What is Qualitative Interviewing? is an accessible and comprehensive ‘what is’ and ‘how to’ methods book. It is distinctive in emphasizing the importance of good practice in understanding and undertaking qualitative interviews within the framework of a clear philosophical position. Rosalind Edwards and Janet Holland provide clear and succinct explanations of relevant philosophies and theories of how to know about the social world, and a thorough discussion of how to go about researching it using interviews. A series of short chapters explain a range of interview types and practices. Drawing on their own and colleagues’ experiences Edwards and Holland provide real research examples as informative illustrations of qualitative interviewing in practice and the use of creative interview tools. They discuss the use of new technologies as well as tackling enduring issues around asking and listening, and power dynamics in research. Written in a clear and accessible style the book concludes with a useful annotated bibliography of key texts and journals in the field. What is Qualitative Interviewing? provides a vital resource for both new and experienced researchers across the social science disciplines.

What is Qualitative Interviewing

「脆弱性(Vulnerability)」とは何か

Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation

Saturation is a core guiding principle to determine sample sizes in qualitative research, yet little methodological research exists on parameters that influence saturation. Our study compared two approaches to assessing saturation: code saturation and meaning saturation. We examined sample sizes needed to reach saturation in each approach, what saturation meant, and how to assess saturation. Examining 25 in-depth interviews, we found that code saturation was reached at nine interviews, whereby the range of thematic issues was identified. However, 16 to 24 interviews were needed to reach meaning saturation where we developed a richly textured understanding of issues. Thus, code saturation may indicate when researchers have "heard it all," but meaning saturation is needed to "understand it all." We used our results to develop parameters that influence saturation, which may be used to estimate sample sizes for qualitative research proposals or to document in publications the grounds on which saturation was achieved.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1049732316665344

Code Saturation Versus Meaning Saturation: How Many Interviews Are Enough?

Poverty in the United Kingdom

This paper describes methodological findings from research to recruit and research hard-to-reach socially excluded people. We review the ways in which researchers have used particular strategies to...

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Accessing Socially Excluded People — Trust and the Gatekeeper in the Researcher-Participant Relationship

Energy poverty is widely understood to be a complex and multi-faceted problem, with a range of drivers. In this paper we draw on secondary qualitative data on energy poverty from the UK, as well as conceptual thinking informed by the capabilities approach, to explore a previously understudied facet of energy poverty: social relations. We focus particularly on how relationships with family, friends, agencies and distant others impact on people’s ability to cope with energy poverty. We find that the connection between social relations and energy poverty is recursive: good social relations can both enable access to energy services, and be a product of such access. This connection is also shaped by structural factors, such as access to a range of resources, membership of particular collectivities, the need to perform social roles, and the common reasons used to explain poverty and energy use. Our work suggests that attempts to address energy poverty need to take into account the quality of people’s social relations, as well as the potential impact of policy and practice on social relations, given that people rely on their friends and families for information support and advice, on key agency workers for access to resources, and are also constrained by discourses of poverty.

Energy poverty and social relations: a capabilities approach

Doing Realist Research

Social injustices, structural and personal crises as well as intensifying stress on some citizens seem increasing preoccupations in contemporary society and social policy. In this context, the concept of vulnerability has come to play a prominent role in academic, governmental and everyday accounts of the human condition. Policy makers and practitioners are now concerned with addressing vulnerability through an expansive range of interventions. As this special issue draws attention to, a vulnerability zeitgeist or ‘spirit of the time’ has been traced in contemporary welfare and disciplinary arrangements (Brown, 2014, 2015), which now informs a range of interventions and approaches to social problems, both in the UK and internationally. As prominent examples, ‘vulnerable’ people are legally entitled to ‘priority need’ in English social housing allocations (Carr and Hunter, 2008), vulnerable victims of crime are seen as requiring special responses in the UK criminal justice system (see Roulstone et al., 2011; Walkgate, 2011), ‘vulnerable adults’ have designated ‘protections’ under British law (Dunn et al., 2008; Clough, 2014) and vulnerable migrants and refugees are increasingly prioritised within international immigration processes (Peroni and Timmer, 2013). There is a long tradition in the field of social policy of critiquing the implications of particular concepts as mechanisms of governance, from poverty (Townsend, 1979; Lister, 2004) and social exclusion (Levitas, 1998; Young 1999) to risk (Beck, 1992; Kemshall, 2002) and resilience (Ecclestone and Lewis, 2014; Wright, 2016). Yet while vulnerability seems to be one of the latest buzzwords gathering political and cultural momentum, critiques and empirical studies of how it is operationalised in different policy and practice contexts are less well elaborated.

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The Many Faces of Vulnerability

This toolkit discusses our experiences using walking interviews in outdoor urban environments, focusing on the practicalities of conducting these interviews and on ways of thinking about the data produced in the method, which we used as part of the Connected Lives project.

Nick Emmel

Papers

Accessing Socially Excluded People — Trust and the Gatekeeper in the Researcher-Participant Relationship

Energy poverty and social relations: a capabilities approach

Doing Realist Research

The Many Faces of Vulnerability

Using walking interviews