Whatever happened to qualitative description?

Title

Whatever happened to qualitative description?

Creator

Sandelowski M

Publisher

Research In Nursing & Health

Date

2000

Subject

Humans; Data Collection; Research Design; Statistical; Data Interpretation; Nursing Research/methods

Description

The general view of descriptive research as a lower level form of inquiry has influenced some researchers conducting qualitative research to claim methods they are really not using and not to claim the method they are using: namely, qualitative description. Qualitative descriptive studies have as their goal a comprehensive summary of events in the everyday terms of those events. Researchers conducting qualitative descriptive studies stay close to their data and to the surface of words and events. Qualitative descriptive designs typically are an eclectic but reasonable combination of sampling, and data collection, analysis, and re-presentation techniques. Qualitative descriptive study is the method of choice when straight descriptions of phenomena are desired.

Rights

Article information provided for research and reference use only. PedPalASCNET does not hold any rights over the resource listed here. All rights are retained by the journal listed under publisher and/or the creator(s).

Type

Journal Article

Citation

Sandelowski M, “Whatever happened to qualitative description?,” Pediatric Palliative Care Library, accessed April 25, 2024, https://pedpalascnetlibrary.omeka.net/items/show/12335.