I had a contract with Sage for this book in 1997, and I
kept on not writing it, mainly because I was doing other things, but partly
because I really believed that lots of others would be doing so. When I finally
decided it had to be written, it almost wrote itself – a brain spill of so much
that I’ve learned from decades of helping researchers. I’ve had marvellous
messages from those who’ve used it: one recently wrote “I bought your book and
it is gold dust!”
Books get a life of their own, and this one has had amazing
feedback. I'm currently working on the second edition. In response to the
feedback from users and teachers, and to my own experiences of what novice
researchers most need, the next edition will carry substantial and very new
online resources.
Please contribute! Click here for details of
my call for online Methods in Practice reports.
Here’s an extract from the preface to explain why I felt it
had to be written.
Methodologists may
decry it, and experienced researchers normally deny it,
but researchers approaching qualitative research are
highly likely to meet data before they meet method.
This book is designed to
assist when qualitative data have to be handled… It is,
therefore, very different from the existing texts on
qualitative methods.
First, the book is about
handling data, working with data in order to
produce adequate and useful outcomes. It’s amazing how
little of the methodological literature is in this area.
Even texts with titles about “analyzing” or “doing”
qualitative research spend considerably more time on
ways of making data than on what you would do with such
data if you ever actually had any. And from the
perspective of those who have to do it, texts addressing
the critical issues of relation between researcher and
record are often inaccessibly high up in the misty
mountains of academic discourse.
Secondly, this book
steers a cautious course around those mountains, whilst
urging that the researcher must be aware that they are
there... These debates enthral and entice those of us
with time and training to engage in them, but send a
strong message to practitioners that qualitative
research is possibly a futile endeavour from the start.
It seems to me that, since the world undoubtedly needs
good qualitative research, (and does not need bad), all
researchers require assistance in designing projects and
handling data thoughtfully and successfully... They need
practical, accessible and informed advice on how
to do their task well, reflecting on what would be a
credible account and producing one.
Thirdly, the book covers
neither the range of qualitative methods nor how
different methods derive from different epistemological
positions …
Fourthly, you will find
here no specification of the rules for working in any
particular method… This book consistently urges the
reader who can do so to pursue literature within the
appropriate method for their study…
And finally, this book
assumes that you will use computer software when
handling qualitative data… For methods texts to treat
computer handling of qualitative data as an optional
extra (most do) makes it far harder to discuss
practically what they can now do with data. That’s
because qualitative software has transformed the tasks
of handling qualitative data…
This book is written in
the conviction that handling qualitative data well beats
handling them badly, and that it can be done.
