“Grab” and Good Science: Writing Up the Results of Qualitative Research

Qualitative researchers have an array of choices in how to write up their research. Yet many write in distanced, third-person voices and give short shrift to the voices of informants, as if neither they nor their informants were part of the research. In doing so, they might believe that their writing style is scientific. Unfortunately, such styles of writing not only silence their informants and themselves, but many times they also contradict the philosophies of science on which many forms of qualitative research are based. If our philosophies of science are science, then how we write up our research, when it is consistent with our science, must logically be scientific. "Grab," or writing that is both interesting and memorable, goes hand in hand with good science.