Planning Your Qualitative Research Project

Book excerpt: This is a key text for any student embarking on a qualitative research project, it provides worked examples and valuable models which can be used as guides for plans and proposals, answering key questions and providing a comprehensive guide to a student’s project. It shows that when planning a qualitative research proposal, researchers should adopt an approach where they ask themselves the following four questions: What research paradigm informs my approach to my research area? What theoretical perspective do I choose within the paradigm? What methodology do I choose? What methods are most appropriate? Including examples of the write-up of two central types of research projects: studies on participants’ ‘perspectives’ on phenomena and studies on how participants manage or ‘cope with’ phenomena, the book outlines five research proposals to illustrate ways in which these two central ‘types’ can be varied and applied when engaging in five other types of studies, namely, policy studies, life history studies, retrospective interactionist longitudinal studies and interactionist historical studies, and ‘problem-focused’ studies.