Introduction to special issue: Diverse approaches to qualitative data analysis for applied research

This article introduces the special issue, "Diverse Approaches to Qualitative Data Analysis for Applied Research, " in which seven papers analyze one shared data set to illustrate different approaches to qualitative analysis. In addition to discussing the articles included in the special issue, this introduction provides an overview of applied research - highlighting some of the implications for qualitative research - and discusses how researchers could use the special issue to compare different qualitative approaches to choose one most appropriate for a given project's goals.