A Theory of Qualitative Methodology: The Social System of Analytic Fieldwork

Qualitative social research, whether conducted as ethnography, participant observation, or in situ interviewing, fares poorly when examined by the criteria of representativeness, reactivity, reliability, and replicability. The “4 Rs” were developed historically for guiding and evaluating quantitative research; their universalistic logic runs independent of the substantive matters investigated. Qualitative researchers can develop a parallel, robust methodology by appreciating the goals for which the 4 Rs are conventional means, and by developing strategies appropriate to the substantive character of their research. Qualitative studies may be guided and evaluated for their power to warrant generalization, their success in transforming researcher-subject interactions into resources for improving substantive explanations, the constraint they place on bias and arbitrariness in data interpretation, and their promotion of the re-testing of findings.