Recherche en soins palliatifs : intérêt des méthodes qualitatives

Qualitative research is little known by health professionals in France. Emerging from the social sciences, qualitative research provides information on social processes or behaviours, as well as people's experiences in a given context. The aim is not to generate statistics, but rather to deepen our understanding of a particular context. Qualitative research is not based on numbers, curves, statistics or histograms as generally used in medical science, but on words, reactions, behaviours, emotions and meanings in order to identify and highlight a behaviour, a strategy, a situation, a group or an individual or collective experience. It is particularly useful and adapted for advancing knowledge in the domain of palliative care, which is often confronted by social and ethical issues. This article contains two sections: the first section presents three qualitative research methodologies: grounded theory, ethnography, and hermeneutic phenomenology; the second section explains how the specificity of qualitative research is of particular interest in palliative care.