The Understanding Research series focuses on the process of writing up social research. The series is broken down into three categories: Understanding Statistics, Understanding Measurement, and Understanding Qualitative Research. The books provide researchers with guides to understanding, writing, and evaluating social research. Each volume demonstrates how research should be represented, including how to write up the methodology as well as the research findings. Each volume also reviews how to appropriately evaluate published research.

Research that occurs in...

Qualitative interviewing has today become one of the most common research methods across the human and social sciences, but it is an approach that comes in different guises. Qualitative Interviewing will help its readers write, represent, understand, and critique qualitative interview research in its many forms as currently practiced. The book begins with a theoretically informed introduction to qualitative interviewing by presenting a variegated landscape of how conversations have been used for knowledge-producing purposes. Particular attention is paid to the complementary positions...

Cognitive interviewing, based on the self-report methods of Ericsson and Simon, is a key form of qualitative research that has developed over the past thirty years. The primary objective of cognitive interviewing, also known as cognitive testing, is to understand the cognitive mechanisms underlying the survey-response process. An equally important aim is contributing to the development of best practices for writing survey questions that are well understood and that produce low levels of response error. In particular, an important applied objective is the evaluation of a particular set of...

Perhaps the greatest strength of choosing video as a method for social research is its flexible and almost limitless potential for gathering, analyzing, writing up, and disseminating the research findings. Understanding the rich potential of video as both method and methodology is a process inextricably linked to epistemological, study design, analysis, and dissemination choices. As technology and media have evolved, video has become a primary tool of presenting information and ideas and a means of culture making.

Video as Method provides researchers with a guide to...

The field of education is rife with calls to action and for research to improve higher-level thinking and learning outcomes in primary, secondary, and tertiary education. With the No Child Left Behind Act and even more recently the Every Student Succeeds Act, policymakers are acknowledging the need for accountability and for an education system that works for everyone. Thankfully, psychologists and educators are coming together to share best methods for how to design better learning environments, assessments and tests, but are also probing learners for how they process the content material...

Qualitative researchers read journal articles, serve on masters' and doctoral committees, make careful decisions on whether conference proposals, manuscripts, or large-scale grant applications should be accepted or rejected; yet, best practices on how to do this work thoroughly and efficiently have gained little attention over the last few decades.

Evaluating Qualitative Research provides expert insight and advice on how to evaluate the merit of qualitative research in the academic community. As one of the first works of literature to address this gap in the exploration of...

Philosophies of Qualitative Research helps readers understand, present, and critique the different roles of philosophical paradigms in qualitative research. Author Svend Brinkmann shows how to reflect upon, report, and evaluate the ways in which philosophical positions inform qualitative research as it is currently practiced.

Diary research methods are distinct in the qualitative canon for their mode of data collection. This book discusses diary research history, design, data collection, data analysis, composing the final report, evaluation, and ethics.

Ethnography introduces readers to traditions of ethnographic research and writing through detailed discussions of their histories, exploratory designs, representational conventions, and standards of evaluation. While situating ethnography within its original, anthropological context, the book simultaneously introduces new frameworks for grasping its rich and ever expanding practices.

Qualitative Research and Complex Teams provides a complete, up-to-date, and contextualized understanding of how to conduct qualitative research in complex teams from research design to project conduct and development of team products. With specific emphasis on writing, it provides a useful guide for novices and experienced research leaders.