 Sample Selection Matters: Moving Toward Empirically Sound Qualitative ResearchStefanie DeLuca Sociological Methods & Research, 2023, vol. 52, issue 2, 1073-1085 Abstract: Increasingly, the broader public, media and policymakers are looking to qualitative research to provide answers to our most pressing social questions. While an exciting and perhaps overdue moment for qualitative researchers, it is also a time when the method is coming under increasing scrutiny for a lack of reliability and transparency. The question of how to assess the quality of qualitative research is therefore paramount, but the field still lacks clear standards to evaluate qualitative work. In their new book, Qualitative Literacy , Mario Luis Small and Jessica McCrory Calarco aim to fill this gap. I argue that Qualitative Literacy offers a compelling set of standards for consumers to assess whether an in-depth interview or participant observation was of sufficient quality and, to an extent, whether sufficient time was spent in the field. However, by ignoring the vital importance of employing systematic, well-justified, and transparent sampling strategies, the implication is that such essential criteria can be ignored, undermining the potential contribution of qualitative research to a more cumulative creation of scientific knowledge. Keywords: Qualitative methods; sampling; interview methods; mixed methods; transparency (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:somere:v:52:y:2023:i:2:p:1073-1085 DOI: 10.1177/00491241221140425 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Sociological Methods & Research |
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