How do you gain entry into a research setting? What tricks are there to learning the rules of the community without alienating the people you came to study? How are good relations maintained with informants? What happens after you leave the field? This title addresses these questions.

Considers the merits of qualitative research, profiles interviewing strategies and discusses the relationship to respondents, and how to write about social life. The later portion of this book contains three sections: constructing perspectives, constructing identities as well as doing and relating. Case studies and research are also featured.