Issues in Qualitative Analysis

Abstract

Qualitative research has become legitimate practice in the past 15 years. Qualitative methodologies are steeped in the rhetoric of innovation and in the rejection of what is thought to be the rigid and biased past of positivism. They carry all of the philosophical debate we have discussed in earlier chapters, and hold out the promise for overcoming the sins of omission, such as attention to matters of gender, ethnicity, and culture, that have received too little attention in quantitative studies.

But thought is one thing, the deed is another, and the image of the deed still another: the wheel of causality does not roll between them.

—Nietzsche (1954, p. 150)

Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.

—T. S. Eliot (1943, p. 19)