Qualitative research and data analysis across methodological traditions: A narrative review

Qualitative research has become essential for developing a deep, contextualized understanding of complex social phenomena, focusing on meaning, context, and lived experience rather than on numerical measurement alone. This article aims to provide early-career researchers with foundational knowledge and practical guidance for conducting ethically sound and methodologically rigorous qualitative inquiry, and to clarify the often-conflated distinction between qualitative research and qualitative data analysis. Adopting a narrative (integrative) review approach, it synthesizes foundational and contemporary literature across diverse methodological traditions. The article examines the foundations, rationale, and principal strengths and limitations of qualitative research; reviews eleven major analytical approaches together with the core techniques of data collection, coding, analysis, interpretation, and reporting; and addresses the criteria of trustworthiness, the expanding role of digital and AI-assisted tools, and key ethical considerations. It further conceptualizes qualitative analysis as an iterative, reflexive, and interpretive process that varies across approaches while sharing a commitment to meaning-making and analytical rigor, and it offers an integrative framework and decision-oriented guidance to support the selection of an appropriate analytical approach. Together, these contributions provide an accessible yet rigorous foundation for understanding and conducting qualitative research across methodological traditions.