Qualitative research poses a series of challenges for Research Ethics Committees. This chapter elucidates the nature of qualitative research, discusses its appraisal, and rehearses the ethical issues it raises. In the process implications for Research Ethics Committees are indicated. These implications are summarised at the end of the chapter.

Introducing qualitative research

What is qualitative research?

Qualitative research is a label for a family of methods and, just as with quantitative research methods, there are differences and disagreements within the family. However the common denominator of the qualitative approach to social research is a focus on meaning, and on the social world as made up of systems of meaning. For example, one good account of qualitative methods, which highlights their distinctiveness, is that they embody ‘… an approach to the study of the social world which seeks to describe and analyse the culture and behaviour of humans and their groups from the point of view of those being studied.’ (Bryman, 1988, p. 46) It is essential to qualitative research methods that they get ‘inside’ the social world, in particular into the cultures of groups and the subjectivities of individuals. Most qualitative researchers will want to move beyond this ‘first person’ point of view, and to incorporate more theoretical or technical analyses that derive from their disciplinary interests and which help them and us to understand the social world. But they will certainly want to ensure that however abstract or theoretical their work becomes, it some how takes into account, and remains connected to, the cultures and subjectivities of those they are studying.