Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory Book

Decided you want to teach yourself qualitative research? Decided that you'd like to actually make that research, not just journalism? Well, apparently this is a good place to start. The start is dense. Unbelievably philosophically loaded dense. While I think I understand why it was important to the authors to situate themselves in a several hundred years of philosophy of science and realism, I'm not sure I needed to read it first. While this risks a degree of naivete, the philosophy made a lot more sense to me once I figured out what the practice they were motivating looked like.

And the book does a lovely, absolutely lovely job of laying out a pragmatic approach to doing rich qualitative research. And then, remarkably, actually spends several chapters doing some -- going over interviews, doing coding, doing memoing, reflecting on it. It gives a very nice feel for how to wade in. If you are going to wade in, this seems like a darn fine survival guide.