Interpretive Description

This book is designed to guide both new and more seasoned researchers through the steps of conceiving, designing, and implementing coherent research capable of generating new insights in clinical settings. Drawing from a variety of theoretical, methodological, and substantive strands, interpretive description provides a bridge between objective neutrality and abject theorizing, producing results that are academically credible, imaginative, and clinically practical. Replete with examples from a host of research settings in health care and other arenas, the volume will be an ideal text for applied research programs.

This book is designed to guide both new and more seasoned researchers through the steps of conceiving, designing, and implementing coherent research capable of generating new insights in clinical settings.

Sally Thorne, RN, PhD, is Professor and Director of the School of Nursing at the University of British Columbia. Her research emphasis for the past 25 years has been the human experience of chronic illness and cancer. Following the initial publication of her methodological work on Interpretive Description in 1997, she has continued to develop it as qualitative research approach particularly suited to the research questions generated from within the applied disciplines, including the health professions. Dr. Thorne is a widely published author, sought after as a consultant on qualitative methodological issues, and a committed educator. She is author or coauthor of 100 published articles and three books.

Margarete Sandelowski is Cary C. Boshamer Professor of Nursing and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill