Qualitative research methods tend to be used more and more in academic research. The cost for these methods is quite low and the results may be very interesting and useful for many fields of study. However, the utility and the characteristic of qualitative research methods differ from subject to subject and from discipline to discipline. This paper comes close to a comparison of two qualitative research methods (focus-group and in-depth interview) used in investigating the opinion of academics, analyzing by comparison the results founded in a research conducted in the Bucharest University of Economics using focus group and in-depth interviews. The conclusions of the study reveal that apart of the limits states in the literature, there are other elements that can contribute to obtaining unrealistic results.

Qualitative research methods, focus group, in-depth interview, academic research