BOOK REVIEW

Book Review



Book Review

Introduction

In the past decades, the quantity of books available on the subject of qualitative research has amplified dramatically. There are handbooks, source books, and textbooks. There are outstanding books on qualitative writing, on qualitative analysis, on participant observation and interviewing, and on the research design. As a practitioner and student of qualitative techniques in management I used to grab every new literature I found. However, more recently I became more selective as there are a number of quality books in the market that the requirement for additional book on the subject is not understandable. Therefore, when the book “Qualitative Researching” by Jennifer Mason came to my notice (the first edition of which was published in the year 1996), I straight away questioned myself what this new book can give in, which would be interesting and new.

Discussion

The book is comprised of 3 sections, Chapter one and chapter two come under the first section of the book that discusses design, research focus, and epistemological foundations and deals with “questions of strategy”. Chapters three to seven come under the second sections of the book, which covers sampling, documents, visual methods, observation and interviewing, and is titled as “Generating Qualitative Data”. Chapter eight and nine come under the third section, which cover interpretation, coding and data organization, and is titled as “Analyzing Qualitative Data”. After that at an initial glance the book “Qualitative Researching” gives the impression of following a moderately typical sequence which is designed to adjust faultlessly within a course of qualitative methods (Mason, 2002).

Nonetheless, the book possesses an interesting and distinctive perspective to the theme, which I personally have not observed elsewhere. It is designed in the order of “difficult questions” as termed by the author Jennifer Mason. Every chapter includes a sequence of around fifteen to twenty questions, which a researcher may concentrate on while performing a study that is qualitative in nature. The viewpoint at the back of this method is drawing readers into “active engagement” (as termed by the author) with the procedure of conducting research. The “difficult questions” utilized in raising concerns regarding the selections, which need to be made, devoid of essentially offering one-best-way responses. The viewpoint appears quite lucrative in principle. It takes care of researchers (both experts and novices) as creative and intelligent individuals competent of reflecting logically on their observation and making choices that are informed, rather than as inactive receivers of information who do not require to be told about what they need to do.

All the chapters discuss the available options, their implications, and their rationales. The types explain include but go past procedural choices between analysis devices (diagrammatic approaches, case writing and indexing) and data collection tools (documentary and visual sources, observations and interviews) considering the epistemological and the fundamental ontological assumptions that drive the research. For instance, Jennifer draws concentration to various analytical logics (reflexive, interpretive and literal) and various styles of data-generation (construction or excavation), which need to be understood and selected in relation ...