THE RATIONALE FOR QUALITATIVE RESEARCH - A REVIEW OF PRINCIPLES AND THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

Inquiry in the social sciences is based on theoretical assumptions tha t are not always clearly articulated in research reports. This article surveys some of the theoretical positions that underlie various quali tative research methods and discusses some of the methodological issue s raised by those positions. The four themes that serve as anchor poin ts for the discussion are contextualization, an approach to social-sci entific observation that takes into account the environment in which t he observational event takes place; understanding, an approach to the problem of knowledge and explanation that addresses the range of what can be learned from observation; pluralism, the proposition that not o nly social settings but the methods for explaining them resist reducti on to a single model; and expression, the problem of conveying the res ults of research.