Qualitative Inquiry —2.0 at 20? Developments,Trends,and Challenges for the Politics of Research

Abstract

After 20 years of Qualitative Inquiry, some current trends and challenges are outlined, which might affect the current state and further development of qualitative research in the near future. A central focus is their impact on the politics of qualitative research. Politics of inquiry addressing problems of societal relevance are challenged by the globalization and internationalization of qualitative enquiry or trends to big data in funding. Other relevant trends are expectations about archiving and reanalysis of qualitative data, the new interest in qualitative inquiry in the context of evidence, limitations coming from ethical reviews, and the limitation to mixed methods research. These trends are discussed here by using examples from current research projects. Locating qualitative inquiry in the future is discussed between being pushed aside by citizen research and taking over some (sub)disciplines.

Keywords

globalization of qualitative inquiry archives for qualitative data re-analysis of qualitative data triangulation ethics evidence citizen research

Introduction

At the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, Austria, the science researcher Helga Novotny (2014) mentioned that it is dangerous for an academic institution to become fifty. According to Novotny, the first crisis starts when an institution becomes twenty, because then the memories of the founding fathers and mothers start to fade. First adaptations to changing circumstances become necessary after the period of expansion is finished (Novotny, 2014). In 2015, the institution of the journal Qualitative Inquiry becomes 20. Looking at the development over these two decades and at recent editions, it seems less to be an example for what Novotny mentions. Rather it gives the impression that it is currently in full swing of growing rather than of growing old. Founding fathers and mothers are still fully involved in this development. Expansions on the levels of involvement (growing numbers of contributions and authors from more countries involved) and of issues to be dealt with are still a leading momentum. Maybe turning into the third decade is a moment for reflecting, how qualitative inquiry can remain updated and relevant and continue as “qualitative inquiry 2.0” in the light of some of the current developments, trends, and challenges for the politics of inquiry.

The outset for the journal can be found in the mission statement in the first edition (Denzin & Lincoln, 1995):

With Volume 1, Issue 1, we proudly launch Qualitative Inquiry, the first interdisciplinary, international journal to provide a forum for qualitative methodology and related issues in the human sciences. QI seeks cutting-edge manuscripts on qualitative research that transcend disciplinary, racial, ethnic, gender, national, and paradigmatic boundaries, including manuscripts that experiment with nontraditional forms, content, and modes of representation. (p. 3)

A look on the history of this journal as reflecting the history of qualitative inquiry reveals how this mission has been unfolded along a number of themes. This unfolding can be seen culminating in the range of (selected) special issues (see Box 1) published over the years.

Box 1.

Topics of Special Issues in Qualitative Inquiry as a Development.

1996 Quality in Human Inquiry

1999 Writing Life’s History

2002 Six Theorists of Ethics

2002 Qualitative Inquiry and the Events Following September 11, 2001

2003 A Self-Fashioned Gallery of Aesthetic Practice

2004 Dangerous Discourses: Methodological Conservatism

2007 Predatory vs. Dialogic Ethics

2007 Qualitative Inquiry, Ethics, and Politics of Evidence

2008 Technography = Technology + Ethnography:

2009 Gender, Violence, and Identity

2010 Emerging Methodologies and Methods Practices in Mixed Methods Research

2012 Causality in Qualitative Inquiry

2013 Intimate (Dis)connections: Research, Therapy, and “Real” Life

2014 Qualitative Inquiry as a Global Endeavor

(Selection taken from qix.sagepub.com)

The thematic lines across the 20 years show how the journal has always tried to link qualitative inquiry to bigger issues: methodology (quality of research, writing life’s history, causality, technology, mixed methods), ethics, politics (methodological conservatism; 9/11; evidence), globalization, gender, identity, and therapy among others. In general, the politics of inquiry can be seen as an overall summary of these perspectives. This article is not about the history or development of qualitative inquiry in retrospection—neither the field nor the journal. Starting from this selective list of special issue topics, it wants to locate progress of qualitative inquiry in this context, when it addresses current and future developments, trends, and challenges. In more detail, it will address the following issues and run through the following steps:

Politics of inquiry;

Societal relevance of qualitative inquiry;

A globalized view on qualitative inquiry;

Doing qualitative research, the meanings and uses of data;

Proliferation of qualitative inquiry;

Recovering qualitative inquiry from current trends;

Internationalization of qualitative inquiry;

Trends and challenges for the future.

Politics of Inquiry

Politics of inquiry is understood here as that we use our potentials of doing studies for academic and societal purposes—which means to further establish qualitative inquiry and to use it for addressing problems of societal relevance.

Our studies, for example, those we do in Berlin, often pass through the following steps if we want to make a contribution of societal relevance with qualitative methods:

Identify vulnerable groups in society;

Identify social problems these groups are confronted with;

For example, the non-utilization of social services and support;

Analyze how the institutions deal with these problems;

Use(fullness) of research;

Relevance and implementation.

An example of our recent research in Germany (see also Flick, 2012) makes this more concrete:

Homeless adolescents in Germany as a vulnerable group;

Health and illness of this group in general as the (social) problem;

Chronic illness in this context remains untreated in particular as an example of non-utilization of services and support;

Perception of the group and institutional barriers in institutions as ways of (institutional) dealing with these problems;

Make political suggestions for how to change this situation on a more general level as a way of making the research used and useful;

Make suggestions for change the service routines as steps toward relevance and implementation of the research.

Societal Relevance of Qualitative Inquiry

From the perspective of the politics of qualitative inquiry, this means that in this case, a qualitative study is addressing social problems of vulnerable groups for making a contribution. In many cases, like in this example, the power of qualitative inquiry comes also from the fact that it is able to work with hard-to-reach groups. These groups otherwise often refuse to participate in research or are too small to become visible in representative studies. With projects like this one, we can increase the acceptance of qualitative studies in disciplines like medicine, health, political sciences, or in the realms of public and political administration, or funding institutions as such studies may demonstrate the societal relevance of qualitative inquiry.

However, such research currently faces a number of challenges coming from different angles. Two of these challenges will be discussed here.

Challenge I: Trends to Clusters, “Big Data,” and “Big Research”

In the article already mentioned, Helga Novotny (2014) highlighted several trends on the level of the research politics and funding of the European Union. These trends in funding lead to advancing “big research,” big data, interdisciplinary research (of social sciences with natural sciences), and the integration of research funding into bigger programs of political program development. For German contexts, we can currently state a trend of research funding toward financing big clusters (of many projects coming from several disciplines). This funding is intended not only to financing the study and answering research questions and social problems but also (or even more) intended to building up and changing the structure of universities—by establishing clusters of excellence. In Germany, the Research Council has spent more than half of its budget in such clusters in 2009 already (Meier & Schimank, 2014). This trend has been growing—at the mercy of the number of funded projects like the above example, which had been funded by this source. In these developments, the chances for obtaining and funding for studies like the above example, become smaller and smaller.

Challenge II: Applying Qualitative Inquiry in Different Cultures

The second challenge is coming from the growing need to extend such research beyond our local cultures. In our above example, the population of homeless adolescents in Germany has become much more international in the last years with more and more members coming from Eastern Europe, for example. Continuing such research means that we increasingly have to address people migrating from one culture to the other, for example. Then the challenge is how to apply qualitative methods in different cultures.

A Globalized View on Qualitative Inquiry

This raises issues linked to the trend of globalizing qualitative inquiry and more particularly linked to using qualitative methods for analyzing experiences and issues of migration. We have addressed this topic in a recent special issue in Qualitative Inquiry (Flick, 2014d). If we extend our research in this direction, we face challenges on five levels (see Flick & Röhnsch, 2014):

Concepts of inquiry

Issues of access

Doing interviews

Analyzing the data

Data between cultures

One of our current studies is about the utilization of institutions for drug and addiction treatment in Germany by migrants from countries of the former Soviet Union. We face these challenges in this project in more concrete terms:

Concepts of inquiry: Qualitative methods and participants’ views;

Issues of access: Hard to reach groups and language;

Doing interviews: Working with translators/interpreters;

Analyzing the data: Interpretation between two cultures;

Data between cultures: Cultural concepts of addiction.

Our understanding of research—non-directive interviews and ethnography—is not always compatible with what our migrants expect from social scientists based on what they have experienced as research in their countries of origin. Several authors have discussed how our understanding of using interviews is in conflict with what people with a Russian background see as research—they expect clear question–answer schemes instead of open-ended questions (see, for example, Fröhlich, 2012; Weaver, 2011). Gobo (2011) has highlighted the implicit assumptions the use of interviews is based on and how these are rooted in a Western, democratic concept of society.

The second challenge is to find access to such a hard to reach group and to overcome language barriers here. Working with native-speaking researchers may help to bridge the language gap. In some of our cases, however, Russian-speaking researchers developed some mistrust based on associations to interrogations in the countries of origin (Flick & Röhnsch, 2014). In interviews and ethnography, it becomes necessary for qualitative researchers to work with translators and interpreters (Littig & Pöchhacker, 2014). Then we have to take into account the influence of these additional agents on the interview situation and on what is said. Alternatives for dealing with their roles are (a) to try to minimize the translators’ influences or (b) to try to make them an explicit part of the research situation (Edwards, 1998). When we want to understand the specific problems and experiences of a migrant group (e.g., Russian-speaking migrants) in the German health and addiction care system, we need to reflect on how to take culture and cultures into account when analyzing the data without neglecting but also without overemphasizing it. Not to use available support can also be observed in drug users coming from Germany, but the aim of our research is to identify the culture-specific barriers and obstacles. A particular challenge is then to reveal the cultural concepts of addiction behind our interviewees’ statements and the differences to our (and the service system’s) concepts.

On a methodological level, these challenges for qualitative inquiry can be summarized in two more general questions:

How to take this need for a culture-sensitive use of qualitative inquiry into account when applying qualitative methods in different cultures or in ethnic groups in a society with a different linguistic and cultural background?

How to adapt methods in the process?

Doing Qualitative Research, the Meanings and Uses of Data

The first part of this article has mainly addressed qualitative research in some general respects. Now it will focus more on data and on issues of doing qualitative inquiry, the meanings and uses of data (see Denzin, 2014). On the background of editing the SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis (Flick, 2014c), the following issues have become significant:

Using existing/natural occurring data or elicited data;

Data analysis as applying methods (e.g., Grounded Theory coding) to whatever sort of data (interviews, observation etc.);

Data analysis as approaches specifically developed for the type of data to analyze (interviews, observation, virtual data);

Triangulation of both approaches.

Uses of Data in the Analysis

Qualitative research has always oscillated between using two kinds of data: (a) In conversation analysis of mundane conversations, natural or existing data are the basis of research. Other approaches are based (b) on producing or eliciting new data in interviews or ethnography, for example.

For analyzing data, two major approaches can be chosen: (a) to take existing methods—such as Grounded Theory coding (Thornberg & Charmaz, 2014)—and to apply it to the concrete data (interviews, observation, etc.) in the current project. Or (b) to take the type of data as a starting point and to use approaches specifically developed for analyzing interviews (see Roulston, 2014), for example—this means to start the other way round. Finally, for both distinctions, we can consider triangulating both approaches by using existing data (e.g., documents) and combine them with elicited data (e.g., interviews). In a similar way we can combine approaches specific for analyzing documents (see Coffey, 2014) with applying Grounded Theory coding, for example.

These distinctions refer to another issue, which is quite important for the points that will be addressed later. In the development of qualitative inquiry, the proliferation of qualitative research into a number of schools of research is one major trend. Prominent schools in qualitative research (see Flick, 2014b, Chapter 31) are

Grounded theory;

Ethnomethodology and conversation analysis;

Discourse analysis;

Narrative analysis and biographical research;

Phenomenology;

Ethnography and auto-ethnography;

Performance-oriented research;

Action research.

Schools tend to become autonomous from a more general discussion in the discipline, develop their own research traditions and fields, distinctive kinds of research questions and methods, and so on. If the general landscapes of social sciences or qualitative research are changing, single schools may be affected more strongly by such changes or get along better with them than others.

A number of current trends that qualitative inquiry is currently confronted with or undergoing are discussed as examples for such changing landscapes. Given the variety in qualitative inquiry, it is not sure, whether the following trends will be leading to progress to each of these approaches or whether they might lead to losing some of these schools along the way.

Recovering Qualitative Inquiry From Current Trends

In the current international landscape of qualitative inquiry, the following trends can be identified as relevant but not unproblematic for our current state of affairs:

Qualitative inquiry in the archives: Research infrastructures;

Re-use and re-analysis of qualitative data;

Ethics and serendipity;

Discovery of qualitative inquiry in the context of evidence;

Triangulation in the context of mixed methods.

Research Infrastructures in and for Qualitative Inquiry

The first trend is also based on the expectation that qualitative data should no longer be produced exclusively for the concrete research project they are created for. Rather, they should be made available for a wider public of researchers or other audiences. In Germany again, we find a pressure in funding institutions and research politicians and managers to build up “research infrastructures.” Arguments mentioned for such a development are, first, that research infrastructures are a precondition for societal relevance of social research and qualitative inquiry:

Research infra-structures make a substantial contribution in all scientific areas to the scientific production of knowledge, to the scientific answering of questions of societal relevance, and to the international links of such efforts. (Wissenschaftsrat, 2011, p. 7)

A second argument refers to the quality of research seen as depending on the establishment of archiving and availability of qualitative data for other researchers:

As a replication of studies in the realm of qualitative research . . . normally is not possible, the inter-subjective transparency of scientific statements on the basis of the existing primary data is a major quality criterion of qualitative research. Losing such data is particularly sensitive against this background. (Wissenschaftsrat, 2011, pp. 56-57)

These statements show that the claim in this development is not only to make available results but also the primary data and the coding instruments or intermediary findings.

Archiving Qualitative Inquiry as a New Standard?

The idea of developing such infrastructures is often linked to the idea of building up archives where data are stored, available, and accessible for other researchers and studies. Archiving is linked to a number of questions for qualitative inquiry.

Archiving in Qualitative Inquiry: Open Questions

The first set of these questions refers to the role of context in qualitative inquiry and how far archiving bears the danger of decontextualizing data and research: Can we use and re-use qualitative data in a meaningful way without really knowing the context of data collection and the methodological particularities and without taking them into account? To analyze qualitative data without being involved in the context of the study, without referring to the original research questions pursued or for which they were produced may lead to rather bloodless and abstract findings. To produce such decontextualized data is not really what qualitative inquiry is about. The aim and claim of archiving as a standard and building up infrastructures for qualitative inquiry, to allow other researchers to take the data out of their original context and to assess and re-use them widely, may have some appeal. But the challenge is how to really take into account the contexts in the data, which is an essential part of the narrative interview, for example, in further or re-use of data in secondary analyses? In particular, when data (e.g., statements) are embedded in a more extensive structure such as a narrative or ethnography, it will be difficult to re-use them without seeing this context as essential. This leads to the major question here: Which kinds of data, of research, of approaches/schools fit into archives and the expectations linked to them?

This trend is not only embedded in making qualitative data available for other researchers but also to make them available for other kinds of research such as meta-analysis. The second trend here is to re-use and re-analyze qualitative data and to expect that qualitative inquiry will be able to provide this.

Re-Using Qualitative Data: Qualitative Meta-Analysis

This trend also extends the argumentation to trends in data analysis. Several strategies for qualitative meta-analysis have been discussed now for some time (see Timulak, 2014):

Meta-study (Paterson, Thorne, Canam, & Jillings, 2001)

meta-data analysis;

meta-method;

meta-theory;

Meta-summary (Sandelowski & Barroso, 2007)

extraction of findings from primary studies;

abstraction of those findings; and

calculation of effect sizes.

To go into details about how the concrete approaches work is beyond this article. But two more general remarks seem necessary. First, our discussion does not mean that it is per se a bad idea to import the approach of meta-analysis into the realm of qualitative inquiry. The more results can unfold a bigger contribution to answering relevant questions on this way, the better it is. However, again, if such a approach becomes a general trend or even a general expectation—qualitative data and inquiry have to be ready for re-analysis—the danger is that a lot of the variety of doing qualitative inquiry and of the data we produce will not fit in such re-analysis schemes. For example, statements from interviews will be fitting in such schemes much easier than descriptions coming from observation protocols in ethnography. If availability and readiness for re-analysis become pre-conditions for funding or for integrating approaches in teaching, the danger again is that we lose parts of the variety and the openness of qualitative inquiry. The challenges here are

How far does the trend to meta-analysis, meta-synthesis, and so on, lead to new implicit or explicit standards for qualitative inquiry (at least if to consider)?

Will this reduce the openness and variety in qualitative inquiry?

The third trend here has again to do with an issue, which is very important and in general a must in the discussion of qualitative inquiry.

Ethics and Serendipity

Research ethics, informed consent, and a review by an ethics committee are important contributions to making research better and improve researchers’ responsibility for their participants (see the special issues of Qualitative Inquiry of August 2002, April 2007, and November 2007, for example). Following the issues just discussed, a number of practical and at the same time more general problems become relevant: If we start interviews, for example, by asking participants for their (informed) consent—are such permissions for doing research or the informed consents obtained valid for re-use of data for all purposes and for every other researcher? What does this mean for clearances by ethic committees? We should reflect how far in every case a general permit for collecting data and using them in the current project and using them in any kind of later project is desirable. This means the trend to making qualitative data widely available also independently from the context for which they are originally collected produces a number of ethical issues and consequences. This can make the actual research much more complicated and questionable.

Working in fields like the above examples from our research has raised another question: What does it mean if we have obtained beforehand the ethical permissions for interviewing specific people (e.g., patients) and find out in running our study that we need other interviewees (e.g., their relatives) or other methods (e.g., for analyzing their interaction with therapists) for answering our research questions? Such extensions and shifts are not uncommon in a flexible research strategy such as ethnography or exploratory research projects. With Robert Merton, this approach to research can also be labeled as “serendipity” (Merton & Barber, 2004). How far does the (necessary) ethical grounding of our research delimit the flexibility of our research practice in this sense—as an essential of qualitative inquiry different from standardized quantitative research—in an inappropriate way? How to deal with this?

Discovery of Qualitative Inquiry in the Context of Evidence-Based Politics

If we come back now to the more general topics of infrastructure, archiving, and meta-analysis or re-analysis, these trends can be seen in the context of another big issue that has quite intensely puzzled qualitative inquiry in earlier years. At that time, a specific danger was seen and discussed as the predominant issue (see the special issue of Qualitative Inquiry of November 2007, for example)—that qualitative inquiry will be pushed away or run over by the “elephant in the living room” to borrow again an illustrative phrase by Norman Denzin (2009). Currently, another trend and danger should be noticed. In several areas in health research, for example, the classical model of evidence finds its limits. A way out of this kind of dead end is to rediscover qualitative inquiry for this context.

In more recent publications of the Cochrane Institute (in evidence-based, intervention-oriented health research), we read about a new interest in qualitative inquiry:

Currently, there are four possibilities to make use of qualitative research in the context of Cochrane Intervention reviews:

The use of qualitative research to define and refine review questions in the Cochrane Review (informing reviews);

The use of qualitative research identified while looking for evidence of effectiveness (enhancing reviews);

The use of findings derived from a specific search for qualitative evidence that addresses questions related to an effectiveness review (extending reviews);

Conducting a qualitative evidence synthesis to address questions other than effectiveness (supplementing reviews; Hannes, 2011, p. 2).

In this discussion, our earlier point about re-analysis and meta-analysis becomes relevant again in a specific way—by producing reports on synthesizing evidence from qualitative inquiry. This is spelled out in more concrete terms:

Qualitative evidence synthesis is a process of combining evidence from individual qualitative studies to create new understanding by comparing and analyzing concepts and findings from different sources of evidence with a focus on the same topic of interest. Therefore, qualitative evidence synthesis can be considered a complete study in itself, comparable to any meta-analysis within a systematic review on effects of interventions or diagnostic tests. (Higgins & Green, 2011, Chapter 20.3.2.3)

Again, this can be seen as a trend with positive sides to it—more recognition and of qualitative inquiry and results and at the same time maybe more impact of our research as outlined at the beginning of this chapter. However, this comes again with a number of challenges. If such recognition of qualitative inquiry is seen as desirable, the question arises, “How far new standards and claims of quality are defined for qualitative inquiry through the backdoor?” Furthermore, this may have a more general consequence, if this leads to a limited understanding of what is accepted as acceptable qualitative inquiry.

The last trend to mention here brings us back to qualitative inquiry in general. This trend has been taken up with some enthusiasm, sometimes critically.

Triangulation in the Context of Mixed Methods

Initially inaugurated by Denzin (1970), the idea of triangulation, that is, using more than one method or more generally more than one approach in our research, has been quite prominent in qualitative research. We can refer here to the ups and downs of “triangulation” as a concept. The downs have at some points been intensified by turning to “mixed methods” as a new concept coming with a lot of extra claims—from being the better concept, to being less limited than triangulation to being the answer to the paradigm wars and to being the solution to the juxtaposition of qualitative and quantitative research in general. Again, we should appreciate that this can be a fruitful approach for some issues of research (see the special issue in Qualitative Inquiry, July 2010), but mention one caveat here again: If we look at the mission statement of the Journal of Mixed Methods Research, we find a clear focus:

Mixed methods research is defined as research in which the investigator collects and analyzes data, integrates the findings, and draws inferences using both qualitative and quantitative approaches or methods in a single study or program of inquiry. (JMMR mission statement, http://mmr.sagepub.com)

But in the research examples mentioned before, it may have become obvious already, that we need more than one approach in such studies. We need here a systematic triangulation of perspectives (Flick, 1992) in the encounter of vulnerable groups and service providers. We do not need quantitative methods, but we need to do interviews with the members of the vulnerable groups about their expectations toward services and help and their expectations with trying to find help or why they refrain from utilizing the services. We also need expert interviews with the service providers’ staff for understanding their view on this clientele and their view on existing barriers against utilization of professional help. Finally, we need an ethnographic approach for understanding the practices of both sides. With a systematic triangulation of perspectives, we can understand the process of “doing social problems” in this field (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Triangulation of perspectives in the study of doing social problems.

This is not outlined here as a general model of doing qualitative inquiry, but this example should illustrate that we need a broader understanding of working with multiple methods beyond what is understood as mixed methods (see also Flick, Garms-Homolová, Herrmann, Kuck, & Röhnsch, 2012 for the possible relations of triangulation and mixed methods).

Internationalizing Qualitative Inquiry

Earlier, this article addressed the use of qualitative inquiry in the context of globalization of issues and of the range of participants we work with. Extending this issue, a more general discussion refers to the question of how we can promote more strongly a development toward an internationalization of qualitative inquiry. This need has been spelled out from various angles. Ping-Chun Hsiung (2012) has problematized a core–periphery divide between local traditions and cultures of research in Asia for example (periphery) and the mainstream discussions and textbooks in the Anglo-American (core) area of qualitative inquiry. The main issue here is how far offers from core discussion are appropriate for what the periphery needs. More concretely, the mainstream discussions appear to be imported at the cost of the local traditions and maybe push them aside. Finally, the mainstream textbooks and examples are seen less helpful for teaching in other cultural contexts. Alasuutari (2004) had suggested to reconsider the history of qualitative inquiry by using a spatial approach emphasizing local traditions of qualitative inquiry rather than stressing a timeline of methodological progress (as in earlier editions of the Handbook of Denzin & Lincoln, 2011, for example). The situation of qualitative inquiry in Germany may illustrate the need for such a spatial approach. Here, distinct approaches to qualitative inquiry have been quite prominent in the research and methodological discussions in the last four decades. Examples are the “Narrative Interview,” developed in the early 1970s (see Rosenthal, 2004) and the “Objective Hermeneutics” developed in the 1970s (see Wernet, 2014). These approaches have only rarely been recognized in international discussions, for example, at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) congresses, in Anglo-Saxon journals, handbooks, and textbooks. The same might be the case for other local developments in countries like France, Italy, Eastern Europe, or in Asia, and so forth (see also Flick, 2014a and Knoblauch, Flick, & Maeder, 2005). These brief remarks may illustrate that there is still a lot to do for establishing a really internationalized or globalized development of qualitative inquiry.

Trends and Challenges for the Future of Qualitative Inquiry

Rounding up what was said so far, the following questions are still waiting for satisfying answers:

How to make qualitative inquiry really international, global, and local?

How to make qualitative inquiry really societally relevant without boiling it down to limited variations (just interviews, just results)?

How to adapt it to new contexts (e.g., citizen research), uses, and phenomena (data)?

Looking into the future and daring to set a prognosis for the next critical cutting edge of 30 years—where will we be after 30 years of Qualitative Inquiry? Here we can see two possible perspectives. The first could be outlined as “Maybe they don’t need us anymore.” Nigel Fielding (2014) described as a current major trend,

The rise of “citizen research” via online media is likely to entail unpredictable changes in the practice and purposes of social research because we would have to go back to the invention of the printing press for a socio-technological development of equivalent magnitude. (p. 1066)

In particular, approaches such as “extreme citizen science” will maybe enable and empower the broader audiences and everyday people to take our methods and to do their own research with them. Thus, they will maybe abandon the idea of the experts of research—as methodologists, as researchers, as scientists.

Extreme Citizen Science is a situated, bottom-up practice that takes into account local needs, practices and culture and works with broad networks of people to design and build new devices and knowledge creation processes that can transform the world. (EXTREME CITIZEN SCIENCE [EXCITES] UCL London https://www.ucl.ac.uk/excites)

The second possible perspective could be “Maybe it’s just us?” For example, a recent editorial of the journal Work, Employment and Society has stated,

According to the recent benchmarking review of the discipline, UK sociological research is predominantly based around qualitative research methods ( . . . ). Further, evidence suggests that the overwhelming majority of empirical articles published in mainstream UK sociology journals are qualitative in their focus. (Charlwood et al., 2014, p. 155)

This means that in some contexts, qualitative inquiry will take over certain disciplines, the research, the teaching, the publications, and so on—maybe not the worst outcome of a long struggle for establishing qualitative research as a major element in social and other sciences.

Conclusion

Coming back to the title of this article, what does “Qualitative Inquiry 2.0” mean here? It means to develop, adapt, and pursue qualitative inquiry along the following lines:

To take on the chances and challenges of the trends discussed in this article;

To take care that their impact on qualitative inquiry is non-reductionist and to keep it alive;

To adapt qualitative inquiry, data, and analysis to the new global and local needs;

To try to stay relevant in changing circumstances;

And to keep on reflecting but also doing qualitative inquiry; and, more generally:

To keep on keeping on!

Footnotes

Author’s Note

This article is based on a keynote address at the 10th International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, May 2014, Urbana–Champaign, IL. This version builds on and extends .

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Uwe Flick is professor for qualitative social and educational research at the Free University of Berlin. Before that he worked at the Alice Salomon University in Berlin in the fields of health services research, which is still his major area of research, with a focus on vulnerability and service utilization. He is author or editor of numerous textbooks and handbooks, most of which have been translated in several languages in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Books include An Introduction to Qualitative Research (5th ed., 2014, SAGE), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis (2014, SAGE), Introducing Research Methodology—A Beginners’ Guide to Doing a Research Project (2nd ed., 2015, SAGE), and the Qualitative Research Kit (2007, 8 Volumes, SAGE).

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