I am doing qualitative research on software testing: here how it looks like

"Qualitative research addresses the question of “what?”

Knowing what something is, entails a conceptualization of the matter under investigation as a whole and in its various parts, the way these parts are related and organized as a whole, and how the whole is similar to and different from other things.

Knowing what something is may also involve the conceptualization of its “how”— its process and temporal unfolding in time. Qualitative knowledge may also include an understanding of the context, the consequences/outcomes, and even the significance of what is investigated in the larger world.

The construction of theories, hypothetical explanation, prediction, and measurement of a subject matter presupposes qualitative knowledge—that is, knowledge of the basic characteristics of the subject matter.

Knowledge of the “what” may be implicit or explicit, uncritically assumed or carefully established, and informally or formally acquired. In the history of the sciences that concern human mental life, great attention has been devoted to the rigorous specification of procedures for measurement and quantitative analysis, and the qualitative/ descriptive procedures have received far less attention.

However, in and of itself, measurement tells us only magnitude, and even when many measurements are made with the finest instruments and rationally analyzed with the most sophisticated statistical procedures, they do not themselves provide qualitative knowledge of what is being measured.

Therefore, a different kind of research and analysis—research about what a subject matter is in all its real-world complexity—is a necessary foundation and complement to quantitative research. Qualitative knowledge is easily taken for granted. We are already familiar with “what things are” through ordinary experience in everyday life.

However, important basic qualitative work has always been done in the physical sciences—for instance, in charting the stars and planets in astronomy, developing classification systems for plants in botany, describing the structure and functions of organ systems, and the stages of embryonic development in biology.

Perhaps such human phenomena as learning, intelligence, emotion, the family, education, democracy, and the Cold War era are so close to us that we can theorize, measure, explain, and even sometimes successfully predict and control them without undertaking any methodical qualitative investigations of them.

However, given that qualitative questions concern the structure, the process, and even the significance of such subject matter, careful, rigorous science may be necessary in order to overcome the prejudices and limitations of uncritical experience and assumptions, however well these may serve us in our everyday lives.

After all, qualitative questions about the nature of phenomena such as “learning” and “intelligence,” indeed of the very nature of “human beings” themselves, continue to be matters of conflicting claims and ongoing debate."

Wertz, Frederick & Charmaz, Kathy & McMullen, L.M. & Josselson, Ruthellen & Anderson, R. & McSpadden, Emalinda. (2011). Five Ways of Doing Qualitative Analysis: Phenomenological Psychology, Grounded Theory, Discourse Analysis, Narrative Research, and Intuitive Inquiry.