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There is a growing interest in, and acceptance of, qualitative research approaches in the health science disciplines, both as standalone methodologies and integrated with quantitative designs in mixed methods approaches. This comprehensive text provides deeper knowledge and application of a wide range of methodologies, methods and processes, enabling readers to develop their qualitative research skills. Divided into two parts, focusing first on methodologies and then on methods and processes, the text also includes revision of essential aspects of quantitative research as they apply to mixed methods research and a discussion of the uptake of qualitative research in the health sciences. The methodologies covered include: Grounded Theory; Historical Research; Ethnography; Phenomenology; Narrative Inquiry; Case Study Research; Critical Ethnography; Action Research and Mixed Methods. The methods and processes covered include: Interviewing and Analysis; Group Work and Analysis; Narrative Analysis; Discourse Analysis. Using accessible language to help extend readers' practical research skills, this is a thorough and reliable text to guide advanced students and researchers from all health-related disciplines - including nursing, midwifery, public health and physiotherapy - to the best use of qualitative research.

An essential element of human research is the successful recruitment of participants. Many researchers appear to be able to recruit participants quickly and without significant issues, while other researchers have more challenges. This paper presents some issues encountered when recruiting participants for a phenomenological research project on the lived experiences of young people aged 16-24 years, with type 1 diabetes living in a rural setting. Insights and strategies are presented to assist researchers when recruiting young people to their research.

Abstract An essential element of human research is the successful recruitment of participants. Many researchers appear to be able to recruit participants quickly and without significant issues, while other researchers have more challenges. This paper presents some issues encountered when recruiting participants for a phenomenological research project on the lived experiences of young people aged 16-24 years, with type 1 diabetes living in a rural setting. Insights and strategies are presented to assist researchers when recruiting young people to their research.Abstract An essential element of human research is the successful recruitment of participants. Many researchers appear to be able to recruit participants quickly and without significant issues, while other researchers have more challenges. This paper presents some issues encountered when recruiting participants for a phenomenological research project on the lived experiences of young people aged 16-24 years, with type 1 diabetes living in a rural setting. Insights and strategies are presented to assist researchers when recruiting young people to their research.

Abstract An essential element of human research is the successful recruitment of participants. Many researchers appear to be able to recruit participants quickly and without significant issues, while other researchers have more challenges. This paper presents some issues encountered when recruiting participants for a phenomenological research project on the lived experiences of young people aged 16-24 years, with type 1 diabetes living in a rural setting. Insights and strategies are presented to assist researchers when recruiting young people to their research.

Narrative analysis is inextricably interwoven into the fabric of narrative inquiry, making it a highly diversified qualitative research methodology (see Chapter 6 of this book). Narrative analysis began in the social sciences, as a systematic means of literary critique through investigating the imagery of metaphor and the flow and impact of stories. Since the emergence of qualitative research approaches as valid epistemological choices for researching human experiences, narrative inquiry and analysis have been considered appropriate methods and processes for researching the human condition. The popularity of narrative inquiry and analysis has led to an ever increasing array of qualitative research approaches, which claim to use narratives and storytelling in their projects.

There is a wide range of groups in health sciences research, which are similar to, and in some cases overlap with therapeutic treatment groups. Therefore, the first task of this chapter is to differentiate between groups and the work they do in the health sciences, before delineating the types of qualitative research group work into methodologically-influenced group work and focus group work. Having made arbitrary distinctions between the two main types of research groups, I then guide you through some possibilities for thinking about methods and processes for undertaking group work and for selecting and applying appropriate analytic strategies.

Narrative inquiry as a research methodology is as broad and wide as the human imagination and our ability to tell stories about our lives. Humans narrate their lives by recounting their experiences and they make sense of their existence through reflecting on their life narratives. Being able to tell stories makes our lives interpersonal and meaningful, as we cooperate linguistically in finding our places and purposes as human beings. Qualitative researchers use words and language as data from which to create meaning about human experiences. Given that there are potentially no bounds to the human imagination and our natural propensity for telling stories, narrative inquiry as a research methodology keeps on evolving and expanding outwards in every direction, like the Universe after the Big Bang.

This chapter revises the process of developing a research proposal, in relation to a project's title, background, aims, objectives, questions, methodology, ethical considerations, participant recruitment and sampling, and data collection and analysis. Proposal development is also discussed in relation to a project's limitations, timeframes, resources and funding. The chapter concludes with a discussion of trustworthiness issues and offers suggestion for writing up a project.

Anything we do in the name of seeking qualitative research data and making sense of it is in some way creative, because it requires us to dig into our imaginations to create the methods and processes most likely to unearth fresh, new insights into what it means to be human. Some forms of enquiry and analysis, however, are just that little bit more creative, because they step outside the boundaries of what have now, to some extent, they become conventional practices. For example, once upon a time unstructured, conversational interviewing was considered creative, because it dared to transgress the structural rules that standardized how we accessed participants' experiential accounts. Now, in the light of many decades of experience, qualitative researchers are at ease with free-flowing interviewing styles and participants enjoy deeper connections to the research process as collaborators and co-researchers. As qualitative researchers move further away from needing to constantly defend their practices against the yardstick of the scientific research method, and relax into the postmodern freedoms of relativism, abstraction and multiple representations of knowledge, contemporary, creative data collection and analysis methods and processes have emerged, and will keep on emerging.

In this chapter, we turn our attention to an early 20th-century philosophical tradition, which opened up for systematic and in-depth discussion, areas of inquiry relating to human consciousness and experience. The development of phenomenology as a methodology for research inquiry came about as a result of philosophical debates about the purposes and means for understanding phenomena, as potential answers to epistemological and ontological questions.