Qualitative Methods for Health Research

Qualitative Methods for Health Research is a practical introduction to designing, conducting and appraising qualitative research in areas such as public health, health services research, nursing and health promotion.

This book will be useful for professionals and students with little prior knowledge of social science theory. The authors provide a clear guide for the reader who would like to know more about how to apply their skills to the field of health.

Using examples from health research projects in a wide range of settings, it introduces readers to the key debates in qualitative methodology, issues in designing ethical and feasible projects, the main methods of collecting and analyzing qualitative data, and ways of reading and writing qualitative research.

Key features include:

- case studies

- chapter summaries

- highlighted key points

A basic understanding of methodological principles is as important in applied as in academic work. Health professionals and students alike will learn a great deal about applying methods from this textbook.

Judith Green has degrees in anthropology and sociology, and a PhD in the sociology of health. She has taught research methods to a wide range of students over the last 30 years, including undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students and health professionals from nursing, medicine, public health and sociology. She is currently Professor of Sociology at the University of Exeter, and Honorary Professor, in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney. She has held posts at the King’s College London, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and London South Bank University. Judith has broad substantive interests in the sociology of health and health services, and has researched and published on primary care, professional identity, accidental injury, public understanding of risk and the relationships between transport and well-being. She is currently co-editor of the Journal of Critical Public Health. Other publications include Risk and misfortune: The social construction of accidents (1997, Taylor & Francis); Critical perspectives in public health, co-edited with Ronald Labonté (2008, Routledge) and Analysing health policy: A sociological approach (1998, Longman), also co-authored with Nicki Thorogood.

Nicki Thorogood’s first degree was in sociology and social anthropology, and she has a PhD in the sociology of health from the University of London. She has over 30 years’ experience of teaching undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students and health professionals from nursing, medicine, public health and sociology She is currently Programme Director for the DrPH (Doctorate in Public Health) at LSHTM as well as supervising several research degree students. Before coming to LSHTM (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) in 1999 she held posts at Middlesex University and at Guy’s, King’s and Thomas’s School of Medicine and Dentistry (GKT).

Her research interests are primarily in qualitative research into aspects of ‘identity’, e.g. ethnicity, gender, disability and sexuality and in the sociology of the body. She is also interested in the intersection of mental health with public health and health promotion. She is Series Editor, with Rosalind Plowman, of the Understanding Public Health series of textbooks published by Open University Press.