Call for online ‘Methods in Practice’ reports

The second edition of Handling Qualitative Data, my 2005 Sage text, is in preparation. The book chapters will be updated, and Sage Publications will host a new website for the book with a very new set of online resources for readers. There will be two parts to this website, one offering advice on qualitative software with links to tutorials for each of the major packages, and the other a substantial resource to show methods in practice.

This is an invitation to contribute one of these method-in-practice reports -  succinct, specific, detailed, lively and live reports from real research projects about the working experience of researchers..

From users and reviewers of Handling Qualitative Data, I’ve had many requests for detailed case studies of real projects, so students using each chapter can read what it’s like to handle data this way and to manage the challenges of that stage of the research process. To do this will require very unusual reports, focussing on the detail of how each part of a qualitative project works in practice. Together they will provide a rich and freely accessible body of material that is otherwise very hard to find. In books, papers and dissertations, we report the outcomes of qualitative research, rarely telling in detail the practices that got us there. Novice researchers frequently ask for reports of the detail of practice, but rarely find them.

I’m seeking researchers willing to write thoughtfully, practically and honestly  about their research experience, presenting the story of a project they have conducted in such a way that the reader can understand what they did with their data, and learn from their experience.

These will be reports about ‘Methods in Practice’. Their emphasis will be on how the researchers actually conducted the tasks of handling and analysing data, what worked and what didn’t, and the strategies and techniques developed. These accounts, unlike the conventional published paper or thesis chapter, will tell the process of what was done and the story of how it was done and what was learned. They will be reports not about the content and conclusions of the project but about key details of how researchers went about handling that content and how they arrived at those conclusions.

With such accounts, readers can develop realistic expectations of the tasks ahead and the sort of respect for the real work of research that is only gained from seeing that work in progress.  Strategic victories can be celebrated, mistakes and near misses can be revisited, lessons learned can be shared.

Why on the web, not in the book? I am keen to retain the book’s brevity and accessibility, as feedback has consistently given these as important reasons for its usefulness. And I’m unwilling to deal with the request for research reports by merely including thumbnail accounts of the successful outcomes of real projects. But the main reasons for providing these methods-in- practice reports online are accessibility and fluidity. Sage Publications will support the site for Handling Qualitative Data, but the materials will be accessible to any researcher. Contributors will be encouraged to link from the book’s site to their own research site, to publications, working papers or data samples, making the reports live and vivid to the reader.

What’s in it for you? I’m expecting that the prime benefits to contributors whose reports are accepted will be the very accessible online publication of details of their study that are hard or impossible to publish, the attendant interest and networking with other researchers and the publicity for their other research products across the courses and research settings in six continents where this book is used. My guess is that the process of doing a methods-in-practice report will also be clarifying and rewarding, and sometimes a first step to a more ‘regular’ publication. And the task of writing such direct, open, informal, live account - and responses to it - may be a lot of fun!

I hope to gather these reports from researchers from a variety of levels of experience, different styles and methods of qualitative work and several disciplines. And of course with a variety of software experiences (and products), including not using software. Each qualitative project reported should have been concluded to the stage of either successful examination of a thesis or acceptance of a refereed publication. Otherwise, variety will be welcomed, the reports doubtless varying in length and emphases and in presentation mode. All contributors will be asked to address each of the research processes covered in the book – so each chapter can point to the relevant parts of the website’s reports – but how they are addressed will depend on your experience and style.

If you have such a project and would like to contribute a methods-in-practice report, please email me to discuss your research experiences and your ideas about presenting them.

Interested? Please go to the detailed Guidelines for Methods in Practice