Qualitative Research Practice: Concise Paperback Edition

Front Cover
Clive Seale, David Silverman, Jaber F Gubrium, Giampietro Gobo
SAGE, Nov 15, 2006 - Social Science - 552 pages
′This book is jam-packed with a wide range of material related to qualitative research.... [T]his is a quality text and has much to offer the reader, especially the novice researcher′ - Nurse Researcher

`This comprehensive collection of almost 40 chapters - each written by a leading expert in the field - is the essential reference for anyone undertaking or studying qualitative research. It covers a diversity of methods and a variety of perspectives and is a very practical and informative guide for newcomers and experienced researchers alike′ - John Scott, University of Essex

`The best ways in which to understand the issues and processes informing qualitative research is to learn from the accounts of its leading practitioners. Here they come together in what is a distinctive and wide-ranging collection that will appeal to postgraduates and social researchers in general′ - Tim May, University of Salford

`This excellent guide engages in a dialogue with a wide range of expert qualitative researchers, each of whom considers their own practice in an illuminating and challenging way. Overall, the book constitutes an authoritative survey of current methods of qualitative research data collection and analysis′ - Nigel Gilbert, University of Surrey

This concise paperback edition of the best selling handbook, Qualitative Research Practice, is particularly aimed at the student reader. The chapters are written by leading, internationally distinguished qualitative researchers who recount and reflect on their own research experiences as well as others, past and present, from whom they have learned. It demonstrates the benefits of using particular methods from the viewpoint of real-life experience. This is also a good philosophy for students to adopt in planing research work: to begin from a practical conception of the research process and to treat a book like this as an opportunity to learn a valuable craft.

From the outside, good research seems to be produced through practitioners learning and following standard theoretical, empirical and procedural formats. But from the inside we learn that qualitative research (like other forms of scientific endeavour) is also a biographical engagement, rendering its scholarly and practical contributions in its own terms. Standards take on practical meaning as the distinct activities of qualitative research resonate throughout the enterprise, complicating its accountability to itself and to others. In an authoritative yet accessible manner, Qualitative Research Practice reveals the special features of this engagement, teaching us that qualitative research is as much a craft and practice as it is a way of knowing.

Presenting a comprehensive examination of contemporary and traditional varieties of qualitative research practice, Qualitative Research Practice will be an invaluable resource for advanced students and researchers in any discipline. It is an essential and definitive guide to the major forms of qualitative methods in use today, written by leaders in the relevant fields of research practice.

 

Contents

Inside Qualitative Research
1
Encountering Method
13
Chapter 1 Interviews
15
Chapter 2 Oral history
34
Chapter 3 Biographical research
48
Chapter 4 Focus groups
65
Chapter 5 Grounded theory
80
Part II Analytic Frameworks
95
working it up down and across
267
Chapter 18 Working qualitatively and quantitatively
282
Chapter 19 Secondary analysis of archived data
297
Chapter 20 Renanalysis of previously collected material
314
Chapter 21 The Internet as research context
328
Chapter 22 Documents
345
Chapter 23 Visual methods
361
Quality and Credibility
377

Chapter 6 Narrative research
97
Chapter 7 Feminist approaches
113
Chapter 8 The Foucaultian framework
129
Chapter 9 Ethnomethodology
139
Chapter 10 Conversation analysis
153
Chapter 11 Discourse analytic practice
168
Chapter 12 Critical discourse analysis
185
Field Relations
203
Chapter 13 Ethnography and participant observation
205
Chapter 14 Ethical issues
218
Chapter 15 Working in hostile environments
236
Chapter 16 Politics research and understanding
249
Context and Method
265
Chapter 24 Quality in qualitative research
379
Chapter 25 Five misunderstandings about casestudy research
390
Chapter 26 Sampling representativeness and generalizability
405
Chapter 27 Working with key incidents
427
Chapter 28 Computerassisted qualitative data analysis
443
Audiences Applications and the International Context
461
Chapter 29 Qualitative evaluation research
463
Chapter 30 Action research
478
lessons learned
491
Chapter 32 The globalization of qualitative research
507
Index
521
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About the author (2006)

Clive Seale has been Professor of Sociology (or Medical Sociology) at Goldsmiths and Queen Mary’s (both University of London) and Brunel University. His work has concerned communication in health care and death in modern society. He has published extensively on research methods. His books include Constructing Death: the sociology of dying and bereavement (Cambridge University Press, 1998), The Quality of Qualitative Research (Sage, 1999), Media and Health (Sage, 2003) and Gender and the Language of Illness (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010, with Jonathan Charteris-Black). Recently, he has turned to fiction, publishing a novel, Interrogating Ellie (Cloiff Books, 2015) using the pen name Julian Gray. He is currently writing another novel.

David Silverman trained as a sociologist at the London School of Economics and the University of California, Los Angeles. He taught for 32 years at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he is now Emeritus Professor in the Sociology Department as well as Visiting Professor in the Business Schools, King’s College, London, Leeds University and University of Technology Sydney and Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology. He is interested in conversation and discourse analysis and he has researched medical consultations, shelters for homeless people and HIV-test counselling. He is the author of Doing Qualitative Research (sixth edition, 2022) and A Very Short, Fairly Interesting, Reasonably Cheap Book about Qualitative Research (second edition, 2013c). He is the editor of Qualitative Research (fifth edition, 2021) and the Sage series Introducing Qualitative Methods. In recent years, he has offered short, hands-on workshops in qualitative research for universities in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. Now retired from full-time work, he aims to watch 100 days of county cricket a year. He also enjoys spending time with his grandchildren and great-grandsons as well as voluntary work in an old people’s home where he chats and sings with residents.

Jaber F. Gubrium is professor and chair of sociology at the University of Missouri. He has an extensive record of research on the social organization of care in human service institutions. His publications include numerous books and articles on aging, family, the life course, medicalization, and representational practice in therapeutic context.

Giampietro Gobo is Professor of Methodology of Social Research and Sociology of Science at the University of Milan (Italy). He was one of the founders of the ‘Qualitative Methods’ Research Network of the European Sociological Association. His interests concern scientific controversies on health issues and workplace studies. He is currently undertaking projects on immunization and COVID-19 policies, and ethnographic experiments in the area of cooperation in small teamwork. His books include Doing Ethnography (Sage, 2008), Qualitative Research Practice (co-edited with C. Seale, J. F. Gubrium and D. Silverman, Sage, 2004) and Constructing Survey Data: An Interactional Approach (with S. Mauceri, Sage, 2014).

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