What is Qualitative Research?

✍ Scribed by Martyn Hammersley

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 136
• Series: The 'What is?' Research Methods Series
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book invites readers to explore the nature of qualitative research, and to recognise the varied and conflicting forms it can take. It examines how these contrast with quantitative work, as well as how they differ from journalism and imaginative literature. The book describes various methodological philosophies that have shaped qualitative work, as well as different types of orientation to be found within it today. It offers clear definitions of key terms and concepts, and also a detailed exploration of recent disputes among qualitative researchers, with a view to showing how differences in practice relate to underlying commitments. This book will be a vital resource for both new and experienced researchers.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Series foreword
Preface
1 Defining qualitative research
The contrast with quantitative research
Methods or paradigms?
A different contrast
Summary
2 Methodological philosophies
Positivism
Interpretivism
The 'critical' tradition
Constructionism
Summary
3 Divergent analytic styles
Identifying causes
Methods used
Criticisms
Investigating experience
Methods used
Criticisms
Penetrating fronts
Methods used
Criticisms
Documenting constitutive practices
Methods used
Criticisms
Relationships among the four orientations
4 Two methodological disputes
The 'radical critique' of interviews
Commentaries on Potter and Hepburn's article and their response
Reflections on the dispute
The critique of urban ethnography
Background to the dispute
Wacquant's critique
Identifying the grounds of disagreement
Conclusion
Conclusion
References
Index
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