Using qualitative research to strengthen clinical practice.

What does qualitative research have to offer individual practitioners? The authors in this special section argue that qualitative research is particularly suited to enhancing clinical practice because it generates a rich description of both local contexts and individual subjective experiences. This rich description can then be used to improve clinical practice and also to generate knowledge about both the process and the outcome of psychological services. In this first article, we provide an overview of the qualitative research paradigm and the many different kinds of qualitative methodologies that exist, discuss how it can be adapted to clinical practice, and provide an example of a qualitative study that practitioners can accomplish. The two articles that follow describe specific examples of qualitative work in more depth. The Qualitative Paradigm