Interpretive Research Design

INTRODUCTION

[Such research is characterized by an] intensive focus on the empirical world; on seeing and understanding behavior in its particular and situated forms. Data that do not stay close to the events, actions, or texts being studied are always suspect. There is a hostility to generalizations at any level that are not connected to description, to immersion in substantive matter. . . . The preference for descriptive material and observation made us suspicious of . . . material torn from the context of their creation. Action was too situated, too contextual to be understood at the high levels of much macroanalysis. Meanings were often not assuredly understandable without an experience with those we were describing.

—Joseph R. Gusfield ...