Doing qualitative research: a practical handbook

cultural issues to be taken more seriously (33), whereas aboriginal people in Australia are not. These writing issues aside, Part II, which comprise more than half of the total book, is a very solid, strong, widely readable and useful account of design issues that typically arise in qualitative research in diverse sites and settings, including cultural settings that are not necessarily ‘international’. It comprises five chapters of approximately 20 pages each, the first two of which are devoted to ‘Getting started’. The balance of the chapters in Part II are accurately titled: ‘Doing the fieldwork’, ‘Analysing the data’ and ‘Writing up and disseminating the findings’. My only minor quibble is the use of ‘Worked examples’ at the end of the analysis chapter and an unnecessarily long (five page) ‘Key extract’ in the writing up chapter on ‘Thick description’ from The interpretation of cultures by Clifford Geetz. The final and very brief Part III attempts to identify sources of support for qualitative research. The reference and computer software list in this 2009 book is dated (80% of the references are over 15-years-old) and the software list refers to ‘New (October 2004) freeware’. The provocative ‘pearl’ I was perhaps seeking when I chose to review this book from a list of titles came very late (in fact, in the ‘Notes’ section, on page 138). It is the quote from Thomas (2002) that ‘academics have since the mid-Sixties become so preoccupied with the weighty matters of theory and theorising . . . that they no longer concern themselves with the mundane matters of reform and social justice’. I sense that Stephens is concerned with what Hammersley (1999, cited on page 11) called ‘the four ‘unhelpful’ tendencies operating within qualitative research: empiricism, instrumentalism, postmodenism and ethicism’. As Stephens puts it, instead of concerning ourselves with a rationale for the adoption of a quantitative approach (in international or other research settings), it is more useful to consider ‘the purposes of the research inquiry in relation to the choice of methodology, and then to keep a watchful eye on the various pitfalls like those suggested by Hammersley’ (12).