Qualitative Inquiry and Emerging Adulthood

Abstract

Qualitative methods are viewed as central to the theory of emerging adulthood, but there remains a relative dearth of qualitative inquiry that fully captures the richness and complexities of emerging adulthood life. One of the challenges to conducting such research is the lack of familiarity with qualitative methods. Accordingly, this article describes foundational issues in qualitative inquiry by delineating the commonalities among all qualitative approaches. Meta-theoretical issues regarding ontology, epistemology, and methodology are discussed, as rigorous qualitative inquiry must always be aware of and transparent about how these issues inform and constrain the methods used. A step-by-step guide-including design of research questions, methods of data collection, sampling, and analysis-is presented to demonstrate how to conduct research that fully utilizes the affordances of rigorous qualitative inquiry. Examples from research on emerging adulthood are used to illustrate each decision made during the qualitative inquiry research process.

Emerging Job Precariousness: Work Experiences and Expectations of Low-Qualified Young Workers in Switzerland

“…We chose a qualitative approach given the exploratory nature of the study, its focus on participants' experiences, and its suitability to exploring emerging adulthood issues (Schwab & Syed, 2015). According to Ponterotto's (2005) classification of paradigms in qualitative research, our study can mainly be considered as postpositivist as we "acknowledge an objective reality that is only imperfectly apprehendable" (p.129), but also entails constructivist features, since we give space to the subjectivity of emerging adults.…”

“…Participants mainly worked in the fields of handling, social work, or sales (Table 1). Table 1 here Participants were recruited on a voluntary basis through a purposive and snowball sampling method (Schwab & Syed, 2015) by two Master's degree students in counseling psychology in their respective personal networks: one of them in an urban environment and the other in her migrants' network. Semi-structured individual interviews, from 45 minutes to 1 hour and 45 minutes long, were carried out with the participants.…”

How Emerging Adults Perceive Elements of Nature as Resources for Wellbeing: A Qualitative Photo-Elicitation Study

“…Researchers highlight the value and the need for more qualitative research to capture the richness and complexities of emerging adult lives as well as the use of participantdriven participatory approaches to contextualise wellbeing within lay understandings and experiences [46,49]. This exploratory study used a photo-elicitation interviewing (PEI) method where photographs taken by participants provided the basis for discussion during the interviews [50].…”

The Varieties of Religious Significance: An Idiographic Approach to Study Religion's Role in Adolescent Development

“…We constructed a framework to carry out a systematic, interpretative, phenomenological, and qualitative analysis (cf., Polkinghorne, 2007;Schwab & Syed, 2015;J. A. Smith & Osborn, 2015).…”