Resumo

GARBIN, Cléa Adas Saliba; MOIMAZ, Suzely Adas Saliba; ARCIERI, Renato Moreira  e  LIMA, Thaís Jaqueline Vieira de. Qualitative methodology: revealing a new path for research in Dentistry. RGO, Rev. gaúch. odontol. (Online) [online]. 2013, vol.61, n.3, pp. 175-182. ISSN 1981-8637.

ABSTRACT Currently, it is easy to find health professionals who not only attach importance to qualitative methods, but also recognize their help to better understand their patients' lives. However, its use in dentistry is still incipient, either due to ignorance or because of technical / operational difficulties in identifying possibilities for their use in research. Thus, the purpose of this study was to review the literature on the characteristics and peculiarities of the qualitative methodology, demonstrating their techniques of collecting, recording and analyzing data. For this, we performed a descriptive literature, from a survey in the "LILACS", "BBO" and "PUBMED" databases, by keywords related to the theme, selecting only the papers that mentioned the "importance" of qualitative research, the "characteristics and fundamentals," and the "techniques of collecting, recording and data analysis" involving this methodology. It was found that all studies have highlighted the importance of qualitative research to the construction of new knowledge that cannot be achieved by quantitative data. We found many different techniques to gather, record and analyze qualitative data applied to the dentistry field. It was concluded that qualitative research represents a new path to be followed by dentistry, so that we are able to plan actions in ethical and humane public health dentistry, bringing better results to the population, because of the depth of knowledge that your date can.

Palavras-chave : Investigative techniques.; Qualitative analysis.; Qualitative research..