Advanced Qualitative Research for Nursing

This collection presents up-to-the-minute qualitative research methodologies creatively developed by and within nursing. The book is written by authors at the forefront of their fields. It is aimed at enabling people to research critical issues for nursing practice and health care.

Nurses face the imperative for practice grounded in research-based evidence. The book demonstrates how qualitative methodologies can produce rigorous and valid research. Drawing on empirical data each chapter introduces a particular contemporary approach; examines the literature in its field; discusses its relevance for nursing and health care; and explains what claims to knowledge can be made.

List of Contributors.

1. Introducing Fields, Selves, Stories, Texts and Materials.

2. Where Do We Stand in Relation to the Data? Being Reflexive About Reflexivity in Health Care Evaluation.

3. Moving Nursing Practice: Integrating Theory and Method.

4. Participative Observation: Using the Subject Body to Understand Nursing Practice.

5. Self and Others: The Rigour and Ethics of Insider Ethnography.

6. Researching Story and Narrative in Nursing: An Object-Relations Approach.

7. Rational Solutions and Unreliable Narrators: Content, Structure and Voice in Narrative Research.

8. Discourse Analysis, Ideology and Professional Practice.

9. Words Are Powerful Tools: Discourse Analytic Explanations of Nursing Practice.

10. Taking Things Seriously: Studying the Material Culture of Nursing.

11. A History of Small Things.

12. Studying The Women in White.

Epilogue.

Index

Joanna Latimer is Professor of Sociology at Cardiff University School of Social Sciences, and Professor in the ESRC Centre for the Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics. She has been researching medical knowledge and practice ethnographically for 30 years.

Nurses are faced with the need for practice grounded in research-based evidence. Research methodologies must be theoretically sound but must also take into account the unique challenges of the socio-political conditions under which nurses practice.

This collection presents up-to-the-minute qualitative research methodologies creatively developed within nursing. Written by authors at the forefront of their fields, the book is intended to enable people to research critical issues for nursing practice and health care. Drawing on empirical data, each chapter introduces a particular contemporary approach, examines the literature in it field, discussed its relevance for nursing and health care and explains what claims to knowledge can be made.

• An advanced-level research book specifically for postgraduate nurses
• Contributions from international authors at the forefront of nursing academia
• Explains the new, more complex research methodologies
• Offers a bridge between nursing and social science