A Review of Qualitative Methods in Health Communication Research

Abstract

This paper examines the ways that qualitative inquiry can be especially useful for gathering relevant descriptive data that can provide a deep understanding of health communication issues and processes, as well as to provide evidence-based guidance for addressing key challenges of health care delivery and promotion. This article promotes methodological diversity in research designs and illustrates the value of employing qualitative methods such as ethnography and grounded theory in health communication research. It is also provides calls for the application of less-used, unfamiliar qualitative methods such as phenomenology. Our careful bibliographic review of health communication research studies published over the past twenty years was conducted using the Google Scholar search engine (employing key search terms that included “health communication, qualitative, ethnography, phenomenology, grounded theory, and multimethod”) to guide our analysis of the uses of qualitative inquiry in health communication inquiry. Our analysis identified a breadth of qualitative research applications and opportunities for future inquiry. This article concludes with an analysis of challenges in qualitative research and a discussion of the usefulness of multimethodological research to address complex health communication challenges.