Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods

The book that has been a resource and training tool for countless applied researchers, evaluators, and graduate students has been completely revised with hundreds of new examples and stories illuminating all aspects of qualitative inquiry. Patton has created the most comprehensive, systematic and up-to-date review of qualitative methods available.

Patton has retained and expanded upon the Exhibits that highlight and summarize major issues and guidelines, the summative sections, tables, and figures as well as the sage advice of the Sufi Master, Halcolm. This revision will help readers integrate and make sense of the great volume of qualitative works published in the past decade.

Patton (the Union Institute) introduces the principles and methods of qualitative research and evaluation. Chapters cover conceptual issues in qualitative inquiry (including strategic themes and variety), the design of qualitative studies, fieldwork strategies and observation methods, interviewing, analysis, interpretation, and reporting. Important controversies are outlined, and key points are illustrated with examples. The book is intended as a graduate-level text.

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Michael Quinn Patton lives in Minnesota where, according to the state's poet laureate, Garrison Keillor, "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." It was this lack of interesting statistical variation in Minnesota that led him to qualitative inquiry despite the strong quantitative orientation of his doctoral studies in sociology at the University of Wisconsin. He serves on the graduate faculty of The Union Institute, a nontraditional, interdisciplinary, nonresidential and individually designed doctoral program. He was on the faculty of the University of Minnesota for 18 years, including five years as Director of the Minnesota Center for Social Research, where he was awarded the Morse-Amoco Award for innovative teaching. Readers of this book will not be surprised to learn that he has also won the University of Minnesota storytelling competition.

He has authored five other Sage books: Utilization-Focused Evaluation, Creative Evaluation, Practical Evaluation, How to Use Qualitative Methods in Evaluation, and Family Sexual Abuse: Frontline Research and Evaluation. He edited Culture and Evaluation for the journal New Direction in Program Evaluation. His creative nonfiction book, Grand Canyon Celebration: A Father-Son Journey of Discovery, was a finalist for 1999 Minnesota Book of the Year.

He is former President of the American Evaluation Association and the only recipient of both the Alva and Gunner Myrdal Award for Outstanding Contributions to Useful and Practical Evaluation from the Evaluation Research Society and the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award for Lifelong Contributions to Evaluation Theoryfrom the American Evaluation Association. The Society for Applied Sociology awarded him the 2001 Lester F. Ward Award for Outstanding Contributions to Applied Sociology.