Uwe Flick - An Introduction to Qualitative Research

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Uwe Flick 2014

First edition published 1998. Second edition published 2002. Third edition first published 2006. Fourth edition first published 2009. This edition published 2014.

Originally published as Qualitative Forschung in the rowohlts enzyklopdie series. 2007 Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, Reinbek bei Hamburg

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013942397

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

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ISBN 978-1-4462-6778-3
ISBN 978-1-4462-6779-0 (pbk)

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Contents

List of Boxes

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Case Studies

About the Author

Uwe Flick is Professor of Qualitative Research in Social Science and Education at the Free University of Berlin, Germany. He is a trained psychologist and sociologist and received his PhD from the Free University of 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, where he continues to work as Guest-Professor. Previously, he was Adjunct Professor at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. Johns, Canada; a Lecturer in research methodology at the Free University of 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, vulnerability in fields like youth homelessness or migration, and technological change in everyday life. He is the author of Designing Qualitative Research (London: Sage, 2007) and Managing Quality in Qualitative Research (London: Sage, 2007) and editor of The SAGE Qualitative Research Kit (London: Sage, 2007), A Companion to Qualitative Research (London: Sage, 2004), Psychology of the Social (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), Quality of Life and Health: Concepts, Methods and Applications (Berlin: Blackwell Science, 1995), and La perception quotidienne de la Sant et la Maladie: Thories subjectives et Reprsentations sociales (Paris: LHarmattan, 1993). As his most recent publications, he wrote Introducing Research Methodology: A Beginners Guide to Doing a Research Project (London: Sage, 2011) and edited The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis (London: Sage, 2014).

Publishers Acknowledgements

The publishers would like to extend their warmest thanks to the following individuals for their invaluable feedback on the fourth edition and the shaping of the fifth edition.

Professor Tania Aspland, Head Education NSW/ACT, Australian Catholic University

Dr Alexander John Bridger, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Huddersfield

Peter Gates, Centre for Research in Mathematics Education, University of Nottingham

Monique Hennink, PhD, Associate Professor, Emory University

Dr Yassaman Imani, Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire

Sheila Katz, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Sonoma State University

Eula Miller, Senior Lecturer, Department of Nursing, Manchester Metropolitan University

Mr Edd Pitt, Lecturer in HE & Academic Practice, University of Kent

Sandra Spickard Prettyman, Associate Professor, University of Akron

Linnea L. Rademaker, PhD, Graduate School Dissertation Chair, Northcentral University