Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for Analysing Talk, Text and Interaction

"This is a superb book. It covers the broad sweep of current qualitative work, while being appropriately selective and always on the side of quality. Its clarity is faultless, and its introduction of the various relevant concepts is neatly integrated with an excellent set of exercises which will bring them alive. David Silverman has written the best general textbook in qualitative methods; I shall use it in my teaching." - Jonathan Potter, Loughborough University

"This is an elegant text on the cutting edge. David Silverman has taken the most recent developments, methodologies, and interpretive strategies in qualitative research and made them immediately accessible to the student." - Norman Denzin, University of Florida, Gainesville

This a much expanded and updated version of David Silverman′s best-selling introductory textbook for the beginning qualitative researcher.

• Takes account of the flood of qualitative work since the 1990s
• All chapters have been substantially rewritten with the aim of greater clarity
• A new chapter on Visual Images and a considerably expanded treatment of discourse analysis are provided
• The number of student exercises has been considerably increased and are now present at the end of every chapter
• An even greater degree of student accessibility: key points and recommended readings appear at the end of each chapter and technical terms are highlighted and appear in a Glossary
• A more inter-disciplinary social science text which takes account of the growing interest in qualitative research outside sociology and anthropology from psychology to geography, information systems, health promotion, management and many other disciplines
• Expanded coverage – 50% longer than the First Edition

Interpreting Qualitative Data – New Edition is a companion volume to Silverman′s Doing Qualitative Research (Sage, 2000), which is a guide to the business of conducting a research project, together with its accompanying volume of key readings Qualitative Research: Theory Method & Practice, (Sage, 1997), which provides further more focused material that students need before contemplating their own qualitative research study.

David Silverman trained as a sociologist at the London School of Economics and the University of California, Los Angeles. He taught for 32 years at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is interested in conversation and discourse analysis and he has researched medical consultations and HIV-test counselling.

He is the author of Interpreting Qualitative Data (Seventh Edition, 2024) and A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Qualitative Research (Second Edition, 2013). He is also the editor of Qualitative Research (Sixth Edition, 2026) and the Sage series, Introducing Qualitative Methods. In recent years, he has offered short, hands-on workshops in qualitative research for research students and faculty at universities in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.

Now retired from full-time work, David aims to watch one hundred days of cricket a year. He also enjoys voluntary work in an old people’s home where he sings with residents with dementia and strokes.