Qualitative Research Methods for Nurses

Robert Dingwall is a consulting sociologist through Dingwall Enterprises Ltd and part-time Professor of Sociology at Nottingham Trent University. He draws on more than forty years’ experience as an academic researcher studying health care, legal services, and science and technology policy at the Universities of Aberdeen, Oxford and Nottingham. Over that time, he has held grants and contracts worth more than £7 million (at 2017 prices) in total from the Leverhulme and Wellcome Trusts, ESRC, NERC, MRC, EPSRC, BBSRC, the EU, the UK Department of Health and various NHS/NIHR programmes, the Ministry of Justice, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the Food Standards Agency. These have resulted in 30 books and more than 100 scientific papers. Robert Dingwall is also an experienced manager: he served for five years as head of a large social science department and founded and directed what was one of Europe’s leading research institutes in science and technology studies for 12 years. Robert has been a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences since 2002 and an Honorary Member of the Faculty of Public Health since 2014. He was awarded the 2019 Prize for Contributions to the Socio-Legal Community by the Socio-Legal Studies Association. Karen Staniland was formerly a Senior Lecturer in Nursing at Salford University. After lengthy clinical experience in acute medical nursing, she trained as a nurse tutor and then as a researcher with a particular interest in quality and hospital organization.

As social scientists who have had a long relationship with nurses learning to conduct qualitative studies, the authors present this basic methods primer in a highly engaging style, building on what their audience already understands about the world and making a case for the value of expanding upon existing ways of knowing through the use of qualitative inquiry methods. This text will be an excellent resource for nurses wanting to expand their capacity to answer questions arising from their practice, and for educators wanting to engage pre-or post registration learners in taking the next steps toward using knowledge to advance their profession.

• Chapter 1: What is research and why does it matter?Chapter 2: Theory and methodologyChapter 3: Creating a projectChapter 4: Reviewing literatureChapter 5: Doing the right thing - ethics in qualitative researchChapter 6: Observing peopleChapter 7: Interviewing peopleChapter 8: Analysing documents and artefactsChapter 9: What do you do with your data?Chapter 10: Writing your dissertation