[Methodology, method, and quality of qualitative research]

Over the last ten years qualitative research approaches have been increasingly recognized and applied to the fields of psychotherapy and psychosomatic medicine in German-speaking countries, although this development has lagged behind what has occurred at the same time in English-speaking countries. In the former, especially, a misunderstanding prevails that qualitative research methods are at best preliminary to real science. This misunderstanding has roots in the philosophy of science and the sociology of knowledge. It comes from the lack of recognition that the human sciences, unlike the natural sciences, entail a double rather than single hermeneutic and that qualitative research methods are logically coherent ways of working systematically and rigorously with this double hermeneutic. Indeed, this nature of qualitative research is generally not well understood by many qualitative researchers themselves. In this article, the need for qualitative research is shown and its methodology is seen as an integration of method and hermeneutics, or methodical hermeneutics, which in turn is distinguished from alternative qualitative research methodologies. The article closes with considerations of quality criteria and publication standards.