This popular text provides useful and pragmatic guidance for developing and successfully defending proposals for qualitative inquiry. The Fifth Edition addresses the advances and challenges presented by developments and new applications while providing direct guidance. Focusing on the proposal stage of research, this edition allows the reader to have a clear plan for data analysis and for the challenging varieties of final reports of qualitative inquiries.

The new edition includes expanded coverage of ethics, analysis processes, and approaches, and is full of updated vignettes that illustrate the methodological challenges that face today's qualitative researcher. This edition also includes discussions about distance-based research (such as email interviews and online discussion groups), the implications of postmodern turns, integrating archival material in qualitative research, and creative ways of presenting the research.

This text is an invaluable resource to teachers and students of research methods across disciplines and is a must for the library of those using qualitative approaches.