Full Description
Malcolm Carey provides social work students, academics and practitioners with a practical guide to completion of a small-scale qualitative research project or dissertation. This clear text takes the reader through the process of beginning and developing a research problem or question, defining their objectives and undertaking empirical or literature-based research that involves data collection, analysis, writing up and dissemination. The book also highlights and details potential obstacles, essential techniques and methods, types of theory and methodology used, and presents case studies and ongoing debates involved in qualitative social work research. It suggests ways by which sometimes difficult processes (such as the literature review, interviews with practitioners, etc.) can be made easier to complete and explores traditional methods such as the focus group or interview alongside less conventional methodologies such as participative, narrative, discourse or ICT-related approaches. Recent investigation has highlighted the lack of research skills held by many social workers in practice. This book overcomes these problems by providing an essential and easily accessible guidebook to qualitative research methods for social work students and practitioners as well as being of interest to tutors who teach research methods to social work students or supervise dissertations.
Contents
Contents: Part 1 Foundations of Qualitative Social Work Research: Introducing qualitative social work research; The research process; Core social work research concepts; The literature review; Literature-based research and methodologies; Theoretical and philosophical perspectives; Methodology; Research ethics. Part 2 Qualitative Methodology and Methods: Interviews and questionnaires; Focus groups; Grounded theory and case studies; Ethnography; Life histories and biographical research; Narrative and discourse analysis; Participative research; internet research. Part 3 Analysis, Writing and Dissemination: Analysis; Writing up and dissemination; Glossary; References; Index.
