Scholarly Research Primer

Look for these types of tools to identify qualitative methodologies

• Case Studies: attempts to shed on the phenomenon by studying in-depth a single case example, eg. chronic hip pain in a patient
• Grounded Theory: to understand the social and psychological processes that characterize an event or situation, eg. a nurse leaving her specialty
• Ethnography: focuses on the sociology of meaning through close field observation of socio-cultural phenomena, eg. observing a sales team
• Historical: Describing and examining past events to better understand the present and to anticipate potential effects on the future, eg. pandemic management in the past
• Phenomenological: describes the structures of experience as they present themselves to consciousness, without looking to theory, deduction, or assumptions from other disciplines, eg. the experience of women with heart disease

Ways to Limit by Methodology in the Library Databases

• while searching, e.g. limit to abstract
• add in as a keyword, e.g. AND qualitative
• use the Find function in the article text and search for methodology, e.g. qualitative
• view the Methods section in an article
• in CINAHL, change view in results to Page Options - Detailed - to look for charts and images
  • but many qualitative studies do quantify the results
• click on the title link in the database record and look for methodology in the minor subject description