Qualitative Methods for Health Research

Qualitative Methods for Health Research provides a thorough and practical introduction to designing, conducting, and appraising qualitative research. It is aimed particularly at students and researchers in fields such as public health, health services research, nursing and health promotion.

Judith Green and Nicki Thorogood draw on over twenty years experience of teaching methodology to students from a range of backgrounds. They focus on applied research, but cover the essentials of theory and principles in an accessible way, with easy-to-follow guidance on how to apply core research skills to the particular contexts of health research.

Using examples from a range of settings, this book introduces readers to the key debates in qualitative methodology; issues in designing ethical, feasible, and rigorous projects; the main ways of collecting and analysing qualitative data and ways of appraising and writing qualitative research.

This Second Edition covers developments in systematic reviews of qualitative research and analysis, and includes a chapter focusing on practical issues of qualitative work within applied health research programs. The book includes case studies, chapter summaries and key points, and a glossary.

This book is an essential introduction for health professionals and students with little prior knowledge of social theory. It will also be useful for social sciences students interested in understanding how qualitative methods are used in health research.

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.