Book Review
Qualitative research design: An interactive approach (Applied Social Research Methods)
Joseph A Maxwell
ISBN: 978-0-761926-07-8; 2004; 192 pages; Sage Publications, Inc;
Nicholas G Procter
Professor and Chair: Mental Health Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Division of Health Sciences, University of South Australia, Adelaide SA
This book by Joseph Maxwell of George Mason University is Volume 41 in Sages' Applied Social Research Methods Series. It is a scholarly, easy to read and informative text that gives researchers and students a user-friendly, step-by-step guide to understanding the nature and planning of qualitative research.
The readability of this book comes from the authors' intimate knowledge of the subject area, his practical experience of doing research as well as teaching students the core features of the text at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. When reading this book it was easy for me to see the experience of the teacher coming through with clear and concise explanations of concepts and key terms. It is also easy to understand how as a teacher and researcher the author has gained much wisdom from the diversity of his students (learners, really) who in the tutorial setting would have been something of a prompt to ensure best possible explanations are given for complex components of research design. This book is successful as it is written jargon-free while simultaneously incorporating many credible real world examples and hands-on exercises.
This book is divided into 7 chapters each with exercises for readers to follow. The chapter headings include: A model for qualitative research design; Goals, why are you doing this study?; Conceptual framework: What do you think is going on?; Research questions: What do you want to understand?; Methods: What will you actually do?; Validity: How might you be wrong?; Research proposals: Presenting and justifying a qualitative study. The final section of this book is something of a rarity in such a thin volume. It contains an example of a qualitative proposal that is both informative and comprehensive.
The strength of this book lay it is readability, consistency and scholarship. Rather than the rigid, linear approach to design sometimes found in research methods textbooks, (which is particularly unsuited to qualitative research which is often context and 'actor' driven) the book presents a flexible, systemic model of qualitative design. This approach is of interest in its own right and reveals the human face of what mid-career and experienced qualitative researchers will enjoy reading about.
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