going on, especially when things are not easily categorized. [16]

• Issues of Concern

As discussed in the sections above, quantitative and qualitative work differ in many different ways, including the criteria for evaluating them. There are four well-established criteria for evaluating quantitative data: internal validity, external validity, reliability, and objectivity. The correlating concepts in qualitative research are credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability. [4] [11] The corresponding quantitative and qualitative concepts can be seen below, with the quantitative concept is on the left, and the qualitative concept is on the right:

• Internal validity--- Credibility
• External validity---Transferability
• Reliability---Dependability
• Objectivity---Confirmability

In conducting qualitative research, ensuring these concepts are satisfied and well thought out can mitigate potential issues from arising. For example, just as a researcher will ensure that their quantitative study is internally valid so should qualitative researchers ensure that their work has credibility.  

Indicators such as triangulation and peer examination can help evaluate the credibility of qualitative work.

• Triangulation: Triangulation involves using multiple methods of data collection to increase the likelihood of getting a reliable and accurate result. In our above magic example, the result would be more reliable by also interviewing the magician, back-stage hand, and the person who "vanished." In qualitative research, triangulation can include using telephone surveys, in-person surveys, focus groups, and interviews as well as surveying an adequate cross-section of the target demographic.
• Peer examination: Results can be reviewed by a peer to ensure the data is consistent with the findings.

‘Thick’ or ‘rich’ description can be used to evaluate the transferability of qualitative research whereas using an indicator such as an audit trail might help with evaluating the dependability and confirmability.

• Thick or rich description is a detailed and thorough description of details, the setting, and quotes from participants in the research. [5] Thick descriptions will include a detailed explanation of how the study was carried out. Thick descriptions are detailed enough to allow readers to draw conclusions and interpret the data themselves, which can help with transferability and replicability.
• Audit trail: An audit trail provides a documented set of steps of how the participants were selected and the data was collected. The original records of information should also be kept (e.g., surveys, notes, recordings).

One issue of concern that qualitative researchers should take into consideration is observation bias. Here are a few examples:

• Hawthorne effect: The Hawthorne effect is the change in participant behavior when they know they are being observed. If a researcher was wanting to identify factors that contribute to employee theft and tells the employees they are going to watch them to see what factors affect employee theft, one would suspect employee behavior would change when they know they are being watched.
• Observer-expectancy effect: Some participants change their behavior or responses to satisfy the researcher's desired effect. This happens in an unconscious manner for the participant so it is important to eliminate or limit transmitting the researcher's views.
• Artificial scenario effect: Some qualitative research occurs in artificial scenarios and/or with preset goals. In such situations, the information may not be accurate because of the artificial nature of the scenario. The preset goals may limit the qualitative information obtained.
• Clinical Significance

Qualitative research by itself or combined with quantitative research helps healthcare providers understand patients and the impact and challenges of the care they deliver. Qualitative research provides an opportunity to generate and refine hypotheses and delve deeper into the data generated by quantitative research. Qualitative research does not exist as an island apart from quantitative research, but as an integral part of research methods to be used for the understanding of the world around us. [17]

• Enhancing Healthcare Team Outcomes

Qualitative research is important for all members of the health care team as all are affected by qualitative research. Qualitative research may help develop a theory or a model for health research that can be further explored by quantitative research.  Much of the qualitative research data acquisition is completed by numerous team members including social works, scientists, nurses, etc.  Within each area of the medical field, there is copious ongoing qualitative research including physician-patient interactions, nursing-patient interactions, patient-environment interactions, health care team function, patient information delivery, etc. 

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Disclosure: Steven Tenny declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

Disclosure: Janelle Brannan declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

Disclosure: Grace Brannan declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

This book is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ), which permits others to distribute the work, provided that the article is not altered or used commercially. You are not required to obtain permission to distribute this article, provided that you credit the author and journal.

• Cite this Page Tenny S, Brannan JM, Brannan GD. Qualitative Study. [Updated 2022 Sep 18]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2024 Jan-.

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• What Is Qualitative Research? | Methods & Examples

What Is Qualitative Research? | Methods & Examples

Published on June 19, 2020 by Pritha Bhandari . Revised on June 22, 2023.

Qualitative research involves collecting and analyzing non-numerical data (e.g., text, video, or audio) to understand concepts, opinions, or experiences. It can be used to gather in-depth insights into a problem or generate new ideas for research.

Qualitative research is the opposite of quantitative research , which involves collecting and analyzing numerical data for statistical analysis.

Qualitative research is commonly used in the humanities and social sciences, in subjects such as anthropology, sociology, education, health sciences, history, etc.

• How does social media shape body image in teenagers?
• How do children and adults interpret healthy eating in the UK?
• What factors influence employee retention in a large organization?
• How is anxiety experienced around the world?
• How can teachers integrate social issues into science curriculums?

Table of contents

Approaches to qualitative research, qualitative research methods, qualitative data analysis, advantages of qualitative research, disadvantages of qualitative research, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about qualitative research.

Qualitative research is used to understand how people experience the world. While there are many approaches to qualitative research, they tend to be flexible and focus on retaining rich meaning when interpreting data.

Common approaches include grounded theory, ethnography , action research , phenomenological research, and narrative research. They share some similarities, but emphasize different aims and perspectives.

Note that qualitative research is at risk for certain research biases including the Hawthorne effect , observer bias , recall bias , and social desirability bias . While not always totally avoidable, awareness of potential biases as you collect and analyze your data can prevent them from impacting your work too much.

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Each of the research approaches involve using one or more data collection methods . These are some of the most common qualitative methods:

• Observations: recording what you have seen, heard, or encountered in detailed field notes.
• Interviews:  personally asking people questions in one-on-one conversations.
• Focus groups: asking questions and generating discussion among a group of people.
• Surveys : distributing questionnaires with open-ended questions.
• Secondary research: collecting existing data in the form of texts, images, audio or video recordings, etc.
• You take field notes with observations and reflect on your own experiences of the company culture.
• You distribute open-ended surveys to employees across all the company’s offices by email to find out if the culture varies across locations.
• You conduct in-depth interviews with employees in your office to learn about their experiences and perspectives in greater detail.

Qualitative researchers often consider themselves “instruments” in research because all observations, interpretations and analyses are filtered through their own personal lens.

For this reason, when writing up your methodology for qualitative research, it’s important to reflect on your approach and to thoroughly explain the choices you made in collecting and analyzing the data.

Qualitative data can take the form of texts, photos, videos and audio. For example, you might be working with interview transcripts, survey responses, fieldnotes, or recordings from natural settings.

Most types of qualitative data analysis share the same five steps:

• Prepare and organize your data. This may mean transcribing interviews or typing up fieldnotes.
• Review and explore your data. Examine the data for patterns or repeated ideas that emerge.
• Develop a data coding system. Based on your initial ideas, establish a set of codes that you can apply to categorize your data.
• Assign codes to the data. For example, in qualitative survey analysis, this may mean going through each participant’s responses and tagging them with codes in a spreadsheet. As you go through your data, you can create new codes to add to your system if necessary.
• Identify recurring themes. Link codes together into cohesive, overarching themes.

There are several specific approaches to analyzing qualitative data. Although these methods share similar processes, they emphasize different concepts.

Qualitative research often tries to preserve the voice and perspective of participants and can be adjusted as new research questions arise. Qualitative research is good for:

• Flexibility

The data collection and analysis process can be adapted as new ideas or patterns emerge. They are not rigidly decided beforehand.

• Natural settings

Data collection occurs in real-world contexts or in naturalistic ways.

• Meaningful insights

Detailed descriptions of people’s experiences, feelings and perceptions can be used in designing, testing or improving systems or products.

• Generation of new ideas

Open-ended responses mean that researchers can uncover novel problems or opportunities that they wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

Researchers must consider practical and theoretical limitations in analyzing and interpreting their data. Qualitative research suffers from:

• Unreliability

The real-world setting often makes qualitative research unreliable because of uncontrolled factors that affect the data.

• Subjectivity

Due to the researcher’s primary role in analyzing and interpreting data, qualitative research cannot be replicated . The researcher decides what is important and what is irrelevant in data analysis, so interpretations of the same data can vary greatly.

• Limited generalizability

Small samples are often used to gather detailed data about specific contexts. Despite rigorous analysis procedures, it is difficult to draw generalizable conclusions because the data may be biased and unrepresentative of the wider population .

• Labor-intensive

Although software can be used to manage and record large amounts of text, data analysis often has to be checked or performed manually.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Chi square goodness of fit test
• Degrees of freedom
• Null hypothesis
• Discourse analysis
• Control groups
• Mixed methods research
• Non-probability sampling
• Quantitative research
• Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Research bias

• Rosenthal effect
• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Selection bias
• Negativity bias
• Status quo bias

Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, while qualitative research deals with words and meanings.

Quantitative methods allow you to systematically measure variables and test hypotheses . Qualitative methods allow you to explore concepts and experiences in more detail.

There are five common approaches to qualitative research :

• Grounded theory involves collecting data in order to develop new theories.
• Ethnography involves immersing yourself in a group or organization to understand its culture.
• Narrative research involves interpreting stories to understand how people make sense of their experiences and perceptions.
• Phenomenological research involves investigating phenomena through people’s lived experiences.
• Action research links theory and practice in several cycles to drive innovative changes.

Data collection is the systematic process by which observations or measurements are gathered in research. It is used in many different contexts by academics, governments, businesses, and other organizations.

There are various approaches to qualitative data analysis , but they all share five steps in common:

• Prepare and organize your data.
• Review and explore your data.
• Develop a data coding system.
• Assign codes to the data.
• Identify recurring themes.

The specifics of each step depend on the focus of the analysis. Some common approaches include textual analysis , thematic analysis , and discourse analysis .

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Qualitative Research in the Post-Modern Era pp 1–27 Cite as

A Brief History of Qualitative Research

• Robert E. White   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8045-164X 3 &
• Karyn Cooper 4  
• First Online: 29 September 2022

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As so often happens with matters of research, it is generally thought that quantitative research is the father of modern qualitative research. At face value, this may be true, but the reality is much more convoluted. In order to gain a perspective on the beginnings of qualitative research, we must return to Ancient Greece.

The question of understanding the other and understanding oneself by understanding the other, that is the goal of what is now called qualitative research. Stephen Kemmis, Charles Sturt University

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Title: fast high-resolution image synthesis with latent adversarial diffusion distillation.

Abstract: Diffusion models are the main driver of progress in image and video synthesis, but suffer from slow inference speed. Distillation methods, like the recently introduced adversarial diffusion distillation (ADD) aim to shift the model from many-shot to single-step inference, albeit at the cost of expensive and difficult optimization due to its reliance on a fixed pretrained DINOv2 discriminator. We introduce Latent Adversarial Diffusion Distillation (LADD), a novel distillation approach overcoming the limitations of ADD. In contrast to pixel-based ADD, LADD utilizes generative features from pretrained latent diffusion models. This approach simplifies training and enhances performance, enabling high-resolution multi-aspect ratio image synthesis. We apply LADD to Stable Diffusion 3 (8B) to obtain SD3-Turbo, a fast model that matches the performance of state-of-the-art text-to-image generators using only four unguided sampling steps. Moreover, we systematically investigate its scaling behavior and demonstrate LADD's effectiveness in various applications such as image editing and inpainting.

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