An Introduction to Qualitative Research

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`This text is a unique contribution to the body of general theoretical material about this rapidly expanding field of inquiry in social psychology as well as the social and health sciences′ - Contemporary Psychology

`A highly readable introduction to the most important qualitative research methodologies′ - British Journal of Sociology

`With Uwe Flick′s book, instruction in the field of qualitative research finally comes of age. This is the text I wish I had written! Now students have access to the latest developments in interpretive qualitative inquiry, from symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology to structuralism and poststructuralism. This is a very important book and it will contribute to a new generation of sophisticated qualitative researchers.′ Norman K Denzin, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

`This is a most interesting, timely and necessary introductory text into qualitative research. It is a courageous and successful attempt to cut through the "new obscurities" of qualitative methods ... I will recommend this text to my students′ - Martin Bauer, London School of Economics

`This introduction provides an excellent overview of the most important methods of qualitative research which were developed in the social sciences over the past decades, sketches their history and their theoretical foundations. Perhaps the most valuable feature of the book, next to its inclusiveness is the detailed description of the methods and techniques, and a judicious weighing of their usefulness and disadvantages to achieve given analytic aims′ - Thomas Luckmann, University of Konstanz

This carefully constructed textbook provides an introduction to the theory and practice of qualitative research. The author leads students through the myriad of qualitative methods by providing a systematic structure for comparing the various methods, for designing the research process, for ordering the evidence, and for grounding the claims of theory from text and working back from text to theory.

All the major theories, methods and new approaches are presented in an accessible manner. These include how to construct and interpret verbal data, such as interviews and biographies, visual and observational data with practical information on how to document, analyze, code and categorize data.

Uwe Flick is Senior Professor of Qualitative Research in Social Science and Education at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. He is a trained psychologist and sociologist and received his PhD from the Freie Universität Berlin in 1988 and his Habilitation from the Technical University of Berlin in 1994. He has been Professor of Qualitative Research at Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, Germany and at the University of Vienna, Austria. Previously, he was Adjunct Professor at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, Canada; a Lecturer in research methodology at the Freie Universität Berlin; a Reader and Assistant Professor in qualitative methods and evaluation at the Technical University of Berlin; and Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Medical Sociology at the Hannover Medical School. He has held visiting appointments at the London School of Economics, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, at Cambridge University (UK), University of Lisbon (Portugal), Institute of Higher Studies in Vienna, in Italy and Sweden, and at the School of Psychology at Massey University, Auckland (New Zealand). His main research interests are qualitative methods, social representations in the fields of individual and public health, chronical illness and vulnerability in fields like youth homelessness, peer relations or migration, and technological change in everyday life. He is the author of Introducing Research Methodology: A Beginner’s Guide to Doing a Research Project (4th edn, London: Sage: 2025) and editor of A Companion to Qualitative Research (London: Sage, 2004) and The Psychology of the Social (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). As his most recent publications, he has written Designing Qualitative Research (2nd edn, London: Sage, 2018), Doing Grounded Theory (London: Sage, 2018), Doing Triangulation and Mixed Methods (London: Sage, 2018), and Managing Quality in Qualitative Research (2nd edn, London: Sage, 2018) and Doing Interview Research – The Essential How To Guide (London: Sage, 2022). He edited The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis (London: Sage, 2014), The SAGE Qualitative Research Kit (2nd edn, London: Sage, 2018), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection (London: Sage, 2018) and The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Design (London: Sage, 2022) and The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Quality (London: Sage, 2025).