The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection

How we understand and define qualitative data is changing, with implications not only for the techniques of data analysis, but also how data are collected. New devices, technologies and online spaces open up new ways for researchers to approach and collect images, moving images, text and talk. The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection systematically explores the approaches, techniques, debates and new frontiers for creating, collecting and producing qualitative data. Bringing together contributions from internationally leading scholars in the field, the handbook offers a state-of-the-art look at key themes across six thematic parts:

Part I Charting the Routes

Part II Concepts, Contexts, Basics

Part III Types of Data and How to Collect Them

Part IV Digital and Internet Data

Part V Triangulation and Mixed Methods

Part VI Collecting Data in Specific Populations

“Professor Flick's Handbook offers several pathways to understanding qualitative data -and the appropriate methods - for discovery, exploration, analysis, storage, retrieval, and sharing, as well as working with multiple methods. The materials about cultural contexts, reflexive accounts, and especially the use of electronic documents illuminate the challenges and solutions of more sophisticated qualitative analysis.”

Professor Flick’s Handbook offers several pathways to understanding qualitative data -and the appropriate methods - for discovery, exploration, analysis, storage, retrieval, and sharing, as well as working with multiple methods.  The materials about cultural contexts, reflexive accounts, and especially the use of electronic documents illuminate the challenges and solutions of more sophisticated qualitative analysis. 

The Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection brings together the leading scholars to express the dynamism and creativity which now cut across all disciplines and topics.  The major types of qualitative data collection include interviews, focus groups, narratives, conversation analysis, discourse analysis, observations, ethnography, performance and hermeneutics, and videography, with pragmatic ideas about how to conduct each type of data collection.  Two major sections discuss and analyze digital data collection, and how to use these data alone of with other forms of qualitative data.  The critical issues of induction, generalization, sampling, and triangulation are presented with clarity and elegance.  This Handbook will be foundational for years to come.

Uwe Flick is Senior Professor of Qualitative Research in Social Science and Education at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. He is a trained psychologist and sociologist and received his PhD from the Freie Universität Berlin in 1988 and his Habilitation from the Technical University 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. Previously, he was Adjunct Professor at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, Canada; a Lecturer in research methodology at the Freie Universität Berlin; a Reader and Assistant Professor in qualitative methods and evaluation at the Technical University 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, Cambridge University (UK), Memorial University of St John’s (Canada), University of Lisbon (Portugal), Institute of Higher Studies in Vienna, in Italy and Sweden, and 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 (forced) migration and chronical illness in everyday live. He is the editor of The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Design (2 Vols.; Sage 2022). The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis (Sage, 2014), The SAGE Qualitative Research Kit (Sage, 2nd edn, 2018), A Companion to Qualitative Research (Sage, 2004), Psychology of the Social (Cambridge University Press, 1998). His most recent publications are the seventh edition of An Introduction to Qualitative Research (Sage, 2023), Doing Grounded Theory (Sage, 2018), Doing Triangulation and Mixed Methods (Sage, 2018), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection (editor, Sage, 2018), the third edition of Introducing Research Methodology – Thinking Your Way through Your Research Project (Sage, 2020) and Doing Interview Research - The Essential How To Guide (Sage 2022). In 2019, Uwe Flick received the Lifetime Award in Qualitative Inquiry at the 15th International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.

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