The purpose of this paper, the first of a series of two discussion pieces, is to introduce some of the issues in the debate surrounding qualitative research to the readers of Musculoskeletal Care. Recent issues of the Journal have seen an informative focus on quantitative methods and statistical analysis, and here we provide an equivalent introduction to semi-structured interviewing and qualitative analysis in this series. In the qualitative tradition, we have tried to keep our discussion reflexive, transparent and contextualized within the history of the approach and the theoretical considerations that underlie it, including the origins, nature, methods and limits of the approach. We provide information that we hope is useful for readers with all levels of familiarity with qualitative research, building from an introduction to some basic assumptions and ethical issues. We also introduce one specific qualitative approach, interpretative phenomenological analysis, which researchers might wish to apply. In the accompanying paper in a subsequent issue of Musculoskeletal Care, we will describe the potential application of this approach.
2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd