Anselm L. Strauss

"The second edition of this text continues to offer the immensely practical advice and technical expertise that assists researchers in making sense of their collected data. Basics of Qualitative Research, Second Edition presents methods that enable researchers to analyze and interpret their data ultimately building theory from it. Highly accessible in their approach, authors Anselm Strauss (late of the University of San Francisco and co-creator of grounded theory) and Juliet Corbin provide a step-by-step guide to the research act from the formation of the research question, through several approaches to coding and analysis, to reporting on the research. Full of definitions and illustrative examples, this highly accessible book concludes with chapters that present criteria for evaluating a study, as well as responses to common questions posed by students of qualitative research."--BOOK JACKET.

"The teaching of qualitative analysis in the social sciences is rarely undertaken in a structured way. This handbook is designed to remedy that and to present students and researchers with a systematic method for interpreting qualitative data, whether derived from interviews, field notes, or documentary materials. The special emphasis of the book is on how to develop theory through qualitative analysis. The reader is provided with the tools for doing qualitative analysis, such as codes, memos, memo sequences, theoretical sampling and comparative analysis, and diagrams, all of which are abundantly illustrated by actual examples drawn from the author's own varied qualitative research and research consultations, as well as from his research seminars. Many of the procedural discussions are concluded with rules of thumb that can usefully guide the researchers' analytic operations. The difficulties that beginners encounter when doing qualitative analysis and the kinds of persistent questions they raise are also discussed, as is the problem of how to integrate analyses. In addition, there is a chapter on the teaching of qualitative analysis and the giving of useful advice during research consultations, and there is a discussion of the preparation of material for publication. The book has been written not only for sociologists but for all researchers in the social sciences and in such fields as education, public health, nursing, and administration who employ qualitative methods in their work"--amazon.com.

Sheds light on what the city is and does by analyzing what its citizens think it should be and do.

Identity as a concept is as elusive as everyone's sense of his own personal identity. It is connected with appraisals made by oneself and by others. Each person sees himself mirrored in the judgments of others. The masks he presents to the world are fashioned upon his anticipations of judgments. In Mirrors and Masks, Anselm Strauss uses the notion of identity to organize materials and thoughts about certain aspects of problems traditionally intriguing to social psychologists. The problems Strauss considers to be intriguing traditionally are those encountered when studying group membership, motivation, personality development, and social interaction. The topics covered include: the basic importance of language for human action and identity; the perpetual indeterminacy of identities in constantly changing social contexts; the symbolic and developmental character of human interaction; the theme of identity as it affects adult behavior; relations between generations and their role in personality development; and the symbolic character of membership in groups. By focusing on symbolic behavior with an emphasis on social organization, Strauss presents a fruitful, systematic perspective from which to view traditional problems of social psychology. He opens up new areas of thought and associates matters that are not ordinarily considered to be related. Strauss believes that psychiatrists and psychologists underestimate immensely the influence of social organization upon individual behavior and individual structure, and that sociologists, whose major concern is with social organization, should employ some kind of social psychology in their research. Mirrors and Masks shows that the fusion of theoretical approaches benefits the analyses of many scholars. This fascinating work should be read by sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists.