ABSTRACT
The use of the word ‘qualitative’ is rare in American psychology (it is used more widely in Europe). When psychologists think of research that is descriptive and interpretive, they usually associate it with the term ‘humanistic’. The typical humanistic psychologist, however, is not known for her/his interest in research (‘Humanistic psychologists who are interested in research constitute a minority in the Association for Humanistic Psychology’, Massarik, 1986, p. 19). It is, instead, the ‘human scientists’ who are the most active in dealing with theoretical and methodological issues in research. (To my knowledge, the term ‘human sciences’ was first used as a translation of the German ‘Geisteswischenschaften’ in Stephan Strasser’s work in 1963.)
