Qualitative methods have become common in statistics education research, but questions linger about their role in scholarship. Currently, influential policy documents lend credence to the notion that qualitative methods are inherently inferior to quantitative ones. In this paper, several of the questions about qualitative research raised in recent policy documents in the U.S. are examined. Each question is addressed by drawing upon examples from existing statistics education research. The examples illustrate that qualitative methods can be used profitably to study statistical teaching and learning, and that in some cases qualitative methods are preferable to quantitative ones. By using the examples presented, qualitative researchers in statistics education can begin to more strongly situate their work within scholarly discourse about empirical research.