Designing Qualitative Research (5th Edition)

This popular text provides useful and pragmatic guidance for developing and successfully defending proposals for qualitative inquiry. The Fifth Edition addresses the advances and challenges presented by developments and new applications while providing direct guidance. Focusing on the proposal stage of research, this edition allows the reader to have a clear plan for data analysis and for the challenging varieties of final reports of qualitative inquiries.

The new edition includes expanded coverage of ethics, analysis processes, and approaches, and is full of updated vignettes that illustrate the methodological challenges that face today′s qualitative researcher. This edition also includes discussions about distance-based research (such as email interviews and online discussion groups), the implications of postmodern turns, integrating archival material in qualitative research, and creative ways of presenting the research.

This text is an invaluable resource to teachers and students of research methods across disciplines and is a must for the library of those using qualitative approaches.

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 PhD, 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 PhD 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.