Qualitative Research Methods for Psychologists : Introduction Through Empirical Studies

Qualitative Research Methods for Psychologists is a collection of 14 original articles that teaches readers how to conduct qualitative research. Instead of characterizing and justifying certain methods, the contributors show by means of actual research studies what assumptions, procedures, and dilemmas they encountered. Fischer's introduction, which emphasizes the practical nature of qualitative research and the closing chapter, which uses a question-and-answer format to investigate, among other subjects, what is scientific about qualitative research, are complemented by a glossary and other features that increase the book's utility and value.

• Addresses a range of practical examples from different traditions such as phenomology, grounded theory, ethnography and discourse analysis through actual case studies
• Discusses various methodology and combinations of methods like assimilation analysis, dialogal approach, intuitive inquiry, and conceptual encounter
• Terms are defined within chapters and/or in a glossary
• Helps readers bridge from experimental to qualitative methods
• Provides in-depth, philosophically grounded, and compelling research findings
• Includes practical introduction about steps in qualitative research

CONSTANCE T. FISCHER, Ph.D., ABPP, is a professor at Duquesne University, where she has taught since 1966. Following an undergraduate degree in political science at the University of Oklahoma, she began graduate studies at the University of Kentucky, with a primary interest in social psychology which then included the Kurt Lewin tradition of field observation and field experimentBclose to life. However, she did not want to work in academia, so she opted for a clinical concentration; because clinical psychology at the time was pretty much restricted to mental hospitals and child clinics, her goal instead was to pursue preventative psychology in the community (which later came into being under President Kennedy as community psychology). Ironically, she became a professor of clinical psychology.

At Duquesne, the department was devoted to establishing philosophical and research foundations as well as practices for psychology conceived as a human science, then primarily based in European phenomenology, and now more broadly hermeneutic. In addition to joining in the department=s development of empirical phenomenological research methods, Dr. Fischer initiated a similar approach to psychological assessment in which clients collaborate to develop individualized understandings of their situations, comportment, and options. She published Individualizing Psychological Assessment in addition to about 70 other publications on this approach, and about 40 publications on other topics, mostly about human science psychology and qualitative psychology, along with some traditional experimental studies. She has directed 25 dissertations based on qualitative research. Her published qualitative studies include ones on being criminally victimized (with F. Wertz), being in privacy, being intimate, three styles of living back pain (with M. A. Murphy), and becoming angry.