Although one of the major experts in qualitative research methodology, in terms of
theorizing and dispersing it, Professor Shran Merriam noted that “No longer is the
literature preoccupied with justifying the use of qualitative methods, or debating the merits
of qualitative versus quantitative research”(Merriam, 1989, p. 161), Korean academia still
does not give as much credibility to qualitative research paradigm as it does to quantitative.
This article is aimed to help candidates for master’s or doctoral degrees in the field of
adult education, who may want to conduct their research relying on qualitative research
methodology, have confidence in raising research questions, collecting and interpreting
data, and drawing grounded theories out of the data within the qualitative research
paradigm. For the sake of clear-cut understanding of qualitative research methodology,
philosophical assumptions undergirding quantitative and qualitative research paradigms are
compared, followed by roles researchers play, ways data are collected and interpreted, and
rationales reliability and generalizability are understood in different ways within these two
frameworks. Finally, the unique feature of adulthood differentiated from other stages of life
is explored, and it is proposed that the different aspects of adulthood and the mission of
adult education to comprehend it require qualitative research methodology, rather than
quantitative. Hopefully, this work would draw critiques on the qualitative paradigm from
Korean academia and provide it with a forum in which scholars could sharpen their
research methods during the process of heated debates.