This is actually pretty rigorous for the social sciences. When I was an academic (I was in the School of Pharmacy) I used to see these "qualitative" studies all

This is actually pretty rigorous for the social sciences. When I was an academic (I was in the School of Pharmacy) I used to see these "qualitative" studies all the time by our students collaborating with the social scientists in other departments. These studies all consisted of unstructured interviews of a half dozen people with no clear hypothesis. The first time I was asked to mark a thesis writing up one of these studies I failed it. The other two markers both gave it an A. I was overruled and never invited to mark a similar thesis again. I at least tried to stop this rot :(