ABSTRACT
The major methodological strategy of the deviance study is qualitative sociological research. Qualitative research usually involves techniques such as participant observation, interviewing, life histories, unobtrusive measures, and document analysis for data collection as well as qualitative analysis. Validity and reliability are always issues in sociological work, and perhaps especially in qualitative research. Although the research strategy is qualitative research, a number of different data collection techniques are used. The orienting strategy is triangulation—using several or a combination of methods to study the same problem. A historical method was used in analyzing the medical papers published on hyperactivity that led to its "discovery" and definition as a medical problem. Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss have elaborated in some depth the process of the generation and construction of grounded theory. There are certain limitations to the generalizability of this study because of the sources of the school data, the size of the sample, and the particular research setting.
