README FIRST FOR A USER'S GUIDE TO QUALITATIVE METHODS [Paperback]

"This text offers current thinking in the field. The authors are well-established qualitative researchers and have pulled off a great text for the beginning researcher." -- Matthew A. Eichler 20111028 "The key strength of this text is the discussion and presentation of how to think about qualitative research. This is the only text that discusses the process of thinking before doing at any stage of the research project from the general idea to the writing up and submitting for publication. This kind of discussion is extremely helpful for novice or experienced researchers as it helps them to take a step back in the middle of the research process, rethink clearly and improve the project." -- Ruth Segal 20111028 "This book combines the basics of qualitative research methods (why we choose qualitative over quantitative when we are trying to answer specific questions about human behavior) and the nuts and bolts of how to actually do qualitative research. I like that it explains qualitative research from conceptualization to writing up the results. Not a lot of textbooks accomplish this - they allude to a lot, but they don't include the necessary information that this textbook includes." -- Rhonda R. Buckley 20111028 "The text is very clear and well organized, and accessible for new students. In comparison to many other introductory texts, it really brings to the fore the need for theoretical and methodological coherence." -- Irina L. G. Todorova 20111028 "An invaluable introduction to qualitative inquiry that emphasizes several points that I rarely find in other texts and, although somewhat subtle, they are extremely important for doing rigorous research." -- Sandra Mott 20111028

Lyn Richards (B.A. Hon., political science; M.A., sociology) is a qualitative research writer and consultant and Adjunct Professor in the Graduate School of Business at RMIT University in Melbourne. As a family sociologist, she published four books and many papers on Australian families and women's roles. As a methodologist, she taught graduate and undergraduate qualitative research at La Trobe University and went on to write for and teach the teachers. Her most recent book is Handling Qualitative Data, Second Edition (SAGE, 2009). In university research with Tom Richards, she developed the NUD*IST software and founded QSR International, Melbourne. In interaction with the researchers using the software, and later development teams at QSR, she worked on the design of the subsequent versions (to N6) and then NVivo, as a principal member of the QSR software-development teams and author of the software's documentation. She was an invited speaker at all of the conferences in the first decade of qualitative computing and a leading teacher and trainer internationally in qualitative computing and the handling of qualitative data. Richards has taught qualitative methods and qualitative software to some 4,000 researchers in 15 countries, and learned from them all. Janice M. Morse, PhD (Nurs), PhD (Anthro), FAAN is a professor and Presidential Endowed Chair at the University of Utah College of Nursing, and Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta, Canada., from 1991-1996, she also held a position as professor at The Pennsylvania State University. From 1997-2007, she was the founding Director and Scientific Director of the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology, University of Alberta, founding editor for the International Journal of Qualitative Methods, and Editor of the Qual Press monograph series. She remains the founding editor for Qualitative Health Research, (now in Volume 2, Sage1), is currently editor for the monograph series Developing Qualitative Inquiry, and The Essentials of Qualitative Inquiry (Left Coast Press). Her research programs are in the areas of suffering and comforting, preventing patient falls, and developing qualitative methods. In 2011, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement in Qualitative Inquiry from the International Center for Qualitative Inquiry, was an inaugural inductee into the Sigma Theta Tau International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame (2010), the 5th recipient of the Episteme Award (also Sigma Theta Tau). She received awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Newcastle (Australia) and Athabasca University (Canada). She is the author of 460 articles and chapters and 19 books on qualitative research methods, suffering, comforting and patient falls.