The Status of Method: Flexibility, Consistency and Coherence

Increasingly, qualitative research methods are being embraced by nurse researchers because these approaches allow exploration of human experience. Failure to explicate qualitative methodologies is resulting in a body of nursing research that is either mislabelled or is classified broadly as qualitative and subject to charges that qualitative research lacks rigour. In this paper, the authors discuss the importance of specificity in methodology and distinguish between phenomenology and grounded theory, two frequently misused terms in the description of qualitative methodology.