What should the researcher tell, or not tell the informant? Is fieldwork inherently an activity that requires covert behaviour by the researcher and subject alike? Are honesty and openness at odds with effectiveness in the field? In examining these questions, the author raises the ethical and practical issues of revelation and concealment in the field and attempts to arrive at a more useful set of norms for fieldwork behaviour.

The place of emotions in research poses many dilemmas. Ignoring emotions can have significant costs for analysis and for competence as researchers. This volume explores the links between emotion and analysis: how the feelings of fieldworkers - about their professional identity, their work and the people they study - inform analyses. The conclusion offers an extended example from one of the authors' field studies to highlight how the emotions of the fieldworkers can enhance qualitative analyses.

In recent years, the development of narrative analysis has given life to the study of the narrative as a form of information for social research. This volume, replete with examples and transcriptions from previous narrative studies, is a useful introduction to this growing body of literature. The author provides a detailed primer on the use of narrative analysis, its theoretical underpinnings and world view, and the methods it uses.

In this concise introduction Alain Coulon demystifies the important qualitative research tradition of ethnomethodology. In terms accessible to students, he explains its history, its features and the major criticisms levelled at it.

In this concise introduction Alain Coulon demystifies the important qualitative research tradition of ethnomethodology. In terms accessible to students, he explains its history, its features and the major criticisms levelled at it. Both theoretical notions and main methodological practices are covered and examples of key ethnomethodological work are provided.

Historical and biographical work is becoming a more common type of qualitative research done by social scientists and usually requires the extensive use of formal archives housed in universities, governments, museums and other institutions. This practical and concise book provides an introduction for the novice on conducting archival research and covers such topics as contacting and preparing to work in archives, the protocol of using archives, and ways of organizing and referencing the useful data from the archive.

In this introduction to understanding, researching and doing case studies in the social sciences, Hamel outlines several differing traditions of case study research including the Chicago School of Sociology, the anthropological case studies of Malinowski, and the French La Play school tradition. He shows how each developed, changed and has been practiced over time. Suggestions for the practice of case studies are made for the novice reader and an additional feature is the extensive bibliography on case study methods in social science to allow for further exploration of the topic.

Researchers sometimes work in settings which are potentially dangerous to their health and safety. For example, they can be vulnerable to violent confrontation, verbal abuse or infectious diseases. This volume explores the contexts, settings and situations which pose high physical risk to the fieldworker, and presents the strategies the author has developed for reducing the risks.

Raymond Lee draws on his own experience in Northern Ireland, as well as on the work of other researchers with groups such as outlaw bikers and youth gangs, drug addicts and informants in inherently dangerous...

Conversation analysis has contributed enormously to the understanding of social life, social structure, the meaning ascribed by individuals to interaction, and the rules and structures of conversation. George Psathas' succinct introduction outlines its procedures and its major accomplishments, with discussions on verbal sequence, institutional constraints on interaction and the deep structure of talk.

This guide outlines the differences between active interviews and traditional interviews and give novice researchers clear guidelines on conducting a successful interview.