Source: Research Methods Knowledge Base Qualitative Measures

One of the major reasons for doing qualitative research is to become more experienced with the phenomenon you're interested in. Too often in applied social research (especially in economics and psychology) we have our graduate students jump from doing a literature review on a topic of interest to writing a research proposal complete with theories and hypotheses based on current thinking. What gets missed is the direct experience of the phenomenon. We should probably require of all students that before they mount a study they spend some time living with the phenomenon. Before doing that multivariate analysis of gender-based differences in wages, go observe several work contexts and see how gender tends to be perceived and seems to affect wage allocations. Before looking at the effects of a new psychotropic drug for the mentally ill, go spend some time visiting several mental health treatment contexts to observe what goes on. If you do, you are likely to approach the existing literature on the topic with a fresh perspective born of your direct experience. You're likely to begin to formulate your own ideas about what causes what else to happen. This is where most of the more interesting and valuable new theories and hypotheses will originate. Of course, there's a need for balance here as in anything else. If this advice was followed literally, graduate school would be prolonged even more than is currently the case. We need to use qualitative research as the basis for direct experience, but we also need to know when and how to move on to formulate some tentative theories and hypotheses that can be explicitly tested.