title: One is the liveliest number: the case orientation of qualitative research.
abstract: The epistemological thrust of qualitative research is case oriented. Regardless of qualitative methodology or sample size, qualitative research is quintessentially about understanding a particular in the all-together. Regardless of the kind of analytic technique employed, qualitative analysis are obliged, first and foremost, to make sense of individual cases. Looking at and through each case in a qualitative project is the basis from which researchers may make idiographic generalizations and move to cross-case comparisons to construct aggregations, syntheses, or interpretations of data from and faithful to individual cases.
authors.affiliation: Department of Women's and Children's Health, School of Nursing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 27599, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sandelowski
mesh_terms: D016022:Case-Control Studies; D015400:Clinical Nursing Research / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge