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What's in a name? Qualitative description revisited

What's in a name? Qualitative description revisited “Whatever Happened to Qualitative Description?” (Sandelowski, 2000) was written to critique the prevailing tendency in qualitative health research to claim the use of methods that were not actually used and to clarify a methodological approach rarely identified as a distinctive method. The article has generated several misconceptions, most notably that qualitative description requires no interpretation of data. At the root of these misconceptions is the persistent challenge of defining qualitative research methods. Qualitative description is a “distributed residual category” (Bowker & Star, 2000). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press) in the classification of these methods. Its value lies not only in the knowledge its use can produce, but also as a vehicle for presenting and treating research methods as living entities that resist simple classification. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Res Nurs Health 33:77–84, 2010 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Research in Nursing & Health Wiley

What's in a name? Qualitative description revisited

Sandelowski, Margarete
Research in Nursing & Health , Volume 33 (1) – Feb 1, 2010
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References (33)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
ISSN
0160-6891
eISSN
1098-240X
DOI
10.1002/nur.20362
pmid
20014004
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

“Whatever Happened to Qualitative Description?” (Sandelowski, 2000) was written to critique the prevailing tendency in qualitative health research to claim the use of methods that were not actually used and to clarify a methodological approach rarely identified as a distinctive method. The article has generated several misconceptions, most notably that qualitative description requires no interpretation of data. At the root of these misconceptions is the persistent challenge of defining qualitative research methods. Qualitative description is a “distributed residual category” (Bowker & Star, 2000). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press) in the classification of these methods. Its value lies not only in the knowledge its use can produce, but also as a vehicle for presenting and treating research methods as living entities that resist simple classification. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Res Nurs Health 33:77–84, 2010

Journal

Research in Nursing & Health – Wiley

Published: Feb 1, 2010

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