Successful Qualitative Research

Shortlisted for the BPS Book Award 2014 in the Textbook Category

Winner of the 2014 Distinguished Publication Award (DPA) from the Association for Women in Psychology (AWP)

Successful Qualitative Research: A Practical Guide for Beginners is an accessible, practical textbook. It sidesteps detailed theoretical discussion in favor of providing a comprehensive overview of strategic tips and skills for starting and completing successful qualitative research.

Uniquely, the authors provide a “patterns framework” to qualitative data analysis in this book, also known as “thematic analysis.” The authors walk students through a basic thematic approach, and compare and contrast this with other approaches. This discussion of commonalities, explaining why and when each method should be used, and in the context of looking at patterns, will provide students with complete confidence for their qualitative research journey. This textbook will be an essential textbook for undergraduates and postgraduates taking a course in qualitative research or using qualitative approaches in a research project.

Author Biography

Virginia Braun is a Professor in the School of Psychology at The University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. She is a feminist and critical (health) psychologist and teaches around gender and psychology and critical health psychology at undergraduate and graduate levels. When she gets time for it, her research (sometimes in collaboration with Victoria Clarke) explores the intersecting areas of gender, bodies, sex/sexuality, health, and (now) food. She is on Twitter ginnybraun, where sometimes her tweets about qualitative research, usually in that case a retweet of an awesome thread by Victoria. Victoria Clarke is an Associate Professor in Qualitative and Critical Psychology in the Department of Health and Social Sciences at the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol, where she teaches about qualitative methods, and gender and sexuality, and supervises student research, on a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. When she′s not busy collaborating with Virginia Braun, she has conducted research in the intersecting areas of gender and sexuality, family and relationships, and appearance and embodiment. She is also active on Twitter – mainly tweeting about thematic analysis and qualitative research drvicclarke.