Qualitative and mixed methodsRung 1 · Introductory

Numbers tell you how many people eat after dark, and how much weight a programme took off. They do not tell you why a family keeps the late dinner, or why a clinic’s patients stop coming. Those are questions about meaning and reasons, and they are answered by asking people and listening well. This book teaches the first half of that craft: what questions it answers, the interview and the focus group as instruments, the topic guide, and how to run an interview without steering it. It ends with five pilot interviews you conduct, transcribe and read yourself.

Read Book 0’s sections on evidence first, or at least the ones this book names as it goes. Then read this one in order. The exercises here are things to do with people, not sums: write the questions, run the practice interview, read your own transcript back. Do them as you go; the skill is in the doing.