Different Approaches to Qualitative Health Research Analysis: A Critical and Reflective View

Abstract

There is a consistent theoretical and methodological foundations on qualitative health research provided mainly by social sciences. However, this existent overlap between social and health aspects is a wide multidisciplinary field still underexplored. This article offers an overview of the main paradigms, methodologies and theoretical tendencies of qualitative research analyses within the health sciences context. Based on an initial classification, two opposite extremes for setting the bounds of the qualitative analysis continuum - from designs focusing on data description, which are purely exploratory, to those which go into theorizing processes so as to draw out interpretations and inferences - are discussed. Qualitative research is an important tool in the analysis of health problems from a social and cultural point of view. Adopting different procedures such as content and speech analysis, qualitative research approaches communication patterns and examines the diverse language ideologies. Sociological and anthropological traditions provide unique methodologies which allow to know the context where the phenomena appear and set out theoretical proposals in order to explain them, for example ethnomethodology or analytical induction. Lastly, some keys are suggested for developing a common area, out of which new epistemological perspectives may be set out based on different disciplines coming together.