We present a set of evolving guidelines for reviewing qualitative research, to serve four functions: to contribute to the process of legitimizing qualitative research; to ensure more appropriate and valid scientific reviews of qualitative manuscripts, theses, and dissertations; to encourage better quality control in qualitative research through better self- and other-monitoring; and to encourage further developments in approach and method. Building on a review of existing principles of good practice in qualitative research, we used an iterative process of revision and feedback from colleagues who engage in qualitative research, resulting in a set of seven guidelines common to both qualitative and quantitative research and seven guidelines especially pertinent to qualitative investigations in psychology and related social sciences. The Evolving Guidelines are subject to continuing revision and should not be used in a rigid manner, in order to avoid stifling creativity in this rapidly evolving, rich research tradition.

There is a growing body of opinion that psychology suffers from an elaborate research technology that overemphasizes theory verification and impairs thinking and discovery. Grounded theory is advanced as an approach to research that can address this crisis of method in psychology. The grounded approach is described and illustrated in terms of its application to psychotherapy process research. The emphasis on theory creation characterizing the approach is examined within the history of induction. The challenges to and limitations of grounded theory are discussed. Research leading to this paper was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grants 451-83-3642 and 410-83-1264 to David Rennie. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of D.

In this article it is argued that the realism-relativism duality addressed by the grounded theory approach to qualitative research is best accounted for when the method is understood to be an inductive approach to hermeneutics. Phenomenology, C.S. Peirce's theory of inference, philosophical hermeneutics, pragmatism and the new rhetoric are drawn upon in support of this argument. It is also held that this formulation of the grounded theory method opens the possibility that the method improves on earlier approaches to methodical hermeneutics. As an outcome of this formulation, the debate on the validity and reliability of returns from the grounded theory approach is cast in a new light. The new methodical hermeneutics is discussed in terms of prior attempts to relate hermeneutics to method.

to the clients who participated in the study and to their therapists for supporting the participation; and to Jeff Phillips and Charles Marino for assisting as recall consultants in the study.

The proportion of publications of qualitative research in mainstream psychology journals is small. Thus, in terms of this important criterion, despite its recent rapid growth, qualitative research is marginalized in psychology. The author suggests that contributing to this situation is the lack of a coherent and unifying methodology of qualitative research methods that elucidates their credibility. He groups the many qualitative research methods into 3 main kinds, then applies to them 4 propositions offered as such a methodology: (1) Qualitative research is hermeneutical, entailing application of the method of the hermeneutic circle to text about experience and/or action. (2) Implicit in the use of the hermeneutic circle method is the activity of educing and articulating the meaning of text, an activity that modifies and interacts with C. S. Peirce's (1965, 1966) logical operations of abduction, theorematic deduction, and induction. (3) The cycling of these 4 moments enables demonstration, achieved rhetorically, of the validity of the understandings resulting from the exegesis of the text under study. (4) This demonstrative rhetoric is enhanced when researchers disclose reflexively those aspects of their perspectives they judge to have most relevant bearing on their understandings. The author compares abduction as formulated here with other recent uptakes of it. As an installment on the generality of the methodology, he explores its fit with the descriptive phenomenological psychological method, conversation analysis, and thematic analysis.