1st Edition
Qualitative Research Methods for Medicine and Health Sciences
Part 1. Knowing human life, health and illness
1. A rich and diverse knowledge base for practice and inquiry
2. Unpacking assumptions underpinning qualitative methods
3. Scientific rigour with a human face
4. What makes research qualitative, and why it matters
5. You are the interpreter—your most powerful research instrument
Part 2. Traversing the research process
6. Planning, flexibility and field notes along the path
7. Sampling guided by information power—advancing transferability
8. Data creation interacting with various sources of knowledge
9. Transcription—capturing voices, not just words
10. Analysis—the creative art of rigourous reflection
11. From complexity to knowing—Systematic Text Condensation
12. What counts as a result—and what does not?
13. Writing your study—the craft and the joy
Part 3. On different forms of design and data
14. Dialogue across designs—understanding experiences
15. Beyond conversation—narratives, unique cases and digital traces
16. Observation as situated research practice
17. Critical and committed inquiry in action
18. Metasynthesis—surfacing prior evidence and creating new knowing
19. Between tacit knowing and research evidence
Part 4. Theoretical and methodological questions revisited
20. Theory situates interpretation, focus and abstraction
21. Validation revisited—soundness and scope of understanding
22. Combining methods—sustaining philosophical coherence?
23. Artificial intelligence— friend or foe in qualitative studies?
Part 5. In conclusion
24. Dialogue and reflexivity rather than checklists for rigour?
25. Recognising vulnerability as ethical responsibility
26. Negotiating paradigms in the face of medical research traditions
Biography
Kirsti Malterud MD PhD is Professor Emerita in General Practice at the University of Bergen, Norway.
