An Introduction to Qualitative Research

Uwe Flick is Senior Professor of Qualitative Research in Social Science and Education at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. He is a trained psychologist and sociologist and received his PhD from the Freie Universität Berlin in 1988 and his Habilitation from the Technical University Berlin in 1994. He has been Professor of Qualitative Research at Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, Germany and at the University of Vienna, Austria. Previously, he was Adjunct Professor at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, Canada; a Lecturer in research methodology at the Freie Universität Berlin; a Reader and Assistant Professor in qualitative methods and evaluation at the Technical University Berlin; and Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Medical Sociology at the Hannover Medical School. He has held visiting appointments at the London School of Economics, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, Cambridge University (UK), Memorial University of St John’s (Canada), University of Lisbon (Portugal), Institute of Higher Studies in Vienna, in Italy and Sweden, and the School of Psychology at Massey University, Auckland (New Zealand). His main research interests are qualitative methods, social representations in the fields of individual and public health, vulnerability in fields like youth homelessness or (forced) migration and chronical illness in everyday live. He is the editor of The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Design (2 Vols.; Sage 2022). The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis (Sage, 2014), The SAGE Qualitative Research Kit (Sage, 2nd edn, 2018), A Companion to Qualitative Research (Sage, 2004), Psychology of the Social (Cambridge University Press, 1998). His most recent publications are the seventh edition of An Introduction to Qualitative Research (Sage, 2023), Doing Grounded Theory (Sage, 2018), Doing Triangulation and Mixed Methods (Sage, 2018), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection (editor, Sage, 2018), the third edition of Introducing Research Methodology – Thinking Your Way through Your Research Project (Sage, 2020) and Doing Interview Research - The Essential How To Guide (Sage 2022). In 2019, Uwe Flick received the Lifetime Award in Qualitative Inquiry at the 15th International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.

PART ONE: FRAMEWORK
Guide to This Book
Qualitative Research: Why and How to Do It
Qualitative and Quantitative Research
Ethics of Qualitative Research
PART TWO: FROM THEORY TO TEXT
Making Use of the Literature in Qualitative Research
Theoretical Positions Underlying Qualitative Research
Epistemological Background: Construction and Understanding of Texts
PART THREE: RESEARCH DESIGN
The Qualitative Research Process
Research Questions
Entering the Field
Sampling
How to Design Qualitative Research: An Overview
PART FOUR: VERBAL DATA
Interviews
Narratives
Focus Groups
Verbal Data: An Overview
PART FIVE: OBSERVATION AND MEDIATED DATA
Observation and Ethnography
Visual Data: Photography, Film and Video
Using Documents as Data
Qualitative Online Research: Using the Internet
Observation and Mediated Data: An Overview
PART SIX: FROM TEXT TO THEORY
Documentation of Data
Coding and Categorizing
Analyzing Conversation, Discourse and Genres
Narrative and Hermeneutic Analysis
Using Computers in Qualitative Analysis
Text Interpretation: An Overview
PART SEVEN: GROUNDING AND WRITING QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
Quality Criteria in Qualitative Research
The Quality of Qualitative Research: Beyond Criteria
Writing Qualitative Research
PART EIGHT: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: INTEGRATION AND OUTLOOK
Qualitative Research at Work I: Grounded Theory
Qualitative Research at Work II: Triangulation
Qualitative Research: State of the Art and the Future