Keeping It Real with Qualitative Research Methods

Qualitative research has existed alongside and in tension with quantitative methodologies ever since statistics were institutionalized in social science research in the 1950s as a means to establish scientific rigor. Much like the social work profession itself, which was born out of distinct if not incompatible approaches to social reform, qualitative research is shot through with diverse, contradictory models of the social world and discordant ideas about how researchers ought to approach it. Quantitative research is overwhelmingly anchored in post-positivist epistemology and its corollary proposition that there is a “real world” outside of human perception; in contrast, qualitative research can be conducted from a range of epistemological standpoints, some of which de-emphasize the “real world” and others that deny that human beings have equal access to a shared reality.

This roundtable discussion of reality-based qualitative research is motivated by several observations: 1. Liberal democracy depends, in part, on provisional agreement about a shared reality, 2. Critics of anti-realist epistemologies often aberrantly equate qualitative research with anti-realism and/or are not familiar with the power of qualitative research to capture distinctive aspects of human social life, and 3. There is a rich tradition of reality-oriented qualitative methodologies that allow researchers to render detailed humanistic and meaning-centered accounts of human experience without collapsing into naïve realism or society-fracturing relativism.

Amid the rise of postmodern and critical epistemologies in qualitative social work research (Perron & Qi, 2025), this roundtable will contextualize qualitative research and its early roots in naturalistic, field-based methods, as well as its philosophical genealogy in meaning-centered but reality-based philosophies such as pragmatism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and symbolic interactionism. This brief historical treatment will emphasize the utility of realist qualitative methodologies for analyzing the rich symbolic life of human beings, exploring novel concepts and experiences, contextualizing social problems, and designing and implementing social service and health interventions. It will also explore the connections between epistemology and democratic social norms.

One roundtable presenter will discuss the role of positionality in realist qualitative research by contrasting “everyday empiricism” with “lived experience.” Whereas “everyday empiricism” recognizes that all people can access reality in a human-specific way (and must do so to navigate everyday life), contemporary uses of “lived experience” often posit differential access to the truth across groups based on social position. A second presenter has worked extensively in healthcare research and will discuss a multi-method qualitative research project designed to better understand how expertise operates in informal counseling sessions conducted by peer educators with patients undergoing total knee replacement surgery. This work draws attention to the role of personal experience and relationships in improving objectively-measurable healthcare outcomes, as well as the role of a “shared experience” (in this case, knee replacement) as a vehicle for connection and intervention. A third presenter employs mixed methods to explore silent barriers to accessing contraception. Firsthand accounts from individuals who have encountered these barriers validate their impact on contraceptive decision-making and inform the design of both pilot and large-scale quantitative studies.