Solving the Chaos of Qualitative Research Varieties

With the ambitious aim of bringing clarity and simplicity to the realm of qualitative research, the article begins by defining concepts like research design, strategy, approach, methods, techniques, methodology, and framework. Providing arguments for each definition, research design is identified as the overarching concept, which includes research strategy and practical considerations. Research strategy is further split into research approach and methods and techniques. The main contribution of this article is the conceptualization of research approach in five dimensions, namely focus, orientation, relation to the object, researcher intrusiveness, and scale (FORIS). Considering research approaches as something to be constructed rather than chosen, different elements of these dimensions can be combined to form established and novel research approaches. A clear distinction is made between what we call an approach and what we call methods and techniques. The latter denote active stages of research and are broken down into accessing data sources, collecting data, analyzing data, and presenting the findings. Employing the lenses of the proposed framework, the definitions of the main qualitative research varieties are presented and justified. Furthermore, examples of this framework in practice are presented by translating several ‘methods’ sections of published articles. The article ends by posing questions for future methodological exploration concerning claims about knowledge, the possible functional qualitative research varieties, and the historical determinants of the establishment of the main varieties.