Doing Research from Your Desk: A Student Guide to Qualitative Methods

Doing Research from Your Desk: A Student Guide to Qualitative Methods provides invaluable guidance for students conducting high-quality qualitative research remotely. It assists students in generating and analysing qualitative data effectively and efficiently without requiring travel or face-to-face meetings.

Advancements in technology, data access, and socio-cultural practices in communication have created new opportunities for students conducting qualitative research. Traditional methods like face-to-face interviews, participant observation, and focus groups are now complemented by the ability to conduct high-quality research remotely. This book explores key methods such as remote interviewing, synchronous and asynchronous focus groups, netnography, and social media research. It also examines the internet as a source of data, including online archives, collections, and databases accessible from home. While online methods are the primary focus, the book acknowledges non-digital remote research, such as analyzing books or engaging participants via phone or mail. Alongside practical guidance, it addresses the unique methodological, ethical, and procedural challenges of remote research.

This book is ideal for students interested in researching from home and lecturers wishing to support them.

Nadia von Benzon is Lecturer in Human Geography at Lancaster University. Since her PhD, Nadia has been keenly interested in research methods and ethics as an area of scholarship, with a particular interest in supporting students who want to use less conventional approaches in their research. She supervises students at undergraduate, masters and PhD level undertaking different sorts of qualitative social science research, and leads an undergraduate qualitative research methods module.