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Qualitative inquiry is a family of research approaches that seek in-depth understanding of people and their social worlds. Researchersusually gather verbal material, such as talk or written texts. The procedures used to gather material are flexible, enabling the researcher to adapt them to individual participants. Different types of analysis are used, depending on the researcher's theoretical framework and the questions under investigation.

Qualitative inquiry has long had a presence in psychology, from founders such as William James and Wilhelm Wundt in the 19th century, to personality researchers such as Gordon Allport in the 1930s. However, the development of qualitative inquiry has been slower in psychology than in other social sciences; a fact that is best understood in the context of the general history of the psychologydiscipline in the West. Some characteristics of this context that slowed the development of qualitative inquiry in psychology were therestriction of science to mean natural science; the imperative to restrict psychological research to quantitative methods and measurement; the refusal of psychology journals to publish research using qualitative methods; and the often vociferously expressed contempt for psychologists who used these methods. 

Since the 1970s, larger societal changes, combined with intellectual developments in neighboring disciplines, have made an increasing number of psychologists aware of the merits and possibilities of using qualitative methods to answer their research questions. This increased interest has resulted in a rich and growing flora of methods of gathering and analyzing data, an increase in venues for publishing qualitative research in psychology, and the founding of several nation-wide as well as cross-national organizations of qualitative researchers in psychology. However, qualitative inquiry remains a marginal set of approaches within the discipline. These approaches are very seldom taught in standard courses of research methods.