I am in the process of writing my master thesis and I chose a qualitative research as my study design. I am in a private hospital setting gathering my data and, at the same time, doing an internship at the same hospital. Because of the design and characteristics of my research, I developed three interview guides according to the three groups of doctors I will most likely encounter (keep in mind I am doing an internship and my supervisor suggested it might be the most efficient way to gather insightful data).
The three lists of questions are very similar to each other and only one or two questions really differ from one interview guide to the other.
I was told that doing this is okay as long as "I am familiar with the scientific literature".
My question is then whether I need to justify through literature and existing studies my methodology of gathering data (e.g. finding a research that already did something similar) or if it is enough to explain the characteristics of the study and the reasons for doing that.
A lot depends on how exploratory your goals are. If there is a well-defined literature in your area, then you should refer to in justifying the new data you are going to collect.
Regardless of that, if the differences between you interviews are small and the reasons for them are obvious, then I don't see any reason to rely on the literature to explain them.
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