Strategies for Generating Deliberately Emergent Qualitative Research Designs

Abstract

In carrying out research, qualitative scholars routinely struggle with having to navigate between planned and emergent research design strategies. Pressure from funders and gatekeepers to plan research can be high, but too much planning can interfere with the ethos of discovery that characterizes inductive qualitative research. On the other hand, study designs that are overly emergent present their own array of risks. In this essay, I argue for the integration of planned and emergent approaches to qualitative research design. I outline strategies for making planned research designs more reflexive and emergent, and strategies for making emergent research designs more directive and planned. I present two competencies—conceptual nimbleness and methodological reflexivity—that can be helpful for designing studies in this way and discuss how these deliberately emergent designs should be reported, with a view to enhancing the transparency and trustworthiness of qualitative research methods more generally.