This new edition of the SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research represents the sixth generation of the ongoing conversation about the discipline, practice, and conduct of qualitative inquiry. As with earlier editions, the Sixth Edition is virtually a new volume, with 27 of the 34 chapters representing new topics or approaches not seen in the previous edition. To mark the Handbook’s 30-year history, we are pleased to offer a bonus PART VI in the eBook versions of the Sixth Edition: this additional section brings together and reprints ten of the most famous or game-changing contributions from the previous five editions.

The Constructivist Credo is a set of foundational principles for those wishing to conduct social science research within the constructivist paradigm. They were distilled by Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Guba from their many writings on this topic and are provided in the form of 150 propositional statements. After Guba's death in 2008, the Credo was completed by Lincoln and is presented here. In addition to the key principles of constructivist thought, the volume also contains an introduction to constructivism, an intellectual biography and complete bibliography of Guba's work, and a case study using constructivism, showing how the paradigm can be applied to a research study.

The Constructivist Credo is a set of foundational principles for those wishing to conduct social science research within the constructivist paradigm. They were distilled by Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Guba from their many writings on this topic and are provided in the form of 150 propositional statements. After Guba's death in 2008, the Credo was completed by Lincoln and is presented here. In addition to the key principles of constructivist thought, the volume also contains an introduction to constructivism, an intellectual biography and complete bibliography of Guba's work, and a case study using constructivism, showing how the paradigm can be applied to a research study.

The substantially updated and revised Fifth Edition of this landmark handbook presents the state-of-the-art theory and practice of qualitative inquiry. Representing top scholars from around the world, the editors and contributors continue the tradition of synthesizing existing literature, defining the present, and shaping the future of qualitative research. The Fifth Edition contains 19 new chapters, with 16 revised-making it virtually a new volume-while retaining six classic chapters from previous editions. New contributors to this edition include Jamel K. Donnor and Gloria Ladson-Billings; Margaret Kovach; Paula Saukko; Bryant Keith Alexander; Thomas A. Schwandt and Emily F. Gates; Johnny Saldana; Uwe Flick; Mirka Koro-Ljungberg, Maggie MacLure, and Jasmine Ulmer; Maria Elena Torre, Brett G. Stoudt, Einat Manoff, and Michelle Fine; Jack Bratich; Svend Brinkmann; Eric Margolis and Renu Zunjarwad; Annette N. Markham; Alecia Y. Jackson and Lisa A. Mazzei; Jonathan Wyatt, Ken Gale, Susanne Gannon, and Bronwyn Davies; Janice Morse; Peter Dahler-Larsen; Marc Spooner; and David A. Westbrook.

This is a book of signposts, of key turning points, of Gregory Bateson's 'knots tied in a handkerchief.' Each article reproduced in this volume, edited by leading qualitative methodologists Lincoln and Denzin, represents one of these turning points in qualitative research, a revolution in the way research is conceptualized and practiced. Authority, representation, legitimation, ethics, methods, presentation, even the purpose of qualitative research, have all been transformed by these articles and the authors who penned them. Bringing together the work of scholars from Haraway to Geertz, Mead to Mishler, Clifford to Conquergood, Laurel Richardson to Miles Richardson, the editors are able trace the changes in the discipline over the past five decades. A necessary addition to the shelf of all researchers, it will also be a key textbook for training the next generation of scholars in the history and trajectory of qualitative research.

This is a book of signposts, of key turning points, of Gregory Bateson's 'knots tied in a handkerchief.' Each article reproduced in this volume, edited by leading qualitative methodologists Lincoln and Denzin, represents one of these turning points in qualitative research, a revolution in the way research is conceptualized and practiced. Authority, representation, legitimation, ethics, methods, presentation, even the purpose of qualitative research, have all been transformed by these articles and the authors who penned them. Bringing together the work of scholars from Haraway to Geertz, Mead to Mishler, Clifford to Conquergood, Laurel Richardson to Miles Richardson, the editors are able trace the changes in the discipline over the past five decades. A necessary addition to the shelf of all researchers, it will also be a key textbook for training the next generation of scholars in the history and trajectory of qualitative research.

"An interesting, well written, fascinating critique of positivism. I wish this would be sufficient to put the nails in the coffin of positivism once and for all."

--Ian I. Mitroff, University of Southern California

"This book provides a clear discussion of the essential elements of positivism and post-positivism. It also provides a useful set of guidelines for conducting research within the framework of naturalism. Lincoln and Guba reveal the chinks in the armor of conventional methodological ideas. Their writing draws on a vast array of examples and provides a new vocabulary for thinking about method."

--Shulamit Reinharz, Brandeis University

"This book will interest graduate students and educational researchers as well as social scientists struggling with qualitative and quantitative methodologies. A breath of fresh air."

--Choice

"Overall, this volume serves as a good introductory text in naturalistic inquiry and field research courses."

--International Journal of Intercultural Relations

"The book itself is a good illustration of our inclination towards and our need of more general descriptions. . . . If one wants to inform oneself about the paradigmatic discussion and the development of research methodology within the area of studies of social fields, it is a very interesting book."

--Instructional Science

Showing how science is limited by its dominant mode of investigation, Lincoln and Guba propose an alternative paradigm--a "naturalistic" rather than "rationalistic" method of inquiry--in which the investigator avoids manipulating research outcomes. A "paradigm shift" is under way in many fields, they contend, and go on to describe the different assumptions of the two approaches regarding the nature of reality, subject-object interaction, the possibility of generalization, the concept of causality, and the role of values. The authors also offer guidance for research in the field (where, they say, naturalistic inquiry always takes place). Useful tips are given, for example, on "designing" a study as it unfolds, establishing "trustworthiness," and writing a case report. This book helps researchers "both to understand and to do naturalistic inquiry." Of particular interest to educational researchers, it is valuable for all social scientists involved with questions of qualitative and quantitative methodology.

The Landscape of Qualitative Research, Fourth Edition is Volume I of the three-volume paperback editions of The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, Fourth Edition. This contents include full chapters from "Part I: Locating the Field," "Part II: Paradigms and Perspectives in Contention," and "Part VI: the Future of Qualitative Research" from the complete handbook. The Landscape of Qualitative Research, Fourth Edition aims to put the field of qualitative research in context. It offers background on the field, starting with history, then action research and the academy, and the politics and ethics of qualitative research. It then isolates what we regard as the major historical and contemporary paradigms now structuring and influencing qualitative research in the human disciplines. The chapters move from competing paradigms (positivist, postpositivist, constructivist, critical theory) to specific interpretive perspectives, feminisms, racialized discourses, cultural studies, sexualities, and queer theory. It concludes with consideration for the future of qualitative research.

"In Fourth Generation Evaluation, Guba and Lincoln present a strong, unequivocal argument for the epistemological, methodological, and ethical superiority of their refined constructivist inquiry paradigm for the political and practical demands of program evaluation."

--Jennifer Greene, Cornell University

"I would warmly recommend it as stimulating and challenging reading."

--Systems Practice

"I consider Fourth Generation Evaluation to be an exceptionally daring and insightful book. It has done more than most books to further loosen the grip of liberal, instrumental ''common sense'' (i.e., ideology) that has constricted the field of evaluation for the past 30 years. The book?s idealism is energizing and must only be matched, as the authors certainly know, by yet more hard-headed analysis. Its radical ambitions are inspiring if not always apparently achievable. However, fair is fair: radical ends demand radical means."

--Evaluation Practice

Fourth Generation Evaluation represents a monumental shift in evaluation practice. Guba and Lincoln point to the inherent problems faced by previous generations of evaluators--politics, ethical dilemmas, imperfections and gaps, inconclusive deductions--and lay the blame for failure and nonutilization at the feet of the unquestioned reliance on the scientific/positivist paradigm of research. Fourth Generation Evaluation, a more informed and sophisticated approach, moves beyond science to include the myriad human, political, social, cultural, and contextual elements that are involved. Based upon relativism, a unity between knower and known, and a subjective epistemology, the authors show how fourth generation evaluation unites the evaluator and the stakeholders in an interaction that creates the product of the evaluation. Differing from previously existing generations, this new approach moves evaluation to a new level, whose key dynamic is negotiation. The constructivist paradigm is espoused by the authors and shown to offer multiple advantages, including empowerment and enfranchisement of stakeholders, as well as an action orientation that defines a course to be followed. Not merely a treatise on evaluation theory, Guba and Lincoln also comprehensively describe the differences between the positivist and constructivist paradigms of research, and provide a practical plan of the steps and processes in conducting a fourth generation evaluation.

This is a book that no evaluator can afford to ignore and an important advance in the study of applied research.

The Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies is the only handbook to make connections regarding many of the perspectives of the "new" critical theorists and emerging indigenous methodologies.

Built on the foundation of the landmark SAGE "Handbook of Qualitative Research," the Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies extends beyond the investigation of qualitative inquiry itself to explore the indigenous and nonindigenous voices that inform research, policy, politics, and social justice. Editors Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna S. Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith explore in depth some of the newer formulations of critical theories and many indigenous perspectives, and seek to make transparent the linkages between the two.

Key Features

- Contains global examples including South African, Hawaiian, Maori, Central African and Islamic ones.

- Includes a "Who's Who" of educators and researchers in critical methodologies.

- Provides a comprehensive body of work that represents the state of the art for critical methodologies and indigenous discourses

- Covers the history of critical and indigenous theory and how it came to inform and impact qualitative research

- Offers an historical representation of critical theory, critical pedagogy, and indigenous discourse.

- Explores critical theory and action theory, and their hybrid discourses: PAR, feminism, action research, social constructivism, ethnodrama, community action research, poetics.

- Presents a candid conversation between indigenous and nonindigenous discourses.

This Handbook serves as a guide to help Western researchers understand the new and reconfigured territories they might wish to explore.

The transition from viewing organizations as bureaucracies toward seeing them in metaphoric terms is a contemporary break with past organizational theory. But to investigate the similarities between real organizations and the metaphors describing their functions and context, a shift in both methods of inquiry and organizational theory must take place. The original essays in this volume explore the paradigm shift at three levels: (1) an overview of historical roots; (2) an explication of terminology, metaphors, and constructs; and (3) the practical application of these new organizational inquiry methods, especially for actual research practices and policy analysis applications. "An up-to-date picture of what is going on in the field. . . . Worth reading if one has a serious interest in organizations." --European Journal of Operational Research

Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry, Fourth Edition is Volume II of the three-volume paperback versions of The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, Fourth Edition. This portion of the handbook consists of the topics addressed in "Part III: Strategies of Inquiry." Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry, Fourth Edition isolates the major strategies-historically, the research methods-that researchers can use in conducting concrete qualitative studies. The question of methods begins with questions of design and the matters of money and funding. These questions always begin with the researcher who moves from a research question to a paradigm or perspective, and then to the empirical world. The history and uses of these strategies are explored extensively in this volume. The chapters move from forms (and problems with) mixed methods inquiry to case study, performance and narrative ethnography, to constructionist analytics to grounded theory strategies, testimonies, participatory action research, and clinical research.

Employing Critical Qualitative Inquiry to Mount Non-Violent Resistance engages researchers with the notion of Critical Qualitative Inquiry (CQI) as a direct practice of resistance. First, the authors define CQI and its criticisms; provide an in-depth examination of the contemporary neoliberal, capitalist patriarchal condition as requiring immediate resistance within research locations; and discuss the theories/perspectives that have been historically and are contemporarily useful for challenging forms of domination. Specific examples of CQI as resistance in response to a particular neoliberal, patriarchal, whitelash event are then provided by a range of contributing authors. Finally, Lincoln and Cannella address future research practices focusing on how we make present and useful the historical scholarship, actions, and struggles of those who have come before; how we use emergent perspectives to construct new ways to challenge sexism, racism, and other forms of injustice that continue to harm and destroy; and actions that can emerge through research that lead to transformation more broadly toward a more just world.

New from award winning editors Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, The Qualitative Inquiry Reader offers the best of the popular SAGE journal, Qualitative Inquiry. These collected works aim to introduce the necessary critical framework that will allow scholars and students scholars to interpret cutting edge work in the field of qualitative inquiry. By providing this framework, readers will then be able to use this work as it applies to critical political and moral discourses.

This book focuses on representations of contested realities in qualitative research. The authors examine two separate, but interrelated, issues: criticisms of how researchers use "voice", and suggestions about how to develop experimental voices that expand the range of narrative strategies.

Changing relationships between researchers and respondents dictate alterations in textual representations -- from the "view from nowhere" to the view from a particular location, and from the omniscient voice authors have struggled with voice in to the polyvocality of communities of individuals. Examples of new representations and textual experiments provide models for how some their texts, and in so doing, broaden who they and we mean by "us".

Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials, Fourth Edition is Volume III of the three-volume paperback versions of The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, Fourth Edition. This portion of the handbook considers the tasks of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting empirical materials, and comprises the complete handbook's "Part IV: Methods of Collecting and Analyzing Empirical Materials" and "Part V: The Art and Practices of Interpretation, Evaluation, and Presentation." Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials, Fourth Edition introduces the researcher to basic methods of gathering, analyzing and interpreting qualitative empirical materials. Part 1 moves from narrative inquiry, to critical arts-based inquiry, to oral history, observations, visual methodologies, and autoethnographic methods. It then takes up analysis methods, including computer-assisted methodologies, focus groups, as well as strategies for analyzing talk and text. The chapters in Part II discuss evidence, interpretive adequacy, forms of representation, post-qualitative inquiry, the new information technologies and research, the politics of evidence, writing, and evaluation practices.

Employing Critical Qualitative Inquiry to Mount Non-Violent Resistance engages researchers with the notion of Critical Qualitative Inquiry (CQI) as a direct practice of resistance. First, the authors define CQI and its criticisms; provide an in-depth examination of the contemporary neoliberal, capitalist patriarchal condition as requiring immediate resistance within research locations; and discuss the theories/perspectives that have been historically and are contemporarily useful for challenging forms of domination. Specific examples of CQI as resistance in response to a particular neoliberal, patriarchal, whitelash event are then provided by a range of contributing authors. Finally, Lincoln and Cannella address future research practices focusing on how we make present and useful the historical scholarship, actions, and struggles of those who have come before; how we use emergent perspectives to construct new ways to challenge sexism, racism, and other forms of injustice that continue to harm and destroy; and actions that can emerge through research that lead to transformation more broadly toward a more just world.

New from award winning editors Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, The Qualitative Inquiry Reader offers the best of the popular SAGE journal, Qualitative Inquiry. These collected works aim to introduce the necessary critical framework that will allow scholars and students scholars to interpret cutting edge work in the field of qualitative inquiry. By providing this framework, readers will then be able to use this work as it applies to critical political and moral discourses.