Confronta i metodi

	Ricerca biografica	Etnografia	Teoria Fondata
Campo	Qualitativo	Qualitativo	Ricerca qualitativa
Famiglia	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Anno di origine	Late 19th–early 20th century (Dilthey ~1883; Thomas & Znaniecki 1918–1920)	c. 1922 (Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific)	1967
Ideatore	Wilhelm Dilthey (hermeneutic foundations); Thomas & Znaniecki (sociological application); Norman Denzin (interpretive biography)	Bronisław Malinowski (modern ethnography); rooted in 19th-century anthropology	Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss
Tipo	Qualitative research method	Qualitative fieldwork tradition	Method
Fonte seminale	Denzin, N. K. (1989). Interpretive Biography. Sage Publications.	Hammersley, M. & Atkinson, P. (2019). Ethnography: Principles in Practice (4th ed.). Routledge. ISBN: 978-1138504462	Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Aldine.
Alias	life history research, biographical method, life story research, biographical narrative inquiry	Etnografi, participant observation, fieldwork, ethnographic research	GT, Grounded Theory Approach
Correlati	6	5	3
Sintesi	Biographical research is a qualitative method that examines individual lives in depth — through life-history interviews, personal documents, letters, and autobiographical narratives — to understand how personal experience intersects with social, historical, and cultural forces. Rooted in Wilhelm Dilthey's hermeneutics and made prominent in sociology by Thomas and Znaniecki's study of Polish immigrants, it treats the individual life story as a window onto broader social structures and processes. It belongs to the narrative inquiry subfamily alongside oral history and life-story research.	Ethnography is a qualitative research tradition in which a researcher immerses themselves in a social group or community over an extended period — typically three to six months or longer — to study its culture, values, and behaviours in their natural setting. Originating in social and cultural anthropology, and consolidated as a rigorous method by Bronisław Malinowski in the early twentieth century, ethnography produces rich, contextualised accounts of how people live, work, and make meaning together.	Grounded Theory (GT) is a systematic qualitative research methodology in which theory emerges directly from data through iterative analysis, rather than being imposed before data collection. Developed by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss in 1967, GT prioritizes generating explanatory frameworks grounded in evidence.