Designing Qualitative Research

by Catherine Marshall, Gretchen B Rossman, Gerardo Blanco

Overview

Offering clear, easy-to-understand guidance on designing qualitative research, this fully updated Seventh Edition of Marshall and Rossman’s bestselling text retains the useful examples, tools, and vignettes that has it such an outstanding resource. The book takes graduate students from selecting a research genre through building a conceptual framework, data collection and interpretation, and arguing the merits of the proposal. Now featuring a new co-author, Gerardo L. Blanco, this edition includes more on the history and new emerging genres of qualitative inquiry, as well as a more sustained and deeper focus on social media and other digital applications in conducting qualitative research. New application activities provide opportunities for students to try out ideas, while timely vignettes illustrate the methodological challenges posed by the intellectual, ethical, political, and technological advances affecting society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781071817353
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	06/21/2021
Edition description:	Seventh Edition
Pages:	344
Sales rank:	684,266
Product dimensions:	7.38(w) x 9.12(h) x (d)

About the Author

Catherine Marshall is the William Eaves Distinguished Professor Emerita of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After completing her Ph D, she served on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania and at Vanderbilt University before settling as professor at North Carolina. The ongoing goal of her teaching and research has been to use an interdisciplinary approach to analyze the cultures of schools, state policy cultures, gender issues, and social justice issues. She has published extensively on the politics of education, qualitative methodology, women’s access to careers, and socialization, language, and values in educational administration.

Marshall’s honors include the Campbell Award for Lifetime Intellectual Contributions to the Field, given by the Politics of Education Association (2009); the University Council for Educational Administration’s Campbell Award for Lifetime Achievement and Contributions to Educational Administration (2008); the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Willystine Goodsell Award for her scholarship, activism, and community building on behalf of women and education (2004); and a Ford Foundation grant for Social Justice Leadership (2002). In the American Educational Association, she was elected to head the Politics and Policy Division, and she also created an AERA Special Interest Group called Leadership for Social Justice.

Marshall is the author or editor of numerous other books. These include Activist Educators: Breaking Past Limits; Culture and Education Policy in the American States; The Assistant Principal: Leadership Choices and Challenges; The New Politics of Gender and Race; and Feminist Critical Policy Analysis. This book’s origin came early in her scholarly career, while conducting qualitative research on policy and teaching literally hundreds of doctoral students how to adopt and adapt the qualitative approach into workable proposals. She recognized a need and began to develop this book.

Gretchen B. Rossman is Professor Emerita of International Education and the Center for International Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her Ph D in education from the University of Pennsylvania, with a specialization in higher-education administration. She has served as a visiting professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. Prior to coming to the University of Massachusetts, she was senior research associate at Research for Better Schools in Philadelphia. With an international reputation as a qualitative methodologist, she has expertise in qualitative research design and methods, mixed-methods monitoring and evaluation, and inquiry in education. Over the past 30+ years, she has coauthored 15 books, 2 of which are editions of major qualitative research texts (Learning in the Field, third edition, with Sharon F. Rallis, and the present seventh edition of Designing Qualitative Research, with Catherine Marshall and Gerardo L. Blanco—both widely used guides for qualitative inquiry). In addition, she has published a book titled The Research Journey: An Introduction to Inquiry (with Sharon Rallis). She has also authored or coauthored more than 50 articles, book chapters, and technical reports focused on methodological issues in qualitative research synthesis, mixed-methods evaluation, and ethical research practice, as well as the analysis and evaluation of educational reform efforts both in the United States and internationally.

Professor Rossman has served as principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on several large U.S. Agency for International Development–funded projects (in Palestine, the Southern Sudan, Malawi, Tanzania, and India); as co-PI on a World Bank–funded multigrade schooling project (Senegal and Gambia); as lead trainer for a Save the Children–funded participatory monitoring and evaluation of professional training (Azerbaijan); and as external evaluator on several domestic projects, including a Department of Education–funded reform initiative, a National Science Foundation–funded middle-grades science initiative, and a number of projects implementing more inclusive practices for students with disabilities.

Gerardo L. Blanco is Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Higher Education, and Academic Director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development. He received his Ed.D. in Educational Policy and Leadership, with a concentration in Higher Education, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Prior to joining Boston College, he served on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Boston and at the University of Connecticut. His research explores the intersections of quality and internationalization in higher education and is motivated by a commitment to global social justice and a deep curiosity for the ways higher education institutions define, improve and communicate their value to different stakeholder groups. The author of over 30 journal articles to date, his research has been published in Higher Education, Studies in Higher Education, the Comparative Education Review, and the Review of Higher Education. In 2017, he received the “Best Research Article Award” from the Comparative & International Education Society’s Higher Education SIG. In 2014 and 2020, his work received honorable mentions from the same organization.

Blanco is a Fulbright Specialist; his teaching, research and consulting have taken place in 15 countries and 5 continents. He has been a visiting faculty member at Shaanxi Normal University (China), visiting expert at the International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER) at the University of Kassel (Germany) and teaching fellow at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (Poland).

Table of Contents

List of Tables
List of Figures
List of Vignettes
List of Application Activities
Preface to the Seventh Edition
About the Authors
Chapter 1. Introduction
Considerations
The Challenges
Developing an Argument
Overview of the Book
Opportunities and Challenges
Further Reading
Key Concepts
Chapter 2. Qualitative Research Genres
Canonical Genres
Critical Genres
Opportunities and Challenges
Further Reading
Key Concepts
Chapter 3. Credibility, Trustworthiness, and Ethics
Trustworthiness
Bringing Ethics, Relationships, and Identity Into Trustworthiness
Researcher Identity, Voice, and Relationships
Field Notes
Ethics and Institutional Reviews
Opportunities and Challenges
Further Reading
Key Concepts
Chapter 4. The What of the Study: Building the Conceptual Framework
Sections of the Proposal
Building the Conceptual Framework: Topic, Purpose, and Significance
Literature Review and Critique of Related Research
Opportunities and Challenges
Further Reading
Key Concepts
Chapter 5. The How of the Study: Building the Research Design
Meeting the Challenge
Justifying Qualitative Research
The Qualitative Genre and Overall Approach
The Setting, Site, Population, or Phenomenon
Within Sites: Sampling People, Actions, Events, and Processes
Personal Biography, Positionality, Ongoing Relationships, and Reciprocity
Time and Resources: Making Some Tough Choices
Opportunities and Challenges
Further Reading
Key Concepts
Chapter 6. Basic Data Collection Methods
Observation
In-Depth Interviewing
Life Histories and Narrative Inquiry
Opportunities and Challenges
Further Reading
Key Concepts
Chapter 7. Specialized and Focused Data Collection Methods
Collecting Content and Text From Documents and Other Media
Using the Internet and Digital Applications
Multimodal Approaches
Interaction Analysis
Hypotheticals
Dilemma Analysis
Games and Simulations
Combining Data Collection Methods
Opportunities and Challenges
Further Reading
Key Concepts
Chapter 8. Managing, Analyzing, and Interpreting Data
Recording, Managing, Transcribing, and Translating Data
Data Analysis
Generic Data Analysis Strategies
Analytic Procedures
Challenges and Opportunities
Further Reading
Key Concepts
Chapter 9. Arguing the Merits of Your Proposal and Moving Forward
Criteria of Soundness
The Essential Qualitativeness and Value of the Research
Demonstrating Precedents
Envisioning the Final Report, the Dissertation, the Book, or Something Else
Opportunities and Challenges
A Final Word
Further Reading
Key Concepts
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

Written to be accessible to students, researchers, and policy planners across disciplines, this guide details the step-by-step process of building a proposal; collecting, recording, managing, and analyzing data; and defending the value and logic of research. Postmodernist, feminist, and ethical concerns are incorporated into the work. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

A student friendly book that would have been beneficial to my own research development in graduate school.”

Ifeoma Amah

This text will be helpful to graduate students when they first encounter qualitative research and its possibilities. It is both practical and philosophical, and it provides useful advice on strategies to embrace and pitfalls to avoid.”

Mary Jean Herzog

"This is by far the most readable text on methodology I've used in my work with education graduate students. Its careful, detailed and rich explanation of the research process makes it a crucial tool for anyone working with students who are ready to begin the process of qualitative research. But it is the thick, authentic descriptions of researchers actively engaging in the puzzles and dilemmas of doing complex, ethical, and socially powerful research that makes it an invaluable guide for the student at all stages in their research process. It is a text that a student will return to over and over again, and become that dog eared companion that accompanies them from the beginning to end of their research journey."

Catherine Mc Gregor

"This is a handy, practical text for newcomers to qualitative research who are preparing a proposal."

Jon Travis

The authors create a mosaic of qualitative research procedures using text, tables, figures, and vignettes that move the reader between the theoretical and practical aspects of conducting quality research.”

Le Ann Putney

"This useful stand by benefits from it's latest revisions, overall an invaluable teaching resource in qualitative research methodology."

Christopher J. Lucas

“The authors create a mosaic of qualitative research procedures using text, tables, figures, and vignettes that move the reader between the theoretical and practical aspects of conducting quality research.”

LeAnn Putney

"This is by far the most readable text on methodology I've used in my work with education graduate students. Its careful, detailed and rich explanation of the research process makes it a crucial tool for anyone working with students who are ready to begin the process of qualitative research. But it is the thick, authentic descriptions of researchers actively engaging in the puzzles and dilemmas of doing complex, ethical, and socially powerful research that makes it an invaluable guide for the student at all stages in their research process. It is a text that a student will return to over and over again, and become that dog eared companion that accompanies them from the beginning to end of their research journey."

Catherine McGregor