An Eclectic Mix of Challenges and Research Practice

Abstract

The eleven chapters in this volume were selected from presentations made at the 4th World Conference on Qualitative Research held in Porto in October 2019. The chapters are wide-ranging substantively,  methodologically,  and  geographically.  The  authors  write  about  their  research experiences or teaching innovations in India, the United States, Portugal, the Philippines, France, Italy, Columbia and there are two chapters each from Brazil and South Africa. The 11 chapters presented  in  three  thematic  sections  focus  on  qualitative  research  at  work,  qualitative  health research,  and  teaching  and  learning  qualitative  research.  The  substantive  topics  are  eclectic ranging  from  young  people  adjusting  to  a  chronic  kidney  diagnosis,  rural  health  inequality, intimate partner violence among adolescents, emotional labor of French sales staff to inventive ways  to  teach  students  unfamiliar  with  qualitative  research.    Methodologically  these  chapters adopt a diverse range of techniques as if current qualitative research practice does not use a unified  methodology.  It  does  not.  Techniques  included  the  traditional  narrative  research, unstructured interviews, community based participatory research to the more innovative critical incident and basic content analysis to those that used computer analysis to facilitate qualitative research.