While the rationalistic approach traditionally employed in research and development efforts in the social sciences may be the best method of inquiry to use in the physical sciences, social scientists, and, more particularly, vocational education researchers, would do better to adopt a naturalistic method of research. The naturalist approach to inquiry is better suited for educational research because it recognizes the multiple nature of reality, the necessary interaction between researcher and respondent, and the impossibility of making generalizations among similar situational contexts. Despite the fact that practitioners of the naturalistic approach do not emphasize rigor over relevance as do practitioners of the rationalistic mode of research, their research is not necessarily sloppy. On the contrary, naturalists have their own way of dealing with the issues of credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability of data. Adoption of the naturalistic approach would have enormous implications for research and development in the area of vocational education. Among these implications are the following: the notion of the possibility of generalizable research would be abandoned, grounding would be required in every inquiry, human beings would become preferred instruments, and reports would assume the form of case studies or other qualitative portrayals. (MN)