The qualitative approach in criminological research

This paper summarizes the findings of voluminous methodological literature, as well as our concrete research experience, achieved through conducting many projects, in which the qualitative approach was used either exclusively or complemented by the quantitative approach. The considerable heterogeneity of theoretical concepts within which qualitative research is planned and implemented has caused the emergence of numerous variations of the qualitative approach in research practice. In this review of the main elements of the qualitative research approach, applied to criminological investigations, we will ignore some of these differences and present them in a somewhat simplified form, with the enumeration of common bases and principles. After a short review of the application of the quantitative and qualitative approaches to research in criminology and a summary of the chief features of the qualitative research approach, we will present the key elements of shaping research design and describe the selection of data collection methods, as well as procedures for their analysis in the qualitative studies of criminological phenomena.