There is no longer any question that qualitative inquiry is fundamental to the enterprise of social science research, with a broad reach and a history all its own. This book seeks to introduce to reintroduce readers to selections that provide a solid intellectual grounding in the area of qualitative research. The Qualitative Researcher’s Companion examines the theoretical underpinnings, methodological perspectives, and empirical approaches that are crucial to the understanding and practice of qualitative inquiry. The authors, in their research, believed in making their processes explicit; they were convinced that all researchers profit from their colleagues’ open discussion of the ways they do their work. This book gives first hand reports from the expanding field of qualitative data analysis in the period from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s. This book includes reports that document the use of long-standing methods in social anthropology, linguistics, and social phenomenology along with some that, without excessive polarization, illuminate under-examined assumptions. The book attempts to set up a road map for building theories from case study research. It also discusses persistent problems in qualitative research, such as sampling, researcher-informant interaction, and condensation of information, tolerance of contractions and paradoxes and issues of generalizability.