I’m delighted to share the new book that my co-authors and I have just published. Qualitative research design and methods: An introduction (deMarrais et al., 2024) is addressed to novice researchers who are designing and conducting a first qualitative research study.
The book is organized in three parts. Part 1 encompasses getting started with theory and design. Chapters sketch the history of qualitative methods, the role of ethical decision-making throughout the life of a project, and how theory relates to the design of research questions and informs the methods selected for a study.
Part 2 in turn provides resources for the primary methods used in qualitative studies: those of talking to people (interviews), observing people (ethnography and ethnographic designs), and examining documents and archives. Part 3 provides details on how one might use these various methods to design a study using narrative inquiry, autoethnography, and arts-based methods. While not exhaustive, these chapters showcase the wide variety of options available to qualitative researchers. The final chapter reviews strategies that researchers have taken to design quality studies.
Each chapter concludes with activities that instructors might use in teaching, along with additional references. An appendix provides examples of the topics, research questions, and research designs used in a variety of dissertation studies. These examples showcase the variety of ways in which dissertation studies might be represented – in a traditional format, a three-article dissertation formal, or using experimental methods (such as arts-based approaches).
We hope that this text will be useful to newcomers to qualitative inquiry and that others will enjoy designing and conducting qualitative studies and working with students as much as we do. To take a look at the book, click HERE. Enjoy!
Kathy Roulston
deMarrais, K., Roulston, K., & Copple, J. (2024). Qualitative research design and methods: An introduction. Myers Education Press.
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