13. Qualitative Methods

"I want to understand the world from your point of view. I want to know what you know in the way you know it. I want to understand the meaning of your experience, to walk in your shoes, to feel things as you feel them, to explain things as you explain them. Will you become my teacher and help me understand?" - 

James P. Spradley

"The worse thing that contemporary qualitative research can imply is that, in this post-modern age, anything goes. The trick is to produce intelligent, disciplined work on the very edge of the abyss." 

David Silverman

Banner photo: Florence Nightingale's polar area diagram showing the causes of death in the Crimean War, 1858. Accessed from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale#/media/File:Nightingale-mortality.jpg.