Links to SAGE readings have been provided, non-SAGE readings are suggested and you may be able to find these via your university’s library.

For an overview of the range of qualitative methods used in health research, and how they might be written up for different audiences. Here are three examples of published qualitative studies to skim read to see how different qualitative methods are used, in different kinds of output:

Nettleton et al. report analysis of accounts of living with food intolerance (note the ways in which theory is more explicitly fore-grounded in the article in a sociology journal):

Nettleton, S., Woods, B., Burrows, R. and Kerr, A. (2010) ‘Experiencing food allergy and food intolerance: an analysis of lay accounts’, Sociology, 44: 289 

Jaspan et al. use focus groups to identify views in a preparatory phase of a trial – here, there is little in the way of analysis of the data, which are used in a straightforward way to identify respondents’ perspectives – an approach rather like qualitative description, which is described in Chapter 10:

Jaspan, H.B., Soka, N.F., Mathews, C. et al. (2010) ‘A qualitative assessment of perspectives on the inclusion of adolescents in HIV vaccine trials in South Africa’, International Journal of STD and AIDS 21: 172–76