Qualitative Research: Practices and Challenges

Abstract

The 11 articles presented in three thematic sections focus on qualitative research at work, qualitative health research, and teaching and learning qualitative research. The substantive topics are eclectic ranging from young people adjusting to a chronic kidney diagnosis, rural health inequality, intimate partner violence among adolescents, emotional labor of French sales staff to inventive ways to teach students unfamiliar with qualitative research. Methodologically these articles adopt a diverse range of techniques as if current qualitative research practice does not use a unified methodology. It does not. Techniques included the traditional narrative research, unstructured interviews, community based participatory research to the more innovative critical incident and basic content analysis to those that used computer analysis to facilitate qualitative research.