Poth, Cheryl N. Cheryl N. Poth, PhD , has been a faculty member of the Centre for Research and Applied Measurement and Evaluation within the Department of Educational Psychology in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta since 2008. In this role, she has developed and taught graduate-level research methods and program evaluation courses in addition to supervising and mentoring students, faculty, and community members in qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research. Dr. Poth has an adjunct appointment in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry and serves as the methodologist on several cross-disciplinary research teams. She has been principal investigator for projects and grants funded federally (e.g., Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Physiotherapy Foundation of Canada), provincially (e.g., Alberta Education and Alberta Centre for Child, Family and Community Research and Alberta Advisory Committee for Educational Studies), and locally (e.g., University of Alberta and School Boards). She has authored over 30 peer reviewed journal articles and served as guest co-editor of two special issues of the International Journal of Qualitative Methods. In addition to more than 100 conference and 25 workshop presentations, she served as co-chair of the 2013 Advances in Qualitative Methods Conference (AQM). She has led research methods workshops with diverse audiences; for example, at the International Institute of Qualitative Methods' Thinking Qualitatively Series. She is a current editorial board member of the International Journal of Qualitative Methods and the Journal of Mixed Methods Research. In 2013, she was recognized with the Provost's Award for Early Achievement of Excellence in teaching, and won the McGuffey Longevity Award in 2018, followed by the Most Promising New Textbook Award in 2020 (TAA).

This bestseller explores the principles of each of five qualitative inquiry traditions: narrative research, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography and case study. The Fourth Edition features more visual representations of the five approaches.

Introduction
Philosophical Assumptions and Interpretive Frameworks
Designing a Qualitative Study
Five Qualitative Approaches to Inquiry
Five Different Qualitative Studies
Introducing and Focusing the Study
Data Collection
Data Analysis and Representation
Writing a Qualitative Study
Standards of Validation and Evaluation
"Turning the Story" and Conclusion

In the Fourth Edition of this bestselling book, John W Creswell and new co-author Cheryl N Poth explore the philosophical underpinnings, history and key elements of each of five qualitative inquiry traditions: narrative research, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography and case study - putting them side by side, so that we can see the differences. The authors relate research designs to each of the traditions of enquiry. They compare theoretical frameworks and ways to employ standards of quality, as well as strategies for writing introductions to studies, collecting data, analyzing data, writing a narrative and verifying results.

New in this edition:

Updated materials on each tradition
More on interpretive frameworks and ethics
More visual depictions of the five approaches
Two new topical articles in Chapter 5, reproduced in full in the appendices.