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Chapter 11 Descriptive and interpretiveapproaches to qualitative researchRobert Elliott and Ladislav TimulakQualitative research methods today are a diverse set, encompassing approaches such asempirical phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, protocol analysis and dis-course analysis . By one common definition (Polkinghorne, 1983), all these methodsrely on linguistic rather than numerical data, and employ meaning-based rather thanstatistical forms of data analysis . Distinguishing between measuring things with wordsand measuring them in numbers, however, may not be a particularly useful way ofcharacterising different approaches to research. Instead, other distinctive features ofqualitative research may turn out to be of far greater importance (Elliott, 1999): emphasis on understanding phenomena in their own right (rather than from someoutside perspective); open, exploratory research questions (vs.)

analysis, before concluding by summarising principles of good practice in descriptive– interpretive qualitative research and providing suggestions for further reading and learning. Formulating the problem Previously, some qualitative researchers believed that it was better to go into the field without first reading the available literature.

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