The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection

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 of 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 of 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, at Cambridge University (UK), University of Lisbon (Portugal), Institute of Higher Studies in Vienna, in Italy and Sweden, and at 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, chronical illness and vulnerability in fields like youth homelessness, peer relations or migration, and technological change in everyday life. He is the author of Introducing Research Methodology: A Beginner’s Guide to Doing a Research Project (4th edn, London: Sage: 2025) and editor of A Companion to Qualitative Research (London: Sage, 2004) and The Psychology of the Social (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). As his most recent publications, he has written Designing Qualitative Research (2nd edn, London: Sage, 2018), Doing Grounded Theory (London: Sage, 2018), Doing Triangulation and Mixed Methods (London: Sage, 2018), and Managing Quality in Qualitative Research (2nd edn, London: Sage, 2018) and Doing Interview Research – The Essential How To Guide (London: Sage, 2022). He edited The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis (London: Sage, 2014), The SAGE Qualitative Research Kit (2nd edn, London: Sage, 2018), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection (London: Sage, 2018) and The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Design (London: Sage, 2022) and The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research Quality (London: Sage, 2025).

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.

• PART 1: CHARTING THE ROUTESIntroduction to part 1 - Uwe FlickChapter 1: Doing Qualitative Data Collection – Charting the Routes - Uwe FlickPART 2: CONCEPTS, CONTEXTS, BASICSIntroduction to part 2 - Uwe FlickChapter 2: Collecting Qualitative Data: A Realist Approach - Joseph A. MaxwellChapter 3: Ethics of Qualitative Data Collection - Donna M. MertensChapter 4: Deduction, Induction, Abduction - Brianna L. Kennedy and Robert ThornbergChapter 5: Upside Down - Reinventing Research Design - Giampietro GoboChapter 6: Sampling and Generalization - Margrit SchreierChapter 7: Accessing the Research Field - Andrew Bengry-HowellChapter 8: Recording and Transcribing Social Interaction - Christopher JenksChapter 9: Collecting Data in Other Languages - Strategies for Cross-Language Research in Multilingual Societies - Katharina Resch and Edith EnzenhoferChapter 10: From Scholastic to Emic Comparison: Generating Comparability and Handling Difference in Ethnographic Research - Estrid Sørensen, Alison Marlin and Jörg NiewöhnerChapter 11: Data Collection in Secondary Analysis - Louise CortiChapter 12: The Virtue of Naturalistic Data - Jonathan Potter and Chloe ShawChapter 13: Performance, Hermeneutics, Interpretation - Norman K. DenzinChapter 14: Quality of Data Collection - Rosaline S. BarbourPART 3: TYPES OF DATA AND HOW TO COLLECT THEMIntroduction to part 3 - Uwe FlickChapter 15: Qualitative Interviews - Kathryn Roulston and Myungweon Choi Chapter 16: Focus Groups - David L. Morgan and Kim Hoffman Chapter 17: Narrative Data - Michael MurrayChapter 18: Data Collection in Conversation Analysis - Clare JacksonChapter 19: Collecting Data for Analyzing Discourses - Asta Rau, Florian Elliker and Jan K. CoetzeeChapter 20: Observations - David WästerforsChapter 21: Doing Ethnography: Ways and Reasons - Marie BuscattoChapter 22: Go-Alongs - Margarethe KusenbachChapter 23: Videography - Hubert Knoblauch, René Tuma and Bernt SchnettlerChapter 24: Collecting Documents as Data - Tim Rapley and Gethin ReesChapter 25: Collecting Images as Data - Thomas S. EberleChapter 26: Collecting Media Data: TV and Film Studies - Lothar MikosChapter 27: Sounds as Data - Michael Bull PART 4: DIGITAL AND INTERNET DATAIntroduction to part 4 - Uwe FlickChapter 28: The concept of ‘Data’ in Digital Research - Simon Lindgren Chapter 29: Moving Through Digital flows: An Epistemological and Practical Approach - Annette N. Markham and Ane Kathrine GammelbyChapter 30: Ethics in Digital Research - Katrin Tiidenberg Chapter 31: Collecting Data for Analyzing Blogs - Wivian Weller, Lucélia de Moraes Braga Bassalo, and Nicolle PfaffChapter 32: Collecting Qualitative Data from Facebook: Approaches and Methods - Joanne Meredith and Hannah Ditchfield Chapter 33: Troubling the Concept of Data in Qualitative Digital Research - Annette MarkhamPART 5: TRIANGULATION AND MIXED METHODSIntroduction to part 5 - Uwe FlickChapter 34: Triangulation in Data Collection - Uwe FlickChapter 35: Toward an Understanding of a Qualitatively-Driven Mixed Methods Data Collection and Analysis: Moving Toward a Theoretically-Centered Mixed Methods Praxis - Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber Chapter 36: Data-Related Issues in Qualitatively-Driven Mixed-Method Designs: Sampling, Pacing, and Reflexivity - Janice M. Morse, Julianne Cheek, and Lauren ClarkChapter 37: Combining Digital and Physical Data - Nigel Fielding Chapter 38: Using Photographs in Interviews: When We Lack the Words to Say What Practice Means - Karen Henwood, Fiona Shirani, and Chris GrovesPART 6: COLLECTING DATA IN SPECIFIC POPULATIONSIntroduction to part 6 - Uwe FlickChapter 39: Collecting Qualitative Data with Children - Colin MacDougall and Philip DarbyshireChapter 40: Collecting Qualitative Data with Older People - Christine Stephens, Vanessa Burholt, Norah KeatingChapter 41: Generating Qualitative Data with Experts and Elites - Beate Littig, Alexander Bogner and Wolfgang MenzChapter 42: Collecting Qualitative Data with Hard-to-Reach Groups - Kerry Chamberlain and Darrin Hodgetts