Health Sciences, Qualitative Research in

Qualitative inquiry has made an important contribution to our understanding of health and illness over the past 40 years. Since the 1920s, qualitative research has been used by anthropologists to delineate beliefs about health and illness in various cultural groups, often in what they called “primitive natives.” In the 1960s and 1970s, sociologists began using ethnography and ethnomethodology to study health and illness in American cultural groups. From this era, several classics arose—most notably, Boys in White, an ethnography of medical students by Howard Becker and his colleagues, published in 1961.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, qualitative research made inroads into nursing through nurse-anthropologists, such as Madeleine Leininger (University of Washington), Pamela Brink (University of California, Los Angles), and Marguerita Kay (University of Arizona) and through the development of grounded theory by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (University of California, San Francisco). These researchers, with their colleagues and students, made important contributions to qualitative inquiry in three ways: (1) they conducted qualitative research and published the results in nursing journals, thus bringing qualitative inquiry to the attention of the nursing academic community; (2) in the training of their own doctoral students and the publication of qualitative methodology, they built a strong foundation for qualitative health research and the mentoring of a new generation of students; and (3) they brought qualitative inquiry into basic graduate programs and to the attention of funding agencies. Four decades later, qualitative inquiry is integrated into most graduate curricula and is used by most allied health disciplines (such as physical therapy, occupational therapy, and medicine). Specialized qualitative journals (such as Qualitative Health Research) and qualitative proposals are funded at the federal level. Qualitative health research conferences are well attended, and conducting qualitative health research is no longer a marginal activity.

Qualitative research has made significant advancement to the understanding of health and illness, to the provision of care, and to professional development and education. In order to achieve this advancement, qualitative methods have been modified for use with the ill and data collection in institutions. The perspective or context is unique in qualitative health research and certain qualitative methods have been more suited to this task than others. This entry reviews the major areas of qualitative research in the health sciences and describes the modifications made in adapting qualitative methods to this field.