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This article describes methodological strategies, decisions, and issues that emerge when conducting qualitative research. In particular, topics such as situating the research design, sampling considerations, data collection methods, and the analytic and interpretive process are explored. Examples from published research are provided to illustrate the complexities involved in rigorous research.
The blessing and burden of qualitative research is that the depth of understanding this approach is intended to unearth also carries with it a significant responsibility to tell the stories of those with whom researchers come into contact in the most respectful way possible. Our ability to interpret and represent these stories requires great attentiveness to and engagement with all aspects of the research process. Theoretical and methodological decisions reflect who we are as researchers, and influence the way "the word" is written and how a story is ultimately told and retold through qualitative research. Michelle Fine (1994) referred to this dynamic as "working the hyphen" of Self-Other in which the hyphen "both separates and merges personal identities with our inventions of Others" (p. 70). Working the hyphen involves a "messy series of questions about methods, ethics, and epistemologies as we rethink how researchers have spoken 'of' and 'for' Others while occluding ourselves and our own investments" (Fine, p. 70).
This article includes hands-on suggestions for conducting rigorous qualitative research within the context of larger conceptual, theoretical, and ethical issues that emerge as one engages in research in which "the researcher is the instrument" (Merriam, 1998; Patton, 1990) and the "knower and the known" are integrally related (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Because qualitative methodologies are fundamentally anchored in a concern for developing depth of understanding of a particular phenomenon and the construction of meaning that individuals attribute to their experiences, care must be taken to attend to the complex dynamics that emerge.
Although important distinctions in epistemology, theoretical framework, and methodology must be made in designing qualitative studies, several identifiable qualities are characteristic of all qualitative research: Understanding comes from an emic, or insider's, perspective; the researcher is the instrument; research is field based or occurring in natural settings; research is inductive in nature; and research findings depend upon rich description and writing to tell the central story of a phenomenon under investigation (Merriam,...