Through the use of real-life social science examples, this book walks upper-division undergraduate to graduate students through the steps of collecting and analyzing qualitative data. Rather than cover data collection in separate chapters isolated from analysis techniques, the authors pair each data collection technique with the appropriate analytic method. The authors first cover word-based techniques (such as KWIC, word counts, componential analysis, taxonomies, mental maps, and semantic networks.) They next cover discovery techniques (grounded theory, schema analysis, sequential analysis, and analytic induction) followed by confirmatory techniques (tables and matrices, classic content analysis, content dictionaries, and ethnographic decision modeling.) In the last section of the book, the authors tackle philosophical issues related to sampling, reliability and validity as well as how to select the appropriate software. Carefully crafted exercises will provide readers with experiences for practicing the concepts in each chapter. This book will provide readers with not only the most complete information on doing qualitative collection and analysis, but a guide to selecting among the complete variety of qualitative techniques.
H. Russell Bernard is director of the Institute for Social Science Research at Arizona State University and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology of the University of Florida. He is a cultural anthropologist specializing in technology and social change, language revitalization, and social network analysis. Bernard has done research or taught at universities in the United States, Mexico, Greece, Japan, and Germany. He is a former editor of Human Organization and the American Anthropologist and is the founder and editor of the journal Field Methods. Bernard’s books include Research Methods in Anthropology and Social Research Methods (both with Amber Wutich); Analyzing Qualitative Data (with Gery Ryan and Amber Wutich); and Native Ethnography (with Jesús Salinas Pedraza). Bernard was the 2003 recipient of the Franz Boas Award and the 2024 recipient of the Conrad Arensberg Award from the American Anthropological Association and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Gery Ryan (Ph. D., University of Florida, 1995) is a Senior Behavioral Scientist at the RAND Corporation and Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs at the Pardee RAND Graduate School in Policy Analysis. Ryan’s research focuses on social factors in mental and physical health, and includes studies on HIV/AIDS, depression, serious mental illness, childhood diarrhea and acute respiratory illnesses, obesity and complementary and alternative medicine. He has worked extensively in Latin America and Africa on health-related issues and helped redesign and implement a large-scale education reform in Qatar. As a methodologist, Ryan has published widely on the application of systematic methods to qualitative research. Over the last 20 years, he has run workshops sponsored by NSF, NIH, CDC and WHO on qualitative research methods and has taught these methods at UCLA, Pardee RAND, and the University of Missouri.
