Doing Your Qualitative Psychology Project

Embarking on your own psychology research? This book equips you with the skills you need to complete a qualitative project confidently.

The book takes you through the process of doing your project, showing how to plan and execute each stage. It helps you make good decisions about key steps such as choosing a research topic, designing your project, doing ethical research and writing up.

This second edition:

• Offers a host of learning features including ‘in a nutshell’ summaries, further reading, activities and top tips to help you develop your understanding and skills.
• Devotes more space to the important topics of project planning and doing ethical research with a new chapter on each.
• Enables you to critically evaluate your work, helping you conduct high-quality research.
• Discusses student success stories and cautionary tales illustrating, from start to finish, how qualitative projects are done in the real world.

This is the perfect guide for undergraduates doing a final project or dissertation, and postgraduates who are relatively new to qualitative research.

Cath Sullivan (CPsychol, SFHEA) is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Lancashire, UK. She has taught qualitative research methods and supported other lecturers in teaching qualitative methods for over twenty years. Cath is a former Chair of the HEA’s Special Interest Group on the Teaching of Qualitative Methods at Undergraduate Level and was on the committee of the Qualitative Methods in Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society for 10 years. Her published work includes qualitative research papers and pieces about qualitative methodology. She is joint editor of Doing Your Qualitative Psychology Project (Sage, 2023).

Stephen Gibson is Bicentennial Chair in Research Methods and Director of Doctoral Programmes in the School of Social Sciences, Heriot Watt University. He is a social psychologist with research interests in obedience and social influence, identity and citizenship, and representations of peace and conflict. In addition, he has been involved in numerous projects concerning the teaching of qualitative research methods. Between 2008 and 2011 he was chair of the TQRMUL group, and is co-editor (with Simon Mollan) of the volume Representations of Peace and Conflict (Palgrave, 2012).

Sarah Riley is a Professor in Critical Health Psychology at Massey University, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her award-winning, interdisciplinary research focuses on relationships between discourse, affect, technology, and materiality. Recent co-authored books include Technologies of Sexiness (OUP USA, 2014), Postfeminism and Health (Routledge, 2019), Postfeminism and Body Image (Routledge, 2022); and Digital Feeling (Palgrave, 2023); she chaired the British Psychology Society’s Qualitative Methods in Psychology section (2017-19), and teaches qualitative research methods.