Communication researchers, concerned with gathering complete, valid, and
reproducible results, are being encouraged to use a group of qualitative research
methods for studying business communication. The question that intuitively
arises, then, is whether qualitative methods are increasingly utilized in pub
lished business communication research. This paper addresses the call for
qualitative research in business communication, describes qualitative research
methods with examples of business communication articles in which qualitative
and qualitative/quantitative methods were used effectively, and presents an
analysis of research methods used in articles published in three business com
munication journals during the last four years. The paper concludes with
recommendations for business communication research.
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