Research, Research & Theory, Assessment, Education, Science & Mathematics, Psychology 

This title provides guidance for thinking through and planning a qualitative study. Rather than offering recipes for specific techniques Stake stimulates readers to discover 'how things work' in organizations, programs, communities and other systems. 

Introduction : Make yourself comfortable -- Projects -- 1. Qualitative research: how things work -- 1.1. The Science of the particular -- 1.2. Professional knowledge -- 1.3. Individual experience and collective knowledge -- 1.4. The methods of qualitative research -- 1.5. Causes -- 1.6. The thing -- 1.7. Comparing things -- 1.8. Weaknesses of qualitative research -- 1.9. Essence of the qualitative approach -- 2. Interpretation: the person as instrument -- 2.1. Interpretive research -- 2.2. Microinterpretation and macrointerpretation -- 2.3. Empathy -- 2.4. Thick description and verstehen -- 2.5. Context and situation -- 2.6. Skepticism -- 2.7. Emphasis on interpretation -- 3. Experiential understanding : most qualitative study is experiential -- 3.1. The places of human activity -- 3.2. Criterial and experiential description -- 3.3. Emphasizing personal experience -- 3.4. Multiple realities -- 3.5. Bringing in the experience of others -- 4. Stating the problem: questioning how this thing works -- 4.1. First the question, then the methods -- 4.2. Laying out your study -- 4.3. A librarian thinking of a design -- 4.4. Design for studying how this case works -- 4.5. Raising and answering questions -- 5. Methods: gathering data -- 5.1. Observing -- 5.2. Interviewing -- 5.3. Exhibit questions -- 5.4. Survey -- 5.5. Keeping records -- 6. Review of literature: zooming to see the problem -- 6.1. Refining the problem to be studied -- 6.2. Concept mapping -- 6.3. Representing upon the nearby studies -- 6.4. Building upon the nearby studies -- 6.5 Finding the literature -- 7. Evidence: bolstering judgment and reconnoitering -- 7.1. Evidence-based decision making -- 7.2. Unbearable lightness of evidence -- 7.3. Triangulation -- 7.4. Mixed methods and confidence -- 7.5. Member checking -- 7.6. Review panels -- 7.7. Progressive focusing -- 8. Analysis and synthesis : how things work -- 8.1. Taking apart and putting together -- 8.2. Working with patches -- 8.3. Interpretation and sorting.
9. Action research and self-evaluation : finding on your own how your place works -- 9.1. Participatory action research -- 9.2. Evaluation -- 9.3. Studying your own place -- 9.4. Bias -- 9.5 Assertions -- 10. Storytelling illustrating how things work -- 10.1. Vignettes -- 10.2. Elements of story -- 10.3. Story versus a collage of patches -- 10.4. Multiple case research -- 11. Writing the final report: an iterative convergence -- 11.1. The iterative synthesis -- 11.2. The Ukraine report -- 11.3. Dualities and the dialectic -- 11.4. Particular and general assertions -- 11.5. Generalization from particular situations -- 11.6. The professional view -- 12. Advocacy and ethics: making things work better -- 12.1. All research is advocative -- 12.2. A voice for the underrepresented -- 12.3. Personal ethics -- 12.4. Protection of human subjects -- 12.5. People exposed -- 12.6. Essentials of qualitative research -- 12.7. Looking forward. 

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.