In the course of our supervisory work over the years, we have noticed that qualitative research
tends to evoke a lot of questions and worries, so-called frequently asked questions (FAQs). This
series of four articles intends to provide novice researchers with practical guidance for conducting
high-quality qualitative research in primary care. By ‘novice’ we mean Master’s students and
junior researchers, as well as experienced quantitative researchers who are engaging in qualitative
research for the first time. This series addresses their questions and provides researchers,
readers, reviewers and editors with references to criteria and tools for judging the quality of
qualitative research papers. The second article focused on context, research questions and
designs, and referred to publications for further reading. This third article addresses FAQs about
sampling, data collection and analysis. The data collection plan needs to be broadly defined and
open at first, and become flexible during data collection. Sampling strategies should be chosen
in such a way that they yield rich information and are consistent with the methodological
approach used. Data saturation determines sample size and will be different for each study. The
most commonly used data collection methods are participant observation, face-to-face in-depth
interviews and focus group discussions. Analyses in ethnographic, phenomenological, grounded
theory, and content analysis studies yield different narrative findings: a detailed description of a
culture, the essence of the lived experience, a theory, and a descriptive summary, respectively.
The fourth and final article will focus on trustworthiness and publishing qualitative research.