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When does a text about research become a book about passion and joy? Here and now! Welcome to the third edition of Doing Qualitative Research. We love doing, learning, and teaching qualitative research in the context of our clinical mixed-methods world. We love the excitement of discovery, the developing depths of understanding, the surprises, the dilemmas, the uncertainties that emerge, the relationships that grow from working together, the creativity, the magic of exploring new settings and meeting new people, and the insights about self and other that arise. Join us for the adventure and cocreate your own inspired research stories.

Purpose

The global COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated both the uncovering of vulnerabilities and deficiencies in our healthcare systems and dramatic changes in the platforms and structures of care delivery, especially at the level of primary health care. The need for exceptional qualitative clinical research within a mixed-methods context has never been greater. Enter this book. As a result, this third edition of Doing Qualitative Research is substantively a new volume. The goal of the first two editions was to introduce qualitative methods to those hoping to begin and do qualitative research in primary care settings. In those first two editions, we sought to honor the past traditions of qualitative research while also finding a way to make it actionable and accessible to primary care researchers. The third edition goes beyond those goals and seeks to expand the use of qualitative methods in clinical research, to improve the quality of that research and to better align with those we study.

Now, 23 years since the second edition, so much has transpired and changed. We are no longer novice researchers and have personally completed or participated in multiple clinical studies with multiple collaborators across the qualitative research spectrum. Qualitative approaches have not only thrived on their own with many supporting journals and journal review panels, but their use has expanded with the rapid growth of mixed-methods strategies in clinical research. And yet, something feels amiss, something more than simplification, sloppiness, and superficial acceptance. We began the adventure into qualitative research by searching for methods to answer the questions arising in our lives. We wanted to give voice to those not being heard, to recover the importance of context, to disrupt the powerful hierarchies in health care, and to change the conversation about the meaning of evidence that matters. Little of that has happened and was made worse by the global pandemic. We decided to write this third edition in hopes of revitalizing the hidden potential for excellent qualitative research.