Sympathetic Connections between Qualitative Methods and Health Research

This article argues that shifting paradigms for health promotion research would result in a better fit between research intents and social and behavioral phenomena. Further, it argues that the constructivist paradigm exhibits great utility, power, and synergism with emerging concepts in health research. Such inquiry also provides for grounded theory and more stakeholder-based policy analyses and evaluation studies. For the purposes of health promotion, qualitative and constructivist research provides a model superior to conventional research.