Ethnography & Qualitative Research Methods¶
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8 primes originate from Ethnography & Qualitative Research Methods and 2 more draw from it as a secondary origin — sort the Origin column to separate them. They span 8 subdomains; sort by that column to group them, or click any subdomain to filter to it.
| Prime | Origin | Subdomain | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Comparative Method | Also draws from | — | Systematically juxtaposing selected cases so that their similarities and differences do the causal-inference work that controlled experiments cannot. |
| External Analytic Challenge | Primary | Expose revisable reasoning to a competent challenger outside its authoring frame, require explicit probes and alternative readings, and route a documented response back before commitment so hidden assumptions can change the work rather than merely receive a later verdict. | |
| Grain of Analysis | Primary | The choice of the level of decomposition at which an operation is applied to a phenomenon, relative to the level at which the phenomenon's structure actually exists, where mismatch in either direction silently corrupts the operation's results. | |
| Inquiry-Change Learning Loop | Primary | Couple model-guided change in a real setting to measurement and durable model revision, carrying each cycle's evidence into the next action so inquiry and practice learn from the situation they jointly remake. | |
| Memoing | Primary | Producing a parallel, contemporaneous, durable record of the in-flight reasoning that generates an artifact, so the trajectory survives alongside the artifact. | |
| Negative Case Analysis | Primary | Deliberately hunt the cases that would overturn your account, then revise or scope it. | |
| Representational Structure Mismatch | Also draws from | A representation preserves its target's elements but misstates one or more task-relevant relations among them, so content can appear complete while its shape licenses the wrong traversal, inference, or action. | |
| Theoretical Sampling | Primary | Select the next case by what it would teach the emerging model rather than by what it represents about a population, interleaving selection with analysis and stopping when new cases add only confirmation. | |
| Thick Description | Primary | Record a phenomenon together with the surrounding context that makes its meaning recoverable, not just the bare surface event. | |
| Triangulation | Primary | — | Cross-verifying a claim by combining multiple independent sources or methods so their convergence raises confidence and their divergence exposes hidden bias or context. |