ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the quantitative, qualitative, and critical research methods (i.e., the tools and procedures utilized to ask, answer, and address research questions and hypotheses) that scholars use to study family communication. The chapter centers on the identification and description of the approaches researchers typically take when using quantitative and qualitative research methods. Quantitative research methods include questionnaires, content analysis, interactional coding, experiments, and scale development. In contrast, qualitative research methods include interviews, ethnography, narrative analysis, textual analysis, storytelling, and grounded theory. For each approach, the advantages and disadvantages, benefits, and challenges are discussed and several family communication research exemplars are highlighted. The chapter concludes with the identification and explanation of three trends observed by family communication researchers, which include prioritizing the role that family communication theory and methods plays in family communication scholarship, the increased diversity of family communication in current research studies, and evidence of remaining timely by expanding research efforts beyond spousal and parent-child relationships to feature familial relationships such as siblings, grandparents and grandchildren, and in-laws.
