CHAPTER TWO

SIX COMMON QUALITATIVE

RESEARCH DESIGNS

In fields from education to social work to anthropology to man-

agement science, researchers, students, and practitioners are con-
ducting qualitative studies. It is not surprising, then, that different
disciplines and fields ask different questions and have evolved
somewhat different strategies and procedures. Although qualitative
research or qualitative inquiry remains the umbrella term, writers of
qualitative texts have organized the diversity of forms of qualitative
research in various ways. Patton (2015) discusses sixteen “theoreti-
cal traditions”; some, like ethnography and grounded theory,
are familiar classifications, whereas others, such as semiotics and
chaos theory, are less common. Creswell (2013) presents five
“approaches”: narrative research, phenomenology, grounded the-
ory, ethnography, and case study. Tesch (1990) lists 45 approaches
divided into designs (such as case study), data analysis techniques
(such as discourse analysis), and disciplinary orientation (such as
ethnography). Denzin and Lincoln (2011) include a number of
chapters on major “strategies of inquiry” (p. xi), such as, among
others, case study, ethnography, grounded theory, and participa-
tory action research. As this brief overview suggests, there is no
consensus as to how to classify “the baffling numbers of choices or
approaches” to qualitative research (Creswell, 2013, p. 7).
Given the variety of qualitative research strategies, we have
chosen to present six of the more commonly used approaches to
doing qualitative research that we have encountered in our many
years of experience advising doctoral students, teaching qualitative

22
 SIX COMMON QUALITATIVE RESEARCH DESIGNS 23

research courses, and conducting our own qualitative research:

basic qualitative research, phenomenology, grounded theory, eth-
nography, narrative analysis, and qualitative case study. (Qualita-
tive action research, which focuses on solving a problem in practice
and implementing change during the research process, is increas-
ingly common; we discuss this in the next chapter.) Because these
types of qualitative research have some attributes in common, they
fall under the umbrella concept of “qualitative.” However, they
each have a somewhat different focus, resulting in variations in how
the research question may be asked, sample selection, data collec-
tion and analysis, and write-up. There can also be overlaps in these
types of research, wherein a researcher may combine two or more,
such as in an ethnographic case study. For now, we present these six
approaches and then discuss some of the overlaps.

B A S I C Q U A LI TA T I V E R E S E A R C H
A challenge especially to those new to qualitative research is trying
to figure out what “kind” of qualitative research study they are
doing and what their “theoretical framework” is. Our understand-
ing of theoretical framework is discussed at length in Chapter Four,
and it is different from what we mean by an epistemological
framework; that is, a perspective on the nature of or types of
knowledge explored by qualitative researchers. Qualitative
research is based on the belief that knowledge is constructed by
people in an ongoing fashion as they engage in and make meaning
of an activity, experience, or phenomenon. (This is in contrast to
quantitative research paradigms that tend to be based on the belief
that knowledge is preexisting, waiting to be discovered.)
In our experience, in applied fields of practice such as educa-
tion, administration, health, social work, counseling, business, and
so on, the most common “type” of qualitative research is a basic
interpretive study. Here, researchers simply describe their study as
a “qualitative research study” without declaring it a particular type
of qualitative study—such as a phenomenological, grounded theory,
narrative analysis, or ethnographic study. Over the years there has
been a struggle with how to label this common qualitative study
using words such as generic, basic, and interpretive. Since all qualita-
tive research is interpretive, and “generic” doesn’t convey a clear
24 QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: A GUIDE TO DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

meaning, we have come to prefer labeling this type of study a basic

qualitative study.
A central characteristic of all qualitative research is that indi-
viduals construct reality in interaction with their social worlds.
Constructivism thus underlies what we are calling a basic qualitative
study. Here the researcher is interested in understanding the
meaning a phenomenon has for those involved. Meaning, how-
ever, “is not discovered but constructed. Meaning does not inhere
in the object, merely waiting for someone to come upon it. . . .
Meanings are constructed by human beings as they engage with the
world they are interpreting” (Crotty, 1998, pp. 42–43). Thus
qualitative researchers conducting a basic qualitative study would
be interested in (1) how people interpret their experiences,
(2) how they construct their worlds, and (3) what meaning they
attribute to their experiences. The overall purpose is to understand
how people make sense of their lives and their experiences.
Although this understanding characterizes all of qualitative
research, other types of qualitative studies have an additional
dimension. For example, a phenomenological study seeks under-
standing about the essence and the underlying structure of the
phenomenon. Ethnography strives to understand the interaction
of individuals not just with others, but also with the culture of the
society in which they live. A grounded theory study seeks not just to
understand, but also to build a substantive theory about the
phenomenon of interest. Narrative analysis uses the stories people
tell, analyzing them in various ways, to understand the meaning of
the experiences as revealed in the story. If the unit of analysis is a
bounded system—a case, such as a person, a program, or an
event—one would label such a study a “qualitative case study.”
These types of qualitative research are discussed in subsequent
sections of this chapter. To some extent all forms of qualitative
research are trying to uncover participants’ understandings of their
experiences.
Basic qualitative studies can be found throughout the disci-
plines and in applied fields of practice. They are probably the most
common form of qualitative research found in education. Data are
collected through interviews, observations, or document analysis.
What questions are asked, what is observed, and what documents
are deemed relevant will depend on the disciplinary theoretical
 SIX COMMON QUALITATIVE RESEARCH DESIGNS 25

framework of the study (see Chapter Four). An educational psy-

chologist, for example, might be interested in understanding the
teaching-learning transaction in a classroom, whereas a sociologist
would be more interested in social roles and social interaction
patterns in the same classroom. The analysis of the data involves
identifying recurring patterns that characterize the data. Findings
are these recurring patterns or themes supported by the data from
which they were derived. The overall interpretation will be the
researcher’s understanding of the participants’ understanding of
the phenomenon of interest.
Book-length examples of basic qualitative studies are Levinson
and Levinson’s (1996) study of women’s development, based on
in-depth interviews with 15 homemakers, 15 corporate business-
women, and 15 academics, or Tisdell’s (2003) study of 31 adult
educators and how spirituality informs both their own develop-
ment and their emancipatory educator efforts as cultural workers.
Journal-length examples of basic qualitative research studies can be
found in the research journals of most fields. For example, Kim
(2014) conducted a qualitative study to uncover the process
Korean retirees engaged in in transitioning into a postretirement
second career. Fernandez, Breen, and Simpson (2014) examined
how women with bipolar disorder renegotiate their identities as a
result of experiences of loss and recovery. As another example of a
basic qualitative study, Merriam and Muhamad (2013) studied
Malaysian traditional healers, identifying the roles they play in
diagnosing and treating people with cancer.
In summary, all qualitative research is interested in how mean-
ing is constructed, how people make sense of their lives and their
worlds. The primary goal of a basic qualitative study is to uncover
and interpret these meanings.

PHENOMENOLOGY
Because the philosophy of phenomenology also underlies qualita-
tive research, some assume that all qualitative research is phenom-
enological, and certainly in one sense it is. Phenomenology is both
a twentieth-century school of philosophy associated with Husserl
(1970) and a type of qualitative research. From the philosophy of
phenomenology comes a focus on the experience itself and how
26 QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: A GUIDE TO DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

experiencing something is transformed into consciousness. Phe-

nomenologists are not interested in modern science’s efforts to
categorize, simplify, and reduce phenomena to abstract laws.
Rather, phenomenologists are interested in our “lived experience”
(Van Manen, 2014, p. 26); such a focus requires us to go directly
“‘to the things themselves’ . . . to turn toward phenomena which
had been blocked from sight by the theoretical patterns in front of
them” (Spiegelberg, 1965, p. 658). Phenomenology is a study of
people’s conscious experience of their life-world; that is, their
“everyday life and social action” (Schram, 2003, p. 71). Van Manen
(2014) explains it this way: “Phenomenology is the way of access to
the world as we experience it prereflectively. Prereflective experi-
ence is the ordinary experience that we live in and that we live
through for most, if not all, of our day-to-day existence” (p. 28).
Although all of qualitative research draws from the philosophy of
phenomenology in its emphasis on experience and interpretation,
one could also conduct a phenomenological study by using the
particular “tools” ofphenomenology.Thistypeofresearchisbasedon
the assumption that there is an essence or essences to shared experience.
These essences are the core meanings mutually understood
through a phenomenon commonly experienced. The experi-
ences of different people are bracketed, analyzed, and compared
to identify the essences of the phenomenon, for example,
the essence of loneliness, the essence of being a mother, or the
essence of being a participant in a particular program. The
assumption of essence, like the ethnographer’s assumption that
culture exists and is important, becomes the defining charac-
teristic of a purely phenomenological study. (Patton, 2015, pp.
116–117, emphasis in original)

The task of the phenomenologist, then, is to depict the essence

or basic structure of experience. Often these studies are of intense
human experiences such as love, anger, betrayal, and so on. Prior
beliefs about a phenomenon of interest are temporarily put aside,
or bracketed, so as not to interfere with seeing or intuiting the
elements or structure of the phenomenon. When belief is tempo-
rarily suspended, consciousness itself becomes heightened and can
be examined in the same way that an object of consciousness can be
examined.
 SIX COMMON QUALITATIVE RESEARCH DESIGNS 27

To get at the essence or basic underlying structure of the

meaning of an experience, the phenomenological interview is
the primary method of data collection. Prior to interviewing those
who have had direct experience with the phenomenon, the
researcher usually explores his or her own experiences, in part
to examine dimensions of the experience and in part to become
aware of personal prejudices, viewpoints, and assumptions. This
process is called epoche, “a Greek word meaning to refrain from
judgment. . . . In the Epoche, the everyday understandings, judg-
ments, and knowings are set aside, and the phenomena are
revisited” (Moustakas, 1994, p. 33). These prejudices and assump-
tions are then bracketed or temporarily set aside so that we can
examine consciousness itself. Of course the extent to which any
person can bracket his or her biases and assumptions is open to
debate. This process from phenomenological research, however,
has influenced all of qualitative research in that now it is common
practice for researchers to examine their biases and assumptions
about the phenomenon of interest before embarking on a study.
In addition to epoche or bracketing, there are other strategies
unique to phenomenological research. Phenomenological reduction is
the process of continually returning to the essence of the experience
to derive the inner structure or meaning in and of itself. We isolate
the phenomenon in order to comprehend its essence. Horizontaliza-
tion is the process of laying out all the data for examination and
treating the data as having equal weight; that is, all pieces of data have
equal value at the initial data analysis stage. These data are then
organized into clusters or themes. Moustakas (1994, p. 96) explains
that in horizontalization, “there is an interweaving of person, con-
scious experience, and phenomenon. In the process of explicating
the phenomenon, qualities are recognized and described; every
perception is granted equal value, nonrepetitive constituents of
experience are linked thematically, and a full description is derived.”
Imaginative variation involves viewing the data from various perspec-
tives, as if one were walking around a modern sculpture, seeing
different things from different angles.
The product of a phenomenological study is a “composite
description that presents the ‘essence’ of the phenomenon, called
the essential, invariant structure (or essence)” (Creswell, 2013, p. 82,
emphasis in original). This description represents the structure of
28 QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: A GUIDE TO DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

the experience being studied. “The reader should come away from
the phenomenology with the feeling, ‘I understand better what it is
like for someone to experience that’ (Polkinghorne, 1989, p. 46)”
(Creswell, 2013 p. 62).
As mentioned earlier, a phenomenological approach is well
suited to studying affective, emotional, and often intense human
experiences. As an example, Trotman (2006) investigated imagi-
nation and creativity in primary school education. He asserts that
this phenomenological research revealed “the ways in which these
teachers value and interpret the imaginative experience of their
pupils” and “suggests particular challenges that professional edu-
cators need to address if imaginative experience is to be legitimated
and sustained as a worthwhile educational process” (p. 258). In
another example, Ruth-Sahd and Tisdell (2007) investigated the
meaning of intuitive knowing and how intuitive knowing influ-
enced the practice of novice nurses. In a third example, Ryan,
Rapley, and Dziurawiec (2014) conducted a phenomenological
study of the meaning of coping in psychiatric patients. These three
examples underscore the idea that a phenomenological qualitative
study is well suited to studying emotions and affective states.
As with other forms of qualitative research, there are variations
in how a phenomenological study is conducted. Moustakas (1994)
and Spiegelberg (1965) have both delineated a process for doing
such a study that might be helpful to researchers interested in
exploring this method. Van Manen’s (2014) recent book also
provides some guidelines and also explores various strands and
traditions that fall under the umbrella of “phenomenology.” What
is important here is understanding that phenomenology as a
philosophy has had an impact on all of qualitative research;
however, it is also a type of qualitative research with its own focus
and methodological strategies.

ETHNOGRAPHY
Of the various types of qualitative research, ethnography is likely to
be the most familiar to researchers. Its history can be traced to late
nineteenth-century anthropologists who engaged in participant
observation in the “field” (for a brief and interesting history, see
Tedlock, 2011). Anthropologists “do” ethnography, a research