Reply to Marien

I will begin by adding to your definition that qualitative research designs help to gain insight about complex life experiences (phenomena), and give them meaning. I am excited that you brought up the holism issue. A qualitative research must be holistic to ensure culturally situated and theory-enmeshed knowledge to leverage maximum cultural integrity.

Other characteristics of qualitative research design include soft science. Precisely, it is most concerned with life phenomena such as clinical problems, as you have mentioned. The design uses words as the fundamental element id analysis, and results rely on a researcher’s interpretation.

I should also add that Grounded theory is ideal for theory development, especially in social sciences. The methodology is made in such a way that steps co-occur. In the case of a theoretical sampling method you have discussed, the theory can be corrected to align with the data obtained (Wright et al., 2016).  

References

Wright, S., O’Brien, B., Nimmon, L., Law, M., & Mylopoulos, M. (2016). Research Design Considerations. Journal Of Graduate Medical Education, 8(1), 97-98. https://doi.org/10.4300/jgme-d-15-00566.1