How can researchers produce work with relevance to theoretical and formal traditions and requirements of public academic knowledge while still remaining faithful to the experiences and accounts of research participants based in private settings? Feminist Dilemmas in Qualitative Research explores this key dilemma and examines the interplay between theory, epistemology and the detailed practice of research. It does this across the whole research process: access, data collection and analysis and writing up research. It goes on to consider ways of achieving high standards of reflexivity and openness in the strategic choices made during research, examining these issues for specific projects in an open and accessible style.

Particular themes examined are: the research dilemmas that occur from feminist perspectives in relation to researching private and personal social worlds; the position of the researcher as situated between public knowledge and private experience; and the dilemmas raised for researchers seeking to contribute to academic discourse while remaing close to their knowledge forms.

About the Author
Jane Ribbens is Senior Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University. She is co-author of Mothers and Education: Inside Out? Exploring Family Education Policy and Experience (with D Miriam, R Edwards and M Hughes, 1993), and Mothers Intuition? Choosing Secondary Schools (with D Miriam and A West, 1994). Rosalind Edwards is a professor of sociology and a codirector of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods at the University of Southampton. She is an elected fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a founding and coeditor of the International Journal of Social Research Methodology. She has published widely on qualitative and mixed methods, including books on Paradata, Marginalia and Fieldnotes (2017, coedited with J. Goodwin, H. O'Connor, and A. Phoenix), What Is Qualitative Interviewing (2013, with J. Holland), and a Qualitative Research special issue on "Democratising Research Methods" (2017, coedited with T. Brannelly). Currently, she is part of a team exploring the feasibility of conducting secondary analysis across existing data from several qualitative longitudinal studies: http://bigqlr.ncrm.ac.uk/

Reviews
`This is an excellent book for both undergraduate and graduate students. It contains some useful tips on technique and some striking quotations. There is also a comprehensive bibliography of feminist writing on a wide range of theoretical and practical topics. The care and thoughtfulness of this collection bring together in a stimulating way the philosopher's questions about representation and the empirical researcher's questions about evidence. Feminist Dilemmas in Qualitative Research is a useful and timely book' - Women's Philosophy Review

`It is indeed refreshing to find serious, dedicated feminist psychologists who write so expressively about their desires, commitments, limitations and difficulties as researchers, and how they choose to address them.... [This book] offers us a rare oppotunity to thrash through these dilemmas and perhaps gain sufficient practice such that when we are again alone in the thorny thickets of research we shall be better prepared.' - Feminism and Psychology

Book Information
ISBN 9780761956655
Author Jane Catherine Ribbens
Format Paperback
Page Count 224
Imprint SAGE Publications Inc
Publisher SAGE Publications Inc
Weight(grams) 350g