An agenda for the second generation of qualitative studies

Abstract

An agenda is proposed that calls for investigations of and instruction in the skills and dispositions needed by practitioners of qualitative studies. Qualitative studies re-emerged in the social science and health disciplines in the early years of the 1970s. In the subsequent 30-plus years of the first generation of qualitative studies, there has been a dramatic growth in their use and in attention to their theories and methods. In addition, concerns about the quality of qualitative studies have been expressed. In qualitative studies, researchers themselves serve as the data gathering and analytic instruments. Attention to the development of researcher cognitive and conative skills and researcher virtues is recommended.

• Practice
• qualitative studies
• instruction
• virtues
• agenda

Notes

1. otes¹ A significant contribution of the journal is its international perspective. Although I have been a contributing member to qualitative study since its re-emergence in the 1970s, I am aware that my perspective is parochial. The content in this paper is informed by my own by particular experiences. I am a psychologist and for the past fifteen years have taught in a School of Education in Southern California. My knowledge of what has occurred internationally during the re-emergence of qualitative studies, is restricted; my readings, discussions with colleagues, and visits to several European countries. I expect that the description of the development of qualitative studies by someone from another country and academic discipline would differ from mine

2. The subject matter investigated by qualitative studies does not appear as publicly observable objects. I have chosen to use the term phenomenon to refer to the instances of the subject matter that serves as the focus of qualitative studies. I am using phenomenon in an ontologically neutral sense and am not taking a stance of the nature of their reality. I am also using the term phenomenon to include social and cultural items where access to them is through their experienced presence in people's experience. I am also including descriptions of patterns of behavior as well as structures and instances of experience as they appear across individuals and as they appear uniquely in a particular individual's life. Other terms, such as experiential objects, beings, entities, seem to me to be even more problematic