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The Tourism Researcher's Gaze: Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices Concerning Qualitative Research

ABSTRACT This empirical study examines how the methodological training, attitudes and perceptions of tourism researchers are shaping the form and content of the “Knowledge-Based Platform” in tourism studies. Data was gathered electronically with the help of e-mail and an on-line web survey. The trends observed point out a number of institutional and structural barriers to the acceptance of qualitative research as a legitimate mode of inquiry. These relate to tenure, journal article publication, agency funding and obtaining academic positions based on qualitative dissertations. Additionally, the study indicates two graduate program-related conditions that inhibit effective social inquiry: (1) insufficient training to produce good qualitative researchers, and (2) inadequate program support for training students to recognize the philosophical/methodological issues that shape their own research approaches and analyses. Overall, results suggest that tourism research still aspires to being primarily (post)positivistic, seeking epistemological certainty through quantitative methods and institutional legitimacy through emulating natural science methods. The tourism researcher's gaze must change, we argue, to one that is methodologically more reflexive and theoretically more sophisticated.