This edition aims to make accessible the groundbreaking essays that Christel Hopf wrote on the methodology and methods of qualitative research during her all too short life. Few have shaped the development of qualitative social research in the 1980s and 1990s in the Federal Republic of Germany as significantly as Christel Hopf, who was also instrumental in the founding of the "Qualitative Methods" section of the German Sociological Association. She uniquely combined qualitative empirical research with methodological reflection. Primarily, she was a qualitative researcher, meaning her initial interest was in substantive questions, followed by a focus on methodology and methods.