Summary
Contents
What is qualitative secondary analysis? How can it be most effectively applied in social research? This timely and accomplished book offers readers a well informed, reliable guide to all aspects of qualitative secondary analysis. The book: Defines secondary analysis. Distinguishes between quantitative and qualitative secondary analysis. Maps the main types of qualitative secondary analysis. Covers the key ethical and legal issues. Offers a practical guide to effective research. Sets the agenda for future developments in the subject. Written by an experienced researcher and teacher with a background in sociology, the book is a comprehensive and invaluable introduction to this growing field of social research.
Reflexivity
Reflexivity
Reflexivity is the practice of researchers beingself-awareof their own beliefs, values and attitudes, and their personal effects on the setting they have studied, andself-criticalabout their research methods and how they have been applied, so that the evaluation and understanding of their research findings, both by themselves and their audience, may be facilitated and enhanced.
Section Outline: Reflexivity an underrated concept. Reflexivity for high professional research standards. Audit trails. Qualitative methods: personal reactions, feelings, doubts. Intellectual resource versus defensive audit. Positioning statements. Interacting with the setting. Self-critical awareness of own social skills. Limits of ‘confessional accounts’. Writing with ‘authority’.
‘Reflexivity is an immense area of comment and interest’ (Denzin and Lincoln 1998: 394), but it receives little direct attention in many methods textbooks. The practice of researchers ...