Some brief notes on the “unfinished business” of qualitative inquiry

The paper argues that there are a variety of ”implicit” issues in qualitative inquiry that need to be addressed if the area is to develop in some “normal science” sense. This “unfinished business” is concerned with a deeper investigation of basic terms that are now simply taken for granted, such as “theme” and “pattern”. It also includes the need to develop “rules” which will assist in making and justifying how qualitative interpretations are made from the implicit processes of inference. Specific suggestions are made for accomplishing these issues.

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