Qualitative Researchers Can and Do Generalize: Generalizability Claims in Qualitative Psychological Research

A common critique of qualitative research is that it lacks generalizability, and a common response made by qualitative researchers is that qualitative research is not intended to be generalizable. Some have argued that because of varying epistemological assumptions within qualitative research, qualitative research is not capable of statistical-probabilistic generalization but is capable of analytic generalizability and transferability. The purpose of the current study was to explore generalizability in qualitative research. We first examined how frequently qualitative researchers make generalizable claims in their published work. We sampled articles ( N = 33) published from six psychological journals that regularly publish qualitative research and found that 100% of studies included claims related to statistical-probabilistic and analytic generalizability and that 85% related to transferability. A little more than half of studies explicitly described their epistemological framework. However, very few studies said that generalizability was not a goal of the study or noted a lack of generalizability as a limitation of the study. We then provide suggestions to better align qualitative claims with underlying assumptions. We argue that qualitative research can generalize but that qualitative researchers should be more transparent about aiming to do so.