Submitted at the National Science Foundation’s Workshop on Interdisciplinary Standards for Qual¬itative Research, May 19-20, 2005
In anticipation of spending two days discussing the question above, I think it would be helpful to make explicit some of my basic underlying assumptions and definitions regarding: (1) What is qualitative research? (2) What are the goals and objectives of qualitative researchers? and (3) What is the range and scope of qualitative data collection and analysis methods? Answering these questions first makes it easier to address issues of standards of rigor and how they might be best applied to the broad range of social science research methods and investigations.