ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly describes five distinct qualitative strategies: the case study, ethnography approach, actor-network theory, environmental discourse analysis and action research. Action research is research in collaboration with non-specialists, with the express intention of informing effective action to solve real-world problems. Qualitative research often focuses on gaining insights into underlying processes, mechanisms, and belief systems. Students encountering the distinction between quantitative and qualitative research for the first time commonly associate quantitative research with numbers and qualitative research with words. For much qualitative research, there are two extremely important and commonly used methods for collecting data: conducting written surveys or oral interviews. A relatively recent trend in some qualitative research is to try to make the analysis of qualitative data more regularized and systematic. In qualitative research, validity refers to the credibility and generalizability of the conclusions of a study. As with quantitative research, the issue of external validity in qualitative research is about generalizability.
