Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for Analyzing Talk, Text and Interaction

by David Silverman

In this exciting and major updating of one the most important textbooks for beginning qualitative researchers, David Silverman seeks to match the typical chronology of experience faced by the student-reader. Earlier editions of Interpreting Qualitative Data largely sought to provide material for students to answer exam questions, yet the undergraduate encounter with methods training is increasingly assessed by students doing their own research project. In this context, the objective of the Third Edition is to offer undergraduates the kind of hands-on training in qualitative research required to guide them through the process.

Genres: Research

448 pages, Paperback

First published December 7, 1993

About the author

David Silverman is Visiting Professor in the Business School, University of Technology, Sydney. He has lived in London for most of his life, where he attended Christ's College Finchley and did a BSc (Economics) at the London School of Economics in the 1960s. Afterwards, he went to the USA for graduate work, obtaining an MA in the Sociology Department, University of California, Los Angeles. He returned to LSE to write a PhD on organization theory. This was published as The Theory of Organizations in 1970.

He pioneered and taught MA in Qualitative Research at Goldsmiths in 1985. Since becoming Emeritus Professor in 1999, he has continued publishing methodology books.

His main teaching career was at Goldsmiths College. His three major research projects were on decision making in the Personnel Department of the Greater London Council (Organizational Work, written with Jill Jones, 1975), paediatric outpatient clinics (Communication and Medical Practice, 1987) and HIV-test counselling (Discourses of Counselling, 1997).