QUALITATIVE RESEARCH AGuide to Design and Implementation

Abstract

Qualitative research is a mature field of study with its own literature base, research journals, special interest groups, and regularly scheduled conferences. Indeed, staying current is a daunting task for any single individual. Van Maanen (2011) humorously describes trying to “keep up” with developments in ethnography, just one type of qualitative research: The ethnography industry now includes the ceaseless produc tion of authoritative monographs, exhaustive reviews of the liter ature(s), method manuals, encyclopedias of concepts and theories, meta-critical expositions, themed anthologies, hand books of door-stopping weight, established and quasi-established journal publications, formal presentations of talks and papers presided over by umpteen academic societies, online publica tions, blogs, topical chat-rooms, message boards, forums, social networking sites, and on and on. The answer then to how a sin gle person can keep up without gagging is that he or she can’t, for the potentially relevant materials are overwhelming, and new theories, new problems, new topics, new concepts, and new cri tiques of older work multiply with each passing year. It seems the best one can do is to selectively pursue and cultivate an ever diminishing proportion of the potentially relevant work that comes one’s way and assume an attitude of benign neglect toward the rest. (p. 146) However, what has remained constant amidst the burgeoning of resources for doing qualitative research is the value of a practical guide for designing and implementing this type of research. Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation represents our effort to explain qualitative research in an easy-to-follow narrative accessible to both novice and experienced researchers.