1 Qualitative Research and Outcomes in Health, Social Work and Education

The purpose of this paper is to outline ways in which qualitative research has a contribution to make to research on outcomes in Health, Social Work and Education. It is a methodology paper with a practical purpose. Large tracts of inquiry work (a broad term to cover research, evaluation, policy analysis, and practitioner research) are concerned with questions about the benefits of a given policy initiative, programme, service or intervention – benefits that are likely to be couched in terms of outcomes, merit and so on. An appraisal of the possible contribution of qualitative research to such endeavours is important for several reasons. First it is to plausible claim a deepened methodological strength in qualitative research. If this is the case, we should be developing rigorous approaches to qualitative applications to outcomes research. I believe it is a desirable aspiration for social work, health and education researchers to support social science research that seeks to integrate rigour (substantive and methodological) and relevancei. If we are to avoid reinforcing conventional wisdom about what I will call a ‘horses for courses ’ approach to methodological choice, then we need to take an intellectually principled position on the relationship between different methodologies. Quantitative researchers are alread