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Identifying and implementing patient priorities, values, and goals in research, practice, and policy is widely advocated to improve patient-centered care and outcomes (1). Qualitative research is a broad term for various approaches of inquiry that generate insights about people's perspectives, beliefs, and attitudes, which can drive or explain behaviors, decision making, and outcomes (2). Such insights can inform strategies and interventions to address barriers and challenges in clinician-patient communication, shared decision making, education, delivery of care, and resource allocation. Qualitative methods may yield the answers to important questions in nephrology and transplantation. For example, exploring patient attitudes and preferences toward vascular access in hemodialysis can help address barriers to achieve the timely creation of permanent vascular access, which is associated with reduced mortality, infection, and health care costs. Furthermore, to address the gap between the need for and supply of transplantable organs, qualitative methods are used to describe community attitudes and beliefs toward deceased organ donation. This can assist in the development of education strategies, and policy change to increase deceased organ donation rates. In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in the number of qualitative research articles published in medical journals, including in nephrology. Qualitative research conducted in a rigorous, systematic, and transparent manner yields comprehensive and compelling insights to inform practice and policy. This article provides an overview of qualitative research methods and a framework to appraise qualitative studies. ### Overview of Qualitative Methods and Methodologies #### Overview Qualitative research encompasses a variety of different methodologies and methods, outlined in Figure 1. Methodology refers to the theory or framework ( e.g. , grounded theory, phenomenology, or ethnography) that researchers may use, which can inform the choice of methods ( e.g. , participant selection, data collection, and data analysis) (3). Usually, qualitative studies will involve an inductive approach, allowing the theories or concepts emerging from the data … |