เปรียบเทียบวิธี

	การวิจัยชีวประวัติ	การวิเคราะห์วาทกรรม	ชาติพันธุ์วรรณนา
สาขาวิชา	เชิงคุณภาพ	การวิจัยเชิงคุณภาพ	เชิงคุณภาพ
ตระกูล	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
ปีกำเนิด	Late 19th–early 20th century (Dilthey ~1883; Thomas & Znaniecki 1918–1920)	1989 (Fairclough); 1987 (Potter & Wetherell)	c. 1922 (Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific)
ผู้ริเริ่ม	Wilhelm Dilthey (hermeneutic foundations); Thomas & Znaniecki (sociological application); Norman Denzin (interpretive biography)	Norman Fairclough; Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherell	Bronisław Malinowski (modern ethnography); rooted in 19th-century anthropology
ประเภท	Qualitative research method	Method	Qualitative fieldwork tradition
แหล่งต้นตำรับ	Denzin, N. K. (1989). Interpretive Biography. Sage Publications.	Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and power. Longman.	Hammersley, M. & Atkinson, P. (2019). Ethnography: Principles in Practice (4th ed.). Routledge. ISBN: 978-1138504462
ชื่อเรียกอื่น	life history research, biographical method, life story research, biographical narrative inquiry	DA, Critical Discourse Analysis, Discursive Analysis	Etnografi, participant observation, fieldwork, ethnographic research
ที่เกี่ยวข้อง	6	2	5
สรุป	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.	Discourse analysis is a qualitative research methodology that examines how language, communication, and power shape meaning, identity, and social reality. Developed across linguistics, sociology, and psychology (particularly by Norman Fairclough and Jonathan Potter), discourse analysis goes beyond content to analyze language use as a social practice that constitutes and reflects power relations, ideologies, and social structures.	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.