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Open research questions in Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics

101 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 3,538 Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • Future research should explore the comparative and analytic utility of the framework for understanding methodological choices for a single methodology, for multiple methodologies from across paradigms, such as case study or grounded theory approaches (i.e., inter-paradigm methodological analysis), and for multiple methodologies within paradigms (intra-paradigm methodological analysis). These types of methodological analysis could be particularly fruitful for research methods courses and doctoral students, narrowing or justifying their dissertation methodology. The proposed solution may also serve as a companion artifact for those teaching, learning, or applying the theory of paradigms of disciplined inquiry (Lincoln et al., 2023).

    Reconnecting Definitions and Decisions in Research Methodology: A Continuum Framework Linking Worldview to Technique · 2026 · DOI

  • the First, dimensions The CRVI provides a clear method for evaluating contextual alignment, but it has limitations that present opportunities for improvement. four (epistemic, institutional, cultural, and operational fit) capture essential aspects of contextual coherence. However, context is complex and may involve additional factors, such as political economy or environmental conditions. While the CRVI is intentionally concise, future research could explore the need for domain- specific adaptations or weighting. is is not Second, scoring the CRVI relies on interpretation, influenced by assessors' biases and which inherently expertise. This subjectivity problematic, as contextual legitimacy is relational, but it raises concerns about consistency and comparability between studies. Clearer guidelines, calibration exercises, or multi-stakeholder scoring could enhance reliability without making the tool overly mechanical. Third, the CRVI aims to bridge disciplines while focusing on the local context. This creates a tension; the framework cannot be fully universal without losing its contextual sensitivity. Future research should strive to balance general structure with local adaptability, possibly through modular extensions or flexible indicators.

    The Challenge of Context-Free Validity: Introducing the Contextual Research Validity Index Framework for Situated Legitimacy under Socioeconomic Challenges · 2026 · DOI

  • We examine challenges related to justifying and implementing a general, unspecified commitment to equality of opportunity and explain that this reflects a lack of consensus regarding the moral value of PPI in research – a profound problem that remains unaddressed.

    ‘A commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’: a conceptual framework for equality of opportunity in Patient and Public Involvement in research · 2024 · DOI

  • Our community science project investigated the safety of powdered infant formula preparation in the home through the completion of an at-home experiment and a research diary with closed and open questions ( n = 151).

    Analysing Data With Members of a Stigmatised Community: Experiences, Reflections and Recommendations for Best Practice From the Finding the Formula Community Analysis Group · 2024 · DOI

  • The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has witnessed a remarkable increase in research involving human participants, but robust contextually relevant guidelines and local capacity to guide ethical research are lacking.

    A Qualitative Multi-Methods Research Protocol: Applied Research Ethics in the Middle East North Africa Region · 2023 · DOI

  • While perspectives on open scholarship practices (OSPs) in Communication are noted in editorials and position papers, as a discipline we lack data-driven insights into how the larger community understands, feels about, engages in, and supports OSPsinsights that could inform current conversations about OSPs in Communication and document how the field shifts in response to ongoing discourses around OS in the current moment.

    How communication scholars see open scholarship · 2022 · DOI

  • Importantly, the choice of a repertoire is not limited to the individual choice of a researcher but rather, it is shaped by the broader institutional context of higher education, risking instrumental bias in which practices oriented towards practical solutions are incentivised over critical or participatory forms of engagement.

    Knowledge Brokering Repertoires: Academic Practices at Science-Policy Interfaces as an Epistemological Bricolage · 2022 · DOI

  • Aims and objectives: To address the limited research, we completed a deliberative dialogue with the following questions: Is there a consensus regarding a coherent knowledge translation framework for a domestic violence research network? What are the key actions that a domestic violence research network could take to enhance knowledge translation? Methods: Deliberative dialogue is a group process that blends research and practice to identify potential actions.

    Creating an action plan to advance knowledge translation in a domestic violence research network: a deliberative dialogue · 2021 · DOI

  • Aligned with the Five-Level QDA method, we aim to address the gap in the literature by thoroughly presenting the methodological aspects of an existing narrative inquiry.

    Using ATLAS for Mac to enact narrative analysis: metaphor of generativity from LGBT older adult life stories · 2021 · DOI

  • In addition to AR being at those three interfaces, a number of additional key questions are contemplated in this article; questions which appear to have been largely overlooked -or at least under-researched -in spite of their importance.

    Action Research at the Interface: Personal-Professional Reflections on the First 20 Years · 2020 · DOI

  • Despite growing trends in the prevalence of mixed methods research across disciplines and the extensive methodological literature about this approach, little is known about the actual MMR practices of graduate students, such as writing an abstract.

    Graduate Students’ Current Practices for Writing a Mixed Methods Research Study Abstract: An Examination of Doctoral Dissertation and Master’s Thesis Abstracts in the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses GlobalTM Database · 2020 · DOI

  • ” These practices of moving evidence (1) enact gynecological cancer as under-researched; (2) collect and produce new “evidence”; (3) “mobilize” the evidence at public events, in interactions with biomedical researchers, and in different online settings; and (4) entangle affects with biomedical and experiential evidence to enact (a lack of) gynecological cancer biomedical research as a matter of concern.

    Moving Evidence: Patients’ Groups, Biomedical Research, and Affects · 2020 · DOI

  • Although acknowledging the privilege and power of the researcher’s position, this article reveals that power is multifaceted and manifests itself in complex ways: as a researcher, fear of being on unfamiliar territory; researcher anxiety about the unpredictability of participants; and researcher feelings of powerlessness to help; and so on – all impacts which are underexplored.

    The qualitative researcher: the flip side of the research encounter with vulnerable people · 2019 · DOI

  • Purpose Although the epistemology of researcher reflexivity has been championed as crucial to research for some 30 years, it remains controversial and often ill-defined.

    What happened to Çaction? · 2017 · DOI

  • Quantitative researchers increasingly draw on ethnographic research that may not be generalizable to inform and interpret results from statistical analyses; at the same time, while generalizability is not always an ethnographic research goal, the integration of quantitative data by ethnographic researchers to buttress findings on processes and mechanisms has also become common.

    Aligning sampling and case selection in quantitative-qualitative research designs: Establishing generalizability limits in mixed-method studies · 2017 · DOI

  • Findings – Insights from the case study indicate the importance of participatory methodologies for deepening organisational research in the context of an organisational ethnography; the adaptability of the diary and photo methods; the effectiveness of open questions for reflecting on race and gender when participants know the research context; the significance of reflexive practice; the importance of a process approach for organisational analysis and change.

    Participatory methodologies for intersectional research in organisations · 2016 · DOI

  • Difference that is not understood as the product of the individual (Barad, 2012), may engender an orientation to ethical relationality, whereby research teams might hold in tension a conversation between the individual and the collective.

    Meeting at the crossroads: re-conceptualising difference in research teams · 2014 · DOI

  • Understanding the MOD life cycle phases and the gaps in the literature can enable academics from a multitude of disciplines to enhance this field of inquiry in order to better understand this emergent property type.

    Multi-owned developments: a life cycle review of a developing research area · 2013 · DOI

  • Sociologist Dorothy Smith (1989) argued that women's lives should be studied ethnographically from the women's points of view and that this empirical work could lead to the theorizing of gender and power from women's "standpoints.

    Mothers in the Field: How Motherhood Shapes Fieldwork and Researcher-Subject Relations · 2009 · DOI

  • First, how can a researcher develop grounded theory through successive studies without becoming so analytically enmeshed with previous study results that what gets noticed in new data is limited? Second, how strong a presence can a researcher's clinical perspective have in an analysis without violating the tenets of grounded theory? I argue that recent scholarship in grounded theory provides new ways of thinking about these conundrums.

    Constant Comparisons and · 2008 · DOI

  • is no theoretical framework of any kind controlfindings. ling research, unifying itself Thirdly, although the society prides is glaring; there that the the 13 Ibid., 24. 14 Lewis Carroll, Through Glass, New York. 1961. 196.

    Liberating Social Research: The Study of Women · 1974 · DOI

  • Future research could consider combining textual analysis with interviews with dissertation writers or supervisors, as their perspectives on discourse practice may offer valuable insights into the rhetorical function of this part- genre.

    “This study has limitations as all studies do”: Structuring the Limitations Section in ELT Master’s Dissertations · 2026 · DOI

  • Definitive data on dissemination bias remain elusive given the difficulties in identifying examples which can be tracked and the challenge of finding evidence for its existence, especially in qualitative research.

    Non-dissemination in qualitative health research—A retrospective cohort study of conference abstracts · 2026 · DOI

  • Discussion LLMs have been adopted across qualitative research workflows, yet critical methodological details are frequently underreported, undermining comparability.

    The use and methodological reporting of large language models in qualitative research: a scoping review · 2026 · DOI

  • Family research's focus on close relationships, diverse family forms, and children heightens the risks and consequences of breaching internal confidentiality, yet explicit consideration of this issue is lacking in the methodological and family literatures.

    Disguising the Familiar: Considering Internal Confidentiality in Individual Interviews With Partners and Families · 2026 · DOI

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101 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 3,538 Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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