A Guide to Qualitative Field Research

A Guide to Qualitative Field Research provides students with clear, practical, and specific instructions for conducting field research—from selecting a topic to writing the final paper. In the expanded Third Edition, Carol A. Bailey gives increased attention to the early and last stages of field research, often the most difficult: selecting a topic, deciding upon the purpose of your research, and writing the final paper, with a generous number of examples to help readers to generate ideas. While the author's primary focus is face-fo-face field research, she acknowledges that the concept of the "field" has expanded over recent decades to include virtual settings, and so research in the digital world is discussed. Compared to earlier editions which focused solely on an undergraduate readership, this edition more explicitly mentions graduate student research, but selects examples that would not intimidate undergraduate students. Finally, this edition includes more tables, checklists, diagrams, and summary charts, and each chapter has objectives, chapter highlights, and exercises. A glossary of key terms is provided in the back of the book, and additional readings and resources are available on an accompanying website.