Keeping a Personal Focus When Contemplating a Sense of Home: A Review of Qualitative Housing Analysis: An International Perspective

While calling for a more systematic qualitative research approach in addressing contemporary urban studies’ challenges, Paul Maginn, Susan Thompson, and Matthew Tonts’s new edited work, Qualitative Housing Analysis: An International Perspective, also helps to remind us of the importance of remaining sensitive to the perspective of the people inhabiting these dwellings and to those not so fortunate to be living under a roof they can call their own. The research presented in this excellent work calls attention to the value qualitative research findings can bring to the complex study of housing and the implications of housing policy decisions

The Next Generation of Grounded Theorists Tells All

Grounded theory in all of its forms, variations, and extensions is one of the most widely practiced qualitative research methodologies. In a personal rendering, the contributors to Developing Grounded Theory: The Second Generation give an insider’s perspective that allows us not only to learn the commonalities and differences of this diverse family of methodologies, but also to meet the men and women who have contributed to its development and evolution

Exploring Sheila Keegan’s World of Commercial Qualitative Research

The world of commercial qualitative research reflects an emergent and exciting area of contemporary qualitative research which might not be all that familiar to academic qualitative researchers. Traditionally mentored in an oral and experiential fashion, the next generation of market qualitative researchers are benefiting from new books such as Sheila Keegan’s Qualitative Research: Good Decision Making through Understanding People, Cultures and Markets to learn how to address their clients’ needs for gaining insights into their customers’ perspectives. Academic-oriented qualitative researchers can also benefit from Keegan’s insights into this similar but different realm of qualitative inquir

Keeping Things Plumb in Qualitative Research

As qualitative research projects are conceptualized and conducted, they can grow out of alignment as researchers make choices as to their Area of Curiosity, Mission Question, Data Collected, and Data Analysis. This phenomenon of being muddled is a natural, and sometimes necessary, part of the overall process. The important part of being in a muddle is to recognize it and to work to tidy it up. In this paper, a way to keep qualitative research projects plumb is presented. A case study is also shared to show how one project was found to be out of alignment and how it was realigned using the Qualitative Research Plumb Line

Communicating Qualitative Analytical Results Following Grice\u27s Conversational Maxims

Conducting qualitative research can be seen as a developing communication act through which researchers engage in a variety of conversations. Articulating the results of qualitative data analysis results can be an especially challenging part of this scholarly discussion for qualitative researchers. To help guide investigators through this difficult communicative process, the authors suggest Grice\u27s (1989) Conversational Maxims of Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner as general guidelines to follow when formulating and presenting findings in qualitative research products as well as basic assumptions to guide readers when judging the quality of result representations

Interviewing the Investigator: Strategies for Addressing Instrumentation and Researcher Bias Concerns in Qualitative Research

Instrumentation rigor and bias management are major challenges for qualitative researchers employing interviewing as a data generation method in their studies. A usual procedure for testing the quality of an interview protocol and for identifying potential researcher biases is the pilot study in which investigators try out their proposed methods to see if the planned procedures perform as envisioned by the researcher. Sometimes piloting is not practical or possible so an interviewing the investigator technique can serve as a useful first step to create interview protocols that help to generate the information proposed and to assess potential researcher biases especially if the investigator has a strong affinity for the participants being studied or is a member of the population itsel

Indigenous and Emergent Methodologies: A Review of Qualitative Urban Analysis: An International Perspective

Paul Maginn, Susan Thompson, and Matthew Tonts’ (2008) new edited work entitled Qualitative Urban Analysis: An International Perspective introduces its readers to emergent qualitative research and evaluation methodologies indigenous to urban policy studies. These local lessons can prove quite valuable for all qualitative researchers regardless their fields or discipline

Qualitative Research: Central Tendencies and Ranges

It is always interesting to listen closely when someone says, Qualitative research is... or curious to read intently an article or book which prominently features qualitative research in the title, and then experience a strange, defamiliarization process as the words of the conversation, lecture, article, or book don\u27t seem to fit your notion of what qualitative research is and isn\u27t. Well, you are not alone in your confusion. As far as I know, no one has copy rights on the term so it ends up meaning a variety of things for a variety of people. As a matter of fact, that is the most important point: Qualitative research can be a diverse, rich, and sometimes self-contradictory world of inquiry. Meta-analyses of qualitative research methods and philosophies are quite common in the field and serve as good introductions to this diversification of approach. In this short essay I offer one such examination of the field by presenting a series of couplets which help to exemplify central tendencies (CT) and ranges (R) of qualitative research

Qualitative Research Like Politics Can Also Be Local: A Review of Interdisciplinary Standards for Systematic Qualitative Research

The political nature of defining what constitutes standards of rigor and quality in qualitative research comes to the forefront again in Lamont and Whites’ (2008) new report, Interdisciplinary Standards for Systematic Qualitative Research. Based upon a 2005 National Science Foundation (NSF) funded workshop for representatives from NSF’s Cultural Anthropology, Law and Social Science, Political Science, and Sociology programs, Lamont, White, and their colleagues share perspectives on what they see as strengths, standards, and opportunities for qualitative research today and in the near future. Although this manuscript might not allay the fears of those in the field concerned over the conservative challenge that such federal policy reports can issue, the work does offer some promising contrasts to some similarly oriented reports of the recent pas

Bringing Method to the Madness: Sandelowski and Barroso’s Handbook for Synthesizing Qualitative Research

The synthesis of qualitative research has emerged as an important methodology in the contemporary research landscape. In their new book entitled Handbook for Synthesizing Qualitative Research (2007), Margarete Sandelowski and Juliet Barroso successfully bring method to this potentially maddening process of finding, selecting, appraising, and synthesizing results from primary qualitative research studies