
For example, by training to be an EMT and becoming a participant observer in the lives of EMTs, Palmer studied how EMTs cope with the stress associated with some of the gruesome emergencies they deal with. Participant observation extends further than ethnography and into other fields, including psychology. In participant observation ethnographers get to understand a culture by directly participating in the activities of the culture they study. Qualitative researchers may gather information through observations, note-taking, interviews, focus groups (group interviews), documents, and artifacts. Narrative inquiry studies the narratives that people use to describe their experience. Biographical research is concerned with the reconstruction of life histories, based on biographical narratives and documents.

Conversation analysis is primarily used to analyze spoken conversations. Thematic analysis involves analyzing patterns of meaning. Grounded theory is an inductive type of research, based on ("grounded" in) a very close look at the empirical observations a study yields. Autoethnography, the study of self, is a qualitative research method in which the researcher uses his or her personal experience to understand an issue. Data triangulation is also a strategy used in qualitative research. The case study method exemplifies qualitative researchers' preference for depth, detail, and context. These data sources include in-depth interviews, focus groups, standardized interviews, and artifacts such as books or works of art. Qualitative researchers use different sources of data to understand the topic they are studying. Pernecky also deals with some of the neglected domains in qualitative research, such as social ontology, and ventures into new territories (e.g., quantum mechanics) in order to stimulate a more contemporary debate about common qualitative problems, such as absolutism and universalism.

More recent philosophical contributions to qualitative inquiry (Pernecky, 2016 ) have covered topics such as scepticism, idea-ism, idealism, hermeneutics, empiricism and rationalism, and introduced the qualitative community to a variety of realist approaches that are available within the wide philosophical spectrum of qualitative thought. Berger, Thomas Luckmann, and Harold Garfinkel. Qualitative researchers have also been influenced by the sociology of knowledge and the work of Alfred Schütz, Peter L. Traditional positivist approaches to qualitative research seek a more objective understanding of the social world. The symbolic interactionist approach to qualitative research examines how individuals and groups develop an understanding of the world. Approaches to qualitative research based on constructionism, such as grounded theory, pay attention to how the subjectivity of both the researcher and the study participants can affect the theory that develops out of the research. Phenomenology refers the philosophical study of the structure of an individual's consciousness and general subjective experience. Several philosophical and psychological traditions have influenced investigators' approaches to qualitative research, including phenomenology, social constructionism, symbolic interactionism, and positivism.

In this regard, Pernecky proposed an alternative way to implementing philosophical concerns in qualitative inquiry so that researchers are able to maintain the needed intellectual mobility and elasticity. However, some scholars have argued that the adoptions of paradigms may be counterproductive and lead to less philosophically engaged communities. The historical transitions or ‘moments’ in qualitative research, together with the notion of ‘paradigms’ (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005), have received widespread popularity over the past decades.

Contemporary qualitative research has been influenced by a number of branches of philosophy, for example, positivism, postpositivism, critical theory, and constructivism. Qualitative research has been informed by several strands of philosophical thought and examines aspects of human life, including culture, expression, beliefs, morality, life stress, and imagination.
Types of data analysis methods in qualitative research software#
5.1 Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS).
