Developing Typologies in Qualitative Research: The Use of Ideal-type Analysis

The tradition of developing typologies has been prominent in research, particularly within the fields psychology and sociology, for decades. A typology is formed by grouping cases or participants into types on basis their common features. Despite prominence methodological guidance process a typology, as qualitative method analysing data, scarce. Ideal-type analysis relatively new addition to family research methods, which offers systematic, rigorous constructing from data. In our approach ideal-type analysis, methodology consists seven steps: becoming familiarised with dataset; writing case reconstructions; ideal types; identifying optimal cases; forming descriptions; checking credibility; making comparisons. This article summary conducting analysis. We hope that this will help researchers consider whether using may be suitable own studies.