Qualitative Methods

The turn to biographical methods in social science is invigorating the relationship between policy and practice. This book shows how biographical methods can improve theoretical understanding of professional practice, as well as enrich the development of professionals, and promote more meaningful practitioner - service user relationships.

This brilliant book is a great guide for students undertaking their first piece of independent research. Regular critical reflection is an invaluable tool for helping you gain new insights, deal with practical issues as they arise and develop your understanding. This book gets you started in the habit of using a research journal.

Using insights from those with first-hand experience of conducting research in areas of international intervention and conflict across the world, this book provides essential practical guidance, discussion of mistakes, key reflections and raises important questions for researchers and students embarking on fieldwork in violent and closed contexts.

Part of a series of three, this book showcases new research methods and emerging approaches. Focusing on Response and Reassessment, it has three parts: the first looks at the turn to digital methods; the second reviews methods in hand and the final part reassesses different needs and capabilities.

Part of a series of three, this book explores dimensions of creativity and ethics. It has three parts: the first covers creative approaches to researching. The second considers concerns around research ethics and ethics more generally, and the final part addresses different ways of approaching creativity and ethics through collaboration.

Part of a series of three, this book connects themes of care and resilience, addressing their common concern with wellbeing. It has three parts: addressing researchers’ wellbeing, considering participants’ wellbeing, and exploring care and resilience as a shared and mutually entangled concern.

Inviting beginners and more experienced researchers to explore new ways of writing, this book introduces readers to creatively written research in a variety of formats including plays and poems, videos and comics. It not only gives social researchers permission, but also shows them how, to write creatively.

Co-authored by an international team of experts across disciplines, this important book is one of the first to demonstrate the enormous benefit creative methods offer for education research. It illustrates how using creative methods, such as poetic inquiry, theatre and animation, can support learning and illuminate participation and engagement.

This original collection draws on the latest empirical research to explore the practical challenges facing happiness researchers today. By uniquely combining the critical approach of sociology with techniques from other disciplines, the contributors illuminate new qualitative and biographical approaches of the study of happiness and well-being.

This crucial contribution exposes the misconception that health research and health services are equally effective for all and highlights their failures in engaging with Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups. It provides essential case study examples on recruitment, engagement and partnerships with BME groups in research and public engagement.

Drawing on international examples, this book interrogates the relationship between the arts, culture and community development. Contributors from six continents, reimagine community development as they consider how aesthetic arts contribute to processes of peacebuilding, youth empowerment, participatory planning and environmental regeneration.

Providing practical guidance based on real-life examples, this book shows researchers different forms and ways of keeping a research journal and how to get the most out of journaling. Giving researchers licence to do things differently, the book encourages and enables readers to develop their own sense of researcher identity and voice.