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Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods, 3rd ed., by Michael Quinn Patton (2001). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 688 pages.
Lately, I find myself increasingly called on to offer seminars introducing graduate students to the qualitative investigation of organizational life. Any introduction to qualitative research, it seems to me, should provide those interested with an inclusive menu of the considerable variety of approaches practiced under the broad umbrella domain of qualitative research, with a taste of how to execute the operational procedures through which data are gathered and analyzed, and with a sense of the complexity involved in appropriately judging the fruits of their investigative labor. This substantial book comprehensively and systematically delivers all three. It is intended to provide an extensive overview of qualitative research to help prospective researchers make informed choices about the approaches they might pursue. And, having selected an approach, this text supports their moving from this work to original sources for more specific design and analytic guidance. This book is a wonderful general resource for those learning about this form of inquiry.
Michael Patton, of course, has been offering insights as a methodologist for quite some time. Indeed, this book has had two prior incarnations, beginning as Qualitative Evaluation Methods (1980), focusing on the application of qualitative methods to program evaluation. Perhaps because of Patton's association with evaluation research, qualitative researchers in the mainstream of organization studies generally have not drawn on his work. Whatever the reason, this is a mistake, particularly so in this third edition in which qualitative research in general has become an additional focus of the book alongside evaluation research. This change is represented in the book's new title, Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods. The concern with evaluation research persists, particularly in the latter sections of the book, where it is the source of many of the text's examples. Whether researchers are interested in using qualitative inquiry to address more practice centered concerns such as program or policy evaluation or more theoretical ones, this book has much to offer.
The core of the book is divided into three sections; the first section serves as a comprehensive introduction to the qualitative research domain while sections two and three address operational procedures. Each of these sections, and the chapters that...