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Whatever happened to qualitative description?
Author(s) -
Sandelowski Margarete
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
research in nursing and health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.836
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1098-240X
pISSN - 0160-6891
DOI - 10.1002/1098-240x(200008)23:4<334::aid-nur9>3.0.co;2-g
Subject(s) - qualitative research , descriptive research , descriptive statistics , presentation (obstetrics) , qualitative property , data collection , data presentation , research design , psychology , qualitative analysis , computer science , sociology , medicine , statistics , mathematics , social science , radiology , machine learning
The general view of descriptive research as a lower level form of inquiry has influenced some researchers conducting qualitative research to claim methods they are really not using and not to claim the method they are using: namely, qualitative description. Qualitative descriptive studies have as their goal a comprehensive summary of events in the everyday terms of those events. Researchers conducting qualitative descriptive studies stay close to their data and to the surface of words and events. Qualitative descriptive designs typically are an eclectic but reasonable combination of sampling, and data collection, analysis, and re‐presentation techniques. Qualitative descriptive study is the method of choice when straight descriptions of phenomena are desired. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Res Nurs Health 23:334–340, 2000.