ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we trace the genesis of qualitative research approaches as they were initially developed in the social sciences and later taken up by scholars in the applied and practice disciplines. Using the author’s nursing discipline as a case in point, we reflect on some of the ways in which these conventional methods in their original intended form were inadequate to the knowledge needs of the applied world. On that basis, we consider why there was a need for a more purpose-driven and applied approach to qualitative inquiry that could draw upon the collective social science methodological wisdom but without being constrained by methodological rule traditions that did not fit.
