THE NATURE OF QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH
Qualitative research is an umbrella category that
encompasses various kinds of studies. The terms
used by qualitative researchers often depend on
our fields or which “how to” books guide our
studies. Confusion about qualitative work is
partly due to the fact that qualitative approaches
developed somewhat simultaneously in separate
fields (e.g., symbolic interaction in psychology,
phenomenology in philosophy, discourse analysis
and interpretive work in cultural studies, conversation
analysis in sociology and sociolinguistics,
ethnography in anthropology, naturalistic inquiry
in education, life story and oral history in history
and folklore). As the boundaries between disciplines
blur, we have come to realize that distinctive
terms have similar meanings. Qualitative,
naturalistic, interpretive, field or case study, inductive
research, and ethnography often are used
interchangeably or to refer to the same methods
(Merriam, 1998). Inquiry, research, method, design,
and study also are basically synonymous. We
list a number of types of qualitative studies in Figure
1.