Holliday, Adrian (2001)
Doing and Writing Qualitative Research.
London: Sage Publications.
Doing and Writing Qualitative Research answers the questions that plague students, college professors, and practitioners alike as they begin the process of qualitative research. How is qualitative research planned, organized and structured? What guiding principles should be followed in this process? How does the writing process fit into the qualitative research process?
This book demonstrates how to write qualitative research within context of doing qualitative research. It addresses the practical problems that writers face in attempting to transfer the rich data collected in the field into a written product with step-by-step instructions that link the principles of qualitative research to the structure and conventions of the written language. Examples and illustrations from research studies conducted within various fields and professions reinforce specific concepts and add depth and interest to the content.
The primary focus of the book is a description of a methodology to be used in qualitative research. The author maintains that the writing process itself aids in organization, analysis, and conclusions. The writing process is also useful in overcoming the common pitfalls of subjectivity and scientific rigor. This is achieved within the writing process by making the workings of the written study transparent. In order to maintain validity, the qualitative researcher must "show their work" every single time in much the same way that an algebra student provides proof that the correct answer has been determined. (p.8). Revealing the infrastructure of the research to the audience increases accountability and maintains rigorous methodology.
The ideology expressed in the book is born out of the author's experiences supervising qualitative research writing in research methodology classes as well as the author's personal research experiences. Within this ideology there is "a place for powerful, personal authorship" (p. 128) that is seldom seen in today's research. The idea of personal authorship embraces the use of first person in relating experiences or explaining the author's perspective and/or ideology as well as asserting the author's presence in the headings that are chosen. This personal authorship acts as an acknowledgement of the role the writer has within the research: an interactive and ideological force that imparts the relationships between the researcher and the study itself. It also serves to reduce abstractness by bringing out the voice of the writer. The author ascribes this new thinking to the progressive, postmodern, critical branch with the naturalist, post-positivistic tradition (see p. 20).
The book is structured in eight chapters that lead the reader from the philosophical basis for qualitative research through the formulation of topic, research questions, and research settings, to the use of data and writing conventions in presenting the final product. Discussion questions at the end of the book help the reader apply the principles presented in each chapter to their own research experience. Philosophically, qualitative research is seen as "a social activity, which is as ideological and complex as those it studies (p. 1)." The balance between the research strategy and the research setting is central to qualitative research. The researcher must maintain the freedom to creatively explore the context while carefully accounting for each move made, "taking the opportunity to encounter the research setting while maintaining the principles of social science". Holliday makes comparisons between quantitative and qualitative philosophies emphasizing the control of variables and the testing of hypotheses. Quantitative research attempts to control variables, while qualitative research invites a rich array of variables and investigates them directly. Qualitative research invites exploration rather than the validation of quantitative research, "producing, rather than testing hypotheses is more often the outcome of qualitative research" (p. 35).
The connection between data and the social setting from which it is derived is important. In fact, collecting qualitative data most often develops a dialogue within a social setting. Thick description reveals all aspects of the research experience - both intentions and meanings of the data. Data should not be viewed as exhaustive, but representative of the different facets of the social context paired with good analysis. In this way data becomes the evidence and writing becomes the presentation and discussion of that evidence. Raw data cannot be left as is - it must be reorganized and a writing strategy developed that will allow a shift to occur between making sense of what is encountered in the field and making sense of the total research experience to the reader. This is accomplished through the skillful use of writing conventions that convey the intended message while increasing the credibility of the research. The author feels that is can be counterproductive to convey long stretches of data without a discussion of its significance. Readers may miss the point and misinterpret the data. Halliday discusses in detail such useful qualitative writing strategies as conceptual frameworks, coding, referenced themes, and triangulation.
Finally, the author broaches the serious and sensitive area of the relationship between the researcher and the participant. This is linked to the former theme of personal authorship. Any form of researcher presence is considered contamination in quantitative research, yet within qualitative research this presence creates a new third culture of interaction between the researcher and the participant. This culture is generated as each side observes and over-generalizes from the behavior of the other. It becomes essential that the researcher make appropriate claims about the people in the research setting. "Appropriate claims is not simply a matter of technical accuracy, but of creating images of the people we research which promotes understanding of their humanity and do not reduce and package them" (p 175).
Doing and Writing Qualitative Research encompasses both technical and academic aspects of qualitative research. It details the technical construction of qualitative research writing while making reference to the broader academic discussions and literature. This book is useful as a research text or as a user-friendly guide for anyone involved in the qualitative research process.
