An essential companion for students across the social and health sciences, this text provides a wide-ranging coverage of qualitative methods complemented by extended illustration from the array of academic disciplines in which qualitative research is found and employed. Written in a lively and reader-friendly style, the guide covers a comprehensive range of topics, including: - a concise definition of the method - a description of distinctive features - examples to convey the flavour of a technique or principle - a critical and reflective evaluation of the method or approach under consideration - cross references to associated concepts within the dictionary - a list of key readings
editorial board member, Qualitative Research, and Chair, Trustees of the Foundation which owns the Sociology of Health and Illness journal After graduating with a first class degree in Geography from Manchester University, I worked for 4 years as a researcher in the department of Public Health Medicine in Gwent Health Authority. In 1995 I moved to the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University where I started my academic career as a research assistant working on a Department of Health funded study to estimate the prevalence of injecting drug use in Wales using the 'contact-recontact' method. Between 1997 and 2003 I worked as a Research/Tutorial Fellow for the same department. In this role I was engaged in teaching medical sociology and research methods as well as employed on a number of projects including the disclosure of emotional problems in primary care and the construction of risk within cancer genetics. During this time I also completed a PhD which presented an ethnographic investigation of a scientific culture focussing on an emerging and potentially zoonotic virus called Borna Disease Virus. I have also recently completed a qualitative methods text book published by Sage (Bloor and Wood 2006). In 2003 I was appointed as a non-clinical lecturer in the Department of General Practice (now Department of Primary Care & Public Health). My teaching areas include communication skills, research methods and aspects of medical humanities such as literature and medicine and philosophy of medicine at undergraduate level. I have also taught research methods at post-graduate level. I am currently co-supervising two PhD students. Previous PhD students include Michelle Edwards who studied the practice of health literacy in patients with a long-term health condition through self-directed learning, patient education and social interaction. I have also served as a member of the Local Research Ethics Committee. Since my appointment to lecturer in 2003, my main areas of research have been in the areas of common infections and health care communication.
Access Negotiations Action Research Analytic Induction Analytic Notes (see Research Diary) Authenticity (see Naturalism) Authorial presence (see Reflexivity) Audio-recording Autoethnography Bias Biographies Case Study Chicago School (see Symbolic Interactionism) Citizens' Jury Coding (see Indexing) Cognitive Mapping Community Studies (see Action Research and Ethnography) Computer-Assisted Data Analysis Computer Mediated Interviewing (see Electronic Data Collection) Confessional Accounts (see Writing) Constant Comparative Method (see Grounded Theory) Conversation Analysis Covert Research Critical Cases (see Case Study) Dangerous Fieldwork Data Protection (see Ethics) Deconstructionism (see Discourse Analysis) Delphi Groups Depth Interviews (see Interviewing) Deviant Case Analysis (see Analytic Induction) Diary Methods Discourse Analysis Documentary Methods Electronic Data Collection Ethics Ethnography Ethnomethodology Feminist Methods Fieldnotes Fieldwork Relationships Focus Groups Foreshadowed Problems (see Ethnography) Gatekeepers (see Access Negotiations) Generalisation Going Native (see Bias) Grounded Theory Group Interviews Indexing Indigenous Researchers (see Public Participation) Informed Consent (see Ethics) Interviews Key Informants Leaving the Field Life History (see Oral History) Logical Analysis Member Validation (see Triangulation) Meta Ethnography Mixed Methods (see Multiple Methods) Multiple Methods Narratives Naturalism Observation (see Ethnography) Oral History Participant Observation (see Ethnography) Phenomenological Methods Piloting Positivism (see Naturalism) Postmodernism Post-Structuralism (see Postmodernism) Process Evaluation Public Participation Public/Private Accounts Public Sociology (see Whose Side Are We On?) Purposive Sampling (see Sampling) Qualitative/Quantitative Combinations (see Multiple Methods) Rapid Assessment Realism (see Naturalism) Reflexivity Reliability Research Diary Researcher Safety (see Dangerous Fieldwork) Respondent Validation (see Triangulation) Sampling Semi-Structured Interviews (see Interviews) Social Network Analysis Software (see Computer-Assisted Data Analysis) Symbolic Interactionism Taxonomies Telephone Interviewing (see Electronic Data Collection) Thick Description (see Theoretical Saturation) Theoretical Sampling (see Sampling) Theoretical Saturation Time Sampling (see Sampling) Transcription Triangulation Trust Uses of Qualitative Research Video Recording Video Analysis (see Video Recording) Vignettes Virtual Focus Groups (see Focus Groups) Validity (see Reliability) Whose Side Are We On? Writing
'The book at hand is a very useful additional reference to the qualitative research methodology bibliography' - Qualitative Research -- R.V. Labaree * CHOICE * 'The book at hand is a very useful additional reference to the qualitative research methodology bibliography' - Qualitative Research
