ABSTRACT
As noted in Chapter 1, the term qualitative research is used here to refer to a specific research design rather than as a general term for nonquantitive research methods. Qualitative research is concerned with individuals’ own accounts of their attitudes, motivations and behaviour. It offers richly descriptive reports of individuals’ perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, views and feelings, the meanings and interpretations given to events and things, as well as their behaviour. It displays how these are put together, more or less coherently and consciously, into frameworks that make sense of their experiences, and it illuminates the motivations that connect attitudes and behaviour, the discontinuities, or even contradictions, between attitudes and behaviour, or how conflicting attitudes and motivations are resolved and particular choices made. It is especially popular in feminist research (Reinharz, 1992). Although qualitative research is about people as the central unit of account, it is not about particular individuals per se; reports focus rather on the various patterns, or clusters, of attitudes and related behaviour that emerge from the interviews.
