Introduction -2-
There are several "maps" of the qualitative research family. Creswell(1998) identifies five qualitative research traditions:
1) Biography,
2) Phenomenology,
3) Grounded Theory,
4) Ethnography and
5) Case Studies.
Creswell joins these often used but very different methods under the umbrella of shared philosophical and ideological assumptions.
But other methods are readily identifiable and neither philosophical foundations nor ideologies are necessarily shared across approaches.