Customer Reviews

Naturalistic Inquiry

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Lincoln and Guba have written three previous books dealing with research and evaluation in education and the social sciences. This book discusses and explores a paradigm in naturalistic research and evaluation that is not rigid in structure. Lincoln and Guba provide detailed suggestions and a checklist that assist naturalistic researchers in developing credible and trustworthy processes of research. Various methodological stances exist for varying research needs. Lincoln and Guba's book would greatly assist research purposes that require a detailed understanding of a particular setting. This book will interest graduate students, educational researchers, and social scientists struggling with qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

A professor who used this book while working on her own dissertation recommended it to me. I have used the approach described in the book several studies since then. The book is very readable for this type of topic, and the techniques described have been extremely useful for examining a rich data source on a topic without a clear existing theoretical framework. I would definitely recommend this book to both novices and experienced researchers.

Any text edited by Lincoln and Guba explaining the aspects and issues to consider when engaging in qualitative research methods will help the researcher create a sounder study design. This book can be viewed as a seminal text and a necessary element of a personal library on qualitative research methods. The text is well written and explains the thought process and describes the lens through which researchers are to analyze the settings they are observing to understand and describe its unique characteristics.

I had been having an enormous difficulty trying to translate the concepts of validity and reliability for the qualitative section of my dissertation. My chair-person recommended this book and boy...was I ever glad she did. The section on Establishing Trustworthiness is especially well written and gave me a clear understanding of how I wanted that part of my methods section to look.

This was supposed to be a brand-new item, but the cover was torn.