ilog3 Qualitative Research Methods Introduction
Build a coherent qualitative study from worldview and research relationship through evidence collection, analysis, writing, and quality review.
First principle: alignment
Do not begin by selecting a fashionable technique. Align:
phenomenon → paradigm → question → research relationship → sample → data → analysis → claim → quality test → writing form
When any link changes, revisit the others.
Workflow
- Define the phenomenon and purpose. State what experience, interaction, culture, practice, process, or inequality needs understanding, and why qualitative inquiry fits. Read chapters/ch01-paradigms-and-ethics.md.
- Choose a theoretical orientation. Use lifeworld and hermeneutics for lived meaning; symbolic interactionism for meaning in interaction; grounded theory for conceptual process; or a critical/practice orientation for power and transformation. Treat these as commitments, not labels.
- Construct a flexible design. Specify question, setting, relationship, case boundaries, sampling logic, methods, analysis, and quality strategies, while allowing iteration. Read chapters/ch02-research-design.md.
- Sample for information and variation. Select cases deliberately and document inclusion, access, missing voices, negative cases, and stopping logic.
- Collect relationally. Combine observation, in-depth interviewing, focus groups, and materials when the question benefits. Read chapters/ch03-data-collection.md.
- Analyze recursively. Organize data, read holistically, code openly, connect categories, focus the account, compare cases, write memos, and return to data. Read chapters/ch04-data-analysis.md.
- Write as interpretation. Make voice, positioning, evidence, time structure, audience, and editorial power explicit. Read chapters/ch05-writing-and-representation.md.
- Test rigor and relevance. Use prolonged engagement, triangulation, participant feedback, negative cases, peer review, and an audit trail where appropriate. Read chapters/ch06-rigor-and-validity.md.
- Integrate quantitative evidence only with a rationale. Decide sequence, priority, point of integration, and what contradiction means. Read chapters/ch07-method-integration.md.
Method router
- Participant observation: practices, routines, interaction, tacit rules, and setting.
- In-depth interview: experience, meanings, accounts, decisions, and sensitive or dispersed events.
- Focus group: shared language, contestation, norms, and group-produced positions.
- Ethnography: cultural patterns and social organization through sustained field engagement.
- Oral history: remembered experience as historically situated evidence.
- Narrative inquiry: temporal and storied organization of experience.
- Grounded theory: iterative generation of concepts and explanatory relations.
- Action research: inquiry joined to collaborative intervention and reflection.
Required project output
Provide the problem and question, paradigm and researcher position, case and sample, access and ethics, relationship plan, method protocol, data management, analysis trail, quality strategy, writing form, limitations, and intended practical or theoretical contribution. Use patterns.md.
Guardrails
- Do not define qualitative research merely as nonnumeric research.
- Do not mix paradigms by borrowing vocabulary without reconciling assumptions.
- Do not confuse a data-collection technique with a complete methodology.
- Do not treat rapport as neutral access; relationships create opportunities, obligations, and distortions.
- Do not use member feedback as a vote that mechanically validates one final truth.
- Do not claim triangulation means all sources must agree.
- Do not let vivid prose replace a transparent evidential and analytic trail.
Chapter map
- Chs. 1–2: definitions, paradigms, lifeworld, hermeneutics, interaction, practice, ethics
- Ch. 3: cyclical design, questions, cases, samples, relationships, and checks
- Ch. 4: sampling, observation, interviews, focus groups, and tradition-specific collection
- Ch. 5: organization, coding, interpretation, and method-specific analysis
- Ch. 6: writing, construction, voice, power, audience, and form
- Ch. 7: rigor, validity, relevance, threats, and audit strategies
- Ch. 8: qualitative–quantitative debate and integration
Use glossary.md, patterns.md, and cheatsheet.md for application.