What is it precisely that interpretive social research researches?

The literature on interpretive/qualitative social science is maddeningly imprecise with respect to both the focus and aims of interpretive social science; this paper articulates an attempt to address these twin limitations. The dimensions of physical and social reality are compared and the definition of ‘meaning’ and its acquisitive processes are explored. It is argued that the focus of interpretive social science is the propositions that operate to create and sustain social realities and that the aims of interpretive social science are to construct, in the minds of observing interpretivists, valid mirror images of such propositions, prior to making them public. It is further argued that this can only be achieved by inferring the prior intentional inferences of the human agents being observed. Related methodological implications are discussed as they arise in the analysis.