Writing Up Qualitative Research

"I believe Wolcott has achieved his purpose admirably. . . Writing Up Qualitative Research contains many useful suggestions to help both the novice and the experienced writer. . . . If you follow the suggestions in the book, you will get your own work written and it will be well written."

--Madelaine Ramey in Evaluation Practice

"I have just finished a qualitative case study based almost entirely on interviews with engineering students. The two sources on which I depended most heavily were Robert Stake′s The Art of Case Study Research and Harry F. Wolcott′s Writing Up Qualitative Research. I have heard others sing the praises of different works and I have referred to them, but favor the two mentioned."

--Terry C. Hall, Ed.D. Independent Scholar

"This book is timely in attempting to offer a path for beginning and perhaps more important, controlling and finishing written work for sharing with a wide but critical audience. The chapter headings provide a flavor of the book--reading about writing; getting going; keeping going; tightening up; finishing up; getting published. . . . This is a stimulating and worthwhile book for everyone attempting to cope with writing up their findings from this exciting form of research." --Journal of Osteopathic Education "Written in an easy-to-read, conversational-tone, Writing Up Qualitative Research is useful and interesting and will be an important aid to graduate students working on their dissertations. It will also enable recent doctorates who accept university positions to advance in their profession through writing and publishing."

--Harvard Educational Review

"His consistent use of the first person and a conversational style . . . makes the book a pleasure to read. . . . It is not that Wolcott′s ideas are new. Indeed, much of what he has written is also covered by other writers. The difference is that his presentation is written in such an engaging style that it is more likely to be read."

--Contemporary Sociology

"Excellent advice on getting started, keeping going and crafting your writing towards appropriate audiences, and much of the advice offered is as applicable to quantitative as to qualitative work. Wolcott′s booklet provides the ideal complement to Richardson′s more reflexive discussion by offering us a down-to-earth guide as to ′′how to do it.′′. . . Clear, practical tips given with the obvious weight of experience behind them. . . . Recommended reading for anyone out there despairing of ever starting to turn that pile of transcripts into written form (and indeed for all those lucky enough to have already started)."

--Social Research Association

News Researchers across the social sciences all face the same inherent problem--how to write up their findings once the research stage is completed. Now, in Writing Up Qualitative Research, Harry Wolcott draws on years of personal experience to take researchers step by step through the final stage of the research process. He examines key problems in writing qualitative research and explores alternative ways of coping with these problems. Written in a lively, informal style, this practical volume shows researchers how to begin the writing process, how to edit, and how to get published. Wolcott also addresses the problem of ensuring that whatever the researcher has recorded--from observations, interviews, or archival research--is included in the final write-up.

Writing Up Qualitative Research is an essential resource for anyone engaged in social research for whom the link between conducting research and writing it up seems more like an obstacle than an opportunity.

Harry F. Wolcott (Ph.D. Stanford) taught at the University of Oregon, serving on both the faculties of education and anthropology. He authored several ethnographic texts that included his experiences among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia and with the African Beer Gardens of Bulawayo, Rhodesia, as well on ethnographic method and on writing itself, with a focus on qualitative research. His publications included: Transforming Qualitative Data (SAGE 1994); Art of Fieldwork (2nd ed., Altamira Press 2005); Ethnography: A Way of Seeing (2nd ed., Altamira Press 2008); Writing Up Qualitative Research (3rd ed., SAGE 2009); Sneaky Kid and Its Aftermath: Ethics and Intimacy in Fieldwork (Altamira 2002), and Ethnography Lessons: A Primer (Left Coast Press, 2010).