Although advocates of mixed-methods research have proposed pragmatism as a paradigm for social research, nearly all of that work has emphasized the practical rather than the philosophical aspects of pragmatism. This article addresses that gap by connecting John Dewey’s work on experience and inquiry to current issues in the study of social research. In doing so, it also addresses the political concerns that link pragmatism and social justice. As a new paradigm, pragmatism disrupts the assumptions of older approaches based on the philosophy of knowledge, while providing promising new directions for understanding the nature of social research.

Qualitative researchers face unique opportunities and challenges as a result of the disruption of COVID-19. Although the pandemic represents a unique opportunity to study the crisis itself, social distancing mandates are restricting traditional face-to-face investigations of all kinds. In this article, we describe options and resources for researchers who find themselves needing to alter their study designs from face-to-face qualitative data collection to a “socially distant” method. Although technologies are constantly changing, we review the latest videoconferencing services available to researchers and provide guidance on what services might best suit a project’s needs. We describe options for various platforms and applications including information about enhanced security applications for researchers collecting sensitive patient health information. Concerns about these technologies including security of the platform and logistical needs such as computer equipment are also discussed. Special attention is given to ethical issues when transitioning research efforts to online venues.

The potential use of artificial intelligence programs such as a ChatGPT to analyze qualitative data raises any number of questions, most notably whether it is possible to produce similar results without the demanding process of manual coding. In addition, there are questions about both the simplicity of using ChatGPT for qualitative data analysis and the potential time savings that it might provide This article addresses these questions by using ChatGPT to reinvestigate two qualitative datasets that were previously analyzed by more traditional methods. In particular, it examines the extent to which the responses from ChatGPT can recreate the themes that were originally chosen to summarize the two previous analyses. The results show that ChatGPT performed reasonably well, but in both cases it was less successful at locating subtle, interpretive themes, and more successful at reproducing concrete, descriptive themes. In doing so, the program was quite easy to use and required very little effort in comparison to approaches that rely on manual coding. It is important to recognize, however, that both coding and approaches based on artificial intelligence are simply tools that must be applied within a larger analytic process. Overall, this exploration suggests that artificial intelligence may well have the power to disrupt the coding of data segments as a dominant paradigm for qualitative data analysis.

In dyadic interviews, two participants interact in response to open-ended research questions. There are few precedents for using dyadic interviews as a technique for qualitative research. We introduce this method largely in comparison to focus groups, because both represent forms of interactive interviewing. We do not, however, view dyadic interviews as miniature focus groups, and treat them as generating their own opportunities and issues. To illustrate the nature of dyadic interviewing, we present summaries of three studies using this method. In the first study, we used dyadic interviews and photovoice techniques to examine experiences of people with early-stage dementia. In the second study, we explored the experiences of staff who provided services to elderly housing residents. In the third study, we examined barriers and facilitators to substance abuse treatment among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Hawaii. We conclude with a discussion of directions for future research using dyadic interviews.

Because themes play such a central role in the presentation of qualitative research results, we propose a new method, Iterative Thematic Inquiry (ITI), that is guided by the development of themes. We begin by describing how ITI uses pragmatism as a theoretical basis for linking beliefs, in the form of preconceptions, to actions, in the form of data collection and analysis. Next, we present the four basic phases that ITI relies on: assessing beliefs; building new beliefs through encounters with data; listing tentative themes; and, evaluating themes through coding. We also review several notable differences between ITI and existing methods for qualitative data analysis, such as thematic analysis, grounded theory, and qualitative content analysis. The use of ITI is then illustrated through its application in a study of exiters from fundamentalist religions. Overall, the two most notable features of ITI are that it begins the development of themes as early as possible, through an assessment of initial preconceptions, and that it relies on writing rather than coding, by using a continual revision of tentative results as the primary procedure for generating a final set of themes.

In the two sections of this article, I examine aspects of the analysis and reporting of interaction in focus groups. In both sections, I argue that the essential importance of interaction for producing the data in focus groups does not correspond to any requirement that the analysis or the reporting of that data should emphasize interaction. With regard to analyzing interaction, the goals of the research should guide the analysis of the data, and those goals might or might not emphasize interaction. In particular, a great deal of focus group research is conducted for substantive and practical purposes, where the analysis typically requires little attention to the dynamics of interaction in those groups. With regard to reporting interaction, quotations from single individuals can often be the most efficient and effectives ways to accomplish an article’s goals; however, I also discuss the kinds of situations where there are good reasons to report interaction among the participants. I conclude by briefly describing a different agenda for examining the importance of interaction in focus groups.