An essential companion for students across the social and health sciences, this text provides a wide-ranging coverage of qualitative methods complemented by extended illustration from the array of academic disciplines in which qualitative research is found and employed.

Written in a lively and reader-friendly style, the guide covers a comprehensive range of topics, including:

- a concise definition of the method

- a description of distinctive features

- examples to convey the flavour of a technique or principle

- a critical and reflective evaluation of the method or approach under consideration

- cross references to associated concepts within the dictionary

- a list of key readings

Access Negotiations
Action Research
Analytic Induction
Analytic Notes (see Research Diary)
Authenticity (see Naturalism)
Authorial presence (see Reflexivity)
Audio-recording
Autoethnography
Bias
Biographies
Case Study
Chicago School (see Symbolic Interactionism)
Citizens′ Jury
Coding (see Indexing)
Cognitive Mapping
Community Studies (see Action Research and Ethnography)
Computer-Assisted Data Analysis
Computer Mediated Interviewing (see Electronic Data Collection)
Confessional Accounts (see Writing)
Constant Comparative Method (see Grounded Theory)
Conversation Analysis
Covert Research
Critical Cases (see Case Study)
Dangerous Fieldwork
Data Protection (see Ethics)
Deconstructionism (see Discourse Analysis)
Delphi Groups
Depth Interviews (see Interviewing)
Deviant Case Analysis (see Analytic Induction)
Diary Methods
Discourse Analysis
Documentary Methods
Electronic Data Collection
Ethics
Ethnography
Ethnomethodology
Feminist Methods
Fieldnotes
Fieldwork Relationships
Focus Groups
Foreshadowed Problems (see Ethnography)
Gatekeepers (see Access Negotiations)
Generalisation
Going Native (see Bias)
Grounded Theory
Group Interviews
Indexing
Indigenous Researchers (see Public Participation)
Informed Consent (see Ethics)
Interviews
Key Informants
Leaving the Field
Life History (see Oral History)
Logical Analysis
Member Validation (see Triangulation)
Meta Ethnography
Mixed Methods (see Multiple Methods)
Multiple Methods
Narratives
Naturalism
Observation (see Ethnography)
Oral History
Participant Observation (see Ethnography)
Phenomenological Methods
Piloting
Positivism (see Naturalism)
Postmodernism
Post-Structuralism (see Postmodernism)
Process Evaluation
Public Participation
Public/Private Accounts
Public Sociology (see Whose Side Are We On?)
Purposive Sampling (see Sampling)
Qualitative/Quantitative Combinations (see Multiple Methods)
Rapid Assessment
Realism (see Naturalism)
Reflexivity
Reliability
Research Diary
Researcher Safety (see Dangerous Fieldwork)
Respondent Validation (see Triangulation)
Sampling
Semi-Structured Interviews (see Interviews)
Social Network Analysis
Software (see Computer-Assisted Data Analysis)
Symbolic Interactionism
Taxonomies
Telephone Interviewing (see Electronic Data Collection)
Thick Description (see Theoretical Saturation)
Theoretical Sampling (see Sampling)
Theoretical Saturation
Time Sampling (see Sampling)
Transcription
Triangulation
Trust
Uses of Qualitative Research
Video Recording
Video Analysis (see Video Recording)
Vignettes
Virtual Focus Groups (see Focus Groups)
Validity (see Reliability)
Whose Side Are We On?
Writing