9
I. General Guidance for Developing Qualitative
Research Projects
The social sciences have a long tradition of
qualitative research. For example, much of
Sociology’s best known foundational scholarship
is qualitative in nature or combines quantitative
and qualitative data and methods, including the
work of Max Weber, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim,
George Herbert Mead, W.E.B. DuBois, William
Foote Whyte, Erving Goffman, Howard Becker,
and Dorothy Smith, among many others. This
broad legacy of ethnographic, interpretative,
archival, and other forms of qualitative research
has expanded in recent decades by a resurgence of
scholarship using both well-established qualitative
data and methods (e.g., field ethnography and
historical sociology) and new forms of evidence
and analysis (e.g., the collection, production,
and interpretation of narrative and visual data).
Despite the prominence of qualitative work in
sociology and other social sciences, there is
limited consensus about the proper standards
of excellence, validity, reliability, credibility,
fundability, and publishability of qualitative
research, especially when compared to the
fairly well-agreed upon standards for judging
quantitative research.
Current debates about methodologies in the social
sciences focus less on the legitimacy of qualitative
research than on the yardsticks for judging quali-
tative research designs, the proper role of theory
in qualitative research, or the best way to present
credible findings and draw convincing conclusions
from qualitative data. There is substantial, though
not unanimous, agreement among sociologists
regarding the evaluation of technical aspects of
a quantitative project, but there is relatively less
agreement about what constitutes a rigorous quali-
tative project. Quantitative researchers routinely
are asked questions about statistical significance,
falsifiability, theory testing, and hypothesis confir-
mation. Which of these questions is appropriate
to ask about a qualitative project is less clearly
agreed upon by those who design and evaluate
qualitative research. Is it possible to establish
equally rigorous (though not necessarily identical)
standards for judging both quantitative and qualita-
tive research? If so, would the identification and
establishment of such standards place qualitative
and quantitative research on more equal footing in
the discipline’s leading journals, funding agencies,
and graduate training programs?
What is “Qualitative Research?”
A qualitative/quantitative divide permeates much
of social science, but this should be seen as a
continuum rather than as a dichotomy. At one end
of this continuum is textbook quantitative research
marked by sharply defined and delineated popula-
tions, cases, and variables, and well-specified theo-
ries and hypotheses. At the opposite end of this
continuum is social research that eschews notions
of populations, cases, and variables altogether and
rejects the possibility of hypothesis testing. In
fact, at this opposite end of the continuum, con-
ventional theory is highly suspect, and the dis-
tinction between researcher and research subject
vanishes. In between these two extremes are many
different research strategies including many hybrid
and combined strategies.
Considerations of the scientific foundations of
qualitative research often are predicated on ac-
ceptance of the idea of “cases” and the notion
that cases have analyzable features that can be
conceived as “variables” (whether or not this
specific term is used), and thus may be the basis
for comparisons of various sorts. Further elaborat-
ing this position, since the characteristics of these
features can differ from one “case” to the next, it
may be productive to look at similarities and dif-
ferences across cases or, more simply, to compare
cases. To the quantitative researcher these meth-
odological and epistemological assertions seem
I. General Guidance for Developing Qualitative Research Projects