This paper has outlined a qualitative perspective to conducting research in information systems employing grounded theory, personal construct theory, and narrative inquiry. Some published research examples have been presented to support the description of the theories and to demonstrate their application to the information systems field.

A concern about conducting qualitative research relates to verification. In general, qualitative researchers tend to agree that replication is the best means to validate conclusions determined from qualitative research. Further concerns about verification relate to researcher bias, and reliability.

Qualitative researchers become closely involved in research situations and with research participants. There arises then a concern about researcher bias. Thus, in an interview, questions may be posed in a certain way, or certain aspects of the discussion may be pursued more or less intensively. Some researchers would consider this flexibility to be beneficial, allowing the researcher to obtain relevant data. However, as Reason and Rowan (1981) suggest, ‘… it is much better to be deeply interesting than accurately boring’. In the end, emphasis should be placed on the research method in order to counteract the potential introduction of bias.

When conducting qualitative research, it is incumbent upon the investigator to gather data in a systematic way in order to address the above concerns. The RepGrid technique has been shown (Stewart and Stewart, 1981) to be an acceptable method to document the personal constructs of research participants. Its use in the information systems field will support a response to the call for applied theories (Lee, 1999) and practical relevance (Benbasat and Zmud, 1999; Robey and Markus, 1998). The Long Interview technique (McCracken, 1988) supports an open unbiased investigation. It allows the researcher to document a research participant’s interpretation of an event.

Finally, these techniques respond to the concern for qualitative researcher bias by allowing the research participants to determine the response and to provide their own comment elaboration. The techniques lend structure to the qualitative data gathering process while allowing flexibility in the research participants’ responses. Incorporating these techniques will support the grounding of interview data within the environment as interpreted by the research participant.