Doing Qualitative Research in Psychology: A Practical Guide

This unique text provides a complete introduction to qualitative methods in psychology and will be ideal reading for anyone doing a course in qualitative psychology or planning a practical project using qualitative approaches. Forrester′s book has been developed in tandem with its own dataset, collected specifically for the book which will be a unique resource for any students using the text. Using interview recordings (video and audio, available to readers on-line) alongside worked examples of different ways to analyze the same dataset, the handbook and the interview data together provide an invaluable resource for anybody interested in either learning or teaching qualitative methods in psychology.

Following an elucidating introduction, Doing Qualitative Research in Psychology: A Practical Guide offers clear and useful descriptions and explanations of how and why research questions are formulated and the importance of selecting appropriate methods for investigations, with a focus on semi-structured interviewing (as used in the on-line data).

The book describes four specific qualitative methods, explaining in a very clear ′how to proceed′ style, how each of these methods can form the basis of a qualitative methods laboratory class, practical, or field study. It also describes precisely how research reports using qualitative methods are written, in line with the appropriate conventions of report writing in psychology.

All in all, this is simply the most useful undergraduate qualitative research methods book one could wish for.

Michael A Forrester is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Kent, Canterbury. He is the author of The Development of Young Children′s Social Cognitive Skills (1992).