Qualitative Research Design

This book gives researchers and students a user-friendly, step-by-step guide to planning qualitative research. Based on a course that the author taught for 7 years at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, it is written in an informal, jargon-free style and incorporates many examples and hands-on exercises. Rather than the rigid, linear approach to design usually found in research methods textbooks, which is particularly unsuited to qualitative research, the book presents a flexible, systemic model of design. This model not only better fits what experienced qualitative researchers actually do, but provides a clear framework for designing a study and developing a research proposal. This edition includes new or substantially expanded discussions of research paradigms, defining a research problem, site and participant selection, relationships with research participants, data analysis, and validity, as well as more examples and exercises.

Joseph A. Maxwell is a Professor in the Graduate School of Education at George Mason University, where he teaches courses on research design and methods and on writing a dissertation proposal. He has published work on qualitative research and evaluation, mixed method research, sociocultural theory, Native American social organization, and medical education. He has also worked extensively in applied settings. He has presented seminars and workshops on teaching qualitative research methods and on using qualitative methods in various applied fields, and has been an invited speaker at conferences and universities in the United States, Puerto Rico, Europe, and China. He has a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago.