Provides researchers and students with a step-by-step guide to planning qualitative research. This book presents an approach to the components of design and how they interact with each other. It presents a strategy for creating coherent and workable relationships among these design components and highlights key design issues.

Are cultural and material phenomena equally real? How can one study the relationships between cultural constructions, social behavior and material conditions and draw a valid conclusion from the data? In contrast to interpretive or constructivist positions, realism supports the insights of critical theory in social and educational research regarding the relationships between actors' perspectives and their actual situations, while avoiding the epistemological objectivism associated with positivism and some forms of post- positivist empiricism. This book will explain how readers can use realism...

The Third Edition presents an approach to qualitative research design that both captures what researchers really do and provides step-by-step support and guidance for those embarking for the first time on designing a qualitative study.