What is Qualitative Research?

I really like Thomas H. Schram (2006)'s book "Conceptualizing and Proposing Qualitative Research".

Here is a long quotation from his book on page 7:

A Qualitative Predisposition

As a qualitative researcher your position on the continuum will indicate a predisposition toward working with and through complexity rather than around or in spite of it. You will embrace the challenge of turning familiar facts and understandings into puzzles. You will see value in seeking out your subjectivity as a means to explore how your assumptions and personal biography may be shaping your inquiry and its outcomes. From an enlarged awareness of how your own assumptions may be informing or affecting your understanding will emerge a still greater appreciation of complexity.

You will undertake inquiry not so much to achieve closure in the form of definitive answers to problems but rather to generate questions that raise fresh, often critical awareness and understanding of problems. Your distinctive contribution will lie in raising questions about ideas otherwise taken for granted or left unasked (Barone, 2001; Page, 2000).

In this way you might begin to identify yourself as a qualitative researcher: embracing complexity, uncovering and challenging taken-for-granted assumptions, feeling comfortable knowing your direction but not necessarily your destination. If we view the nature of qualitative inquiry in these terms, it becomes even more apparent that, while there are numerous ways to construct qualitative understanding, there is no one way to be a qualitative researchers.

Reference
Schram, T. H. (2006) Conceptualizing and proposing qualitative research. 2nd edn. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson, Merrill Prentice Hall