Key Ideas

• Qualitative research is an approach that enables researchers to explore in detail social and organizational characteristics and individual behaviors and their meanings. To obtain this information, qualitative researchers depend on primary, face-to-face data collection through observations and in-depth interviews.
• Qualitative research can be carried out through case studies, interviews with people who have relevant experiences, and observations in the places where study participants live, work, shop, and engage in leisure time activities.
• Qualitative research is always theoretically guided. The degree to which theory specifies or initiates and guides the process of data collection varies depending on which scientific paradigm the researcher prefers.
• The main qualitative paradigmatic choices are positivist (driven by theory); interpretivist (driven by the views of those in the study setting); and critical (shaped by the belief that individual behaviors are the result of systemic or structural inequities, such as discriminatory policies and practices that exclude some people from resources, policies, and power).
• Qualitative researchers can also choose participatory and collaborative approaches that involve stakeholders in research decisions and activities.
• Qualitative research designs must take into consideration the study population, the study sampling strategy and sample size, the study location, duration, and timing.
• Steps followed in qualitative research include posing study questions, selecting the guiding theoretical model, choosing data collection methods at the individual or cultural (community or organizational) level, data collection, analysis, and reporting the results to main audiences.

The focus of this chapter is on the methodology, methods, and research tools that qualitative researchers use. I define the conduct of qualitative research as using multiple qualitative (and sometimes quantitative) approaches to data collection that are designed to help the researcher learn about and obtain the perspectives, meanings, and understandings of people who live and work in specific social settings. I will differentiate between qualitative methodology and methods. Methodology refers to the blueprint or set of decisions and procedures that governs a study and renders it understandable to others and is subject to inquiry, critique, and replication or adaptation to other settings. I use methods to mean the data collection techniques that qualitative researchers use to gather data within the framework of the study that is defined by its methodology.

In the first part of this chapter I outline the kinds of decisions that qualitative researchers make about who and what to study, for what reasons, and with what tools. I also address the idea of formative research modeling, a way of summarizing the researcher's prior and then growing knowledge of the research question and the field situation. In the second part of the chapter I describe the most common tools that qualitative researchers use to collect their data. Readers are referred to other resources (for example, see Chapter Three) for details on data analysis, as this is not the focus of the chapter. Nevertheless, researchers should have from the outset a fairly clear sense of why they are collecting data using the methods or tools they have chosen, and of how they plan to organize, manage, analyze, and integrate the data they collect.

One of the unique features of qualitative research is the face-to-face nature of data collection. Some qualitative researchers choose to involve themselves in the field or the study setting and to participate in it. Participation entails presence in the location, including residence there; engagement in the activities of daily living of individuals and families; and attendance at special events, rituals, rites of passage, and other one-time or irregular events that illustrate important features of the study context related to the research topic. Other qualitative researchers may find it difficult or impossible to immerse themselves in a specific field setting and instead may choose to gather their data through various forms of reporting obtained directly from respondents. But whether the research involves participating in daily life or conducting interviews, the basic forms of qualitative data collection involve the direct, face-to-face interaction of researchers with members of the study population. Researchers make choices about how and where this interaction takes place. In the end, however, researcher style, personal and interactional skills, and judgments are all critical in obtaining, analyzing, and interpreting data. For these reasons, qualitative researchers often take great pains to describe themselves and to locate their identities in time and space, and through class, ethnicity, race, and other signifiers. In this way, they enable others to assess what biases or other factors might affect the replication of similar research, making it difficult or even impossible.