ABSTRACT
Given that it is the purpose of this chapter to provide a basic introduction to the ontological considerations involved in the selection of particular qualitative research approaches in general, it is important that an early effort is made to explain how (after Holliday 2002: ix) the progressivist ontology common in qualitative research usually differs from the naturalist ontology which is ubiquitous in quantitative research. Thus, the current chapter seeks to reveal how the way investigators think about communal matters of seeing, cultural matters of experiencing, group matters of knowing, and individual/institutional matters of identifying is generally quite different in the day-by-day ontology of qualitative research from how it is within quantitative research. A key message of this chapter is therefore that researchers in tourism studies – indeed, in any field – must be very careful about the ways they go about investigating existential, aspirational and experiential issues – that is, the very ontological matters of being, becoming and meaning.
