What Do We Really Mean By A “Qualitative” Study? An Analysis Of Qualitative Research In Adult And Continuing Education

Abstract

Current approaches to qualitative research in adult and continuing education reflect widely differing assumptions about what is meant by qualitative. To foster conversation in our field around this question, we conducted an exploratory study of qualitative studies published over a ten-year period in Adult Education Quarterly. Our findings suggest differing understandings of what it means to design, conduct, and report “qualitative research.” These understandings reflect the influence of differing paradigms on what qualitative research means and suggest implications for the field and for the training of future researchers. From the early, pathbreaking studies in sociology and anthropology, qualitative research has spread to other social science disciplines, such as social work, communication, and education (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998a). Characterized by several historical moments, the evolution of qualitative research in the social sciences reflects differing epistemological perspectives that stress fundamentally different views of what counts as knowledge and how we come to know. Today, in adult and continuing education qualitative research represents a widely popular approach to scholarly inquiry, particularly among doctoral students. A typical perusal through adult education conference proceedings or mainstream journals in the field will clearly demonstrate its pervasiveness within the scholarship of our field. Within this body of research we encounter many forms of questions, methods of data collection, analytic strategies, and interpretive lenses. With such variation, it is increasingly difficult to fully understand what constitutes the “qualitative” aspect of the research being reported. To help foster reflection on and conversation around this question, we undertook this exploratory study to examine the paradigmatic assumptions reflected in published empirical studies that claim to be qualitative in nature.