This unique text shows researchers how to develop theories derived through qualitative inquiry. Johnny Saldaña illustrates how a theory is a research-based statement with an accompanying explicating narrative that contains six properties: concepts, propositional logic, parameters/variation, explanation/causation, generalizability/transferability, and the improvement of social life. The book features hundreds of examples of theories and metatheories from a wide range of disciplines and includes end-of-chapter activities for exercising the skills necessary to develop original theories. Just as Saldaña demystifies coding and qualitative data analysis in his bestselling Sage books, Developing Theory Through Qualitative Inquiry presents an accessible introduction to the principles and methods of theorizing for social insight.

Encouraging readers to take a critical approach to empirical data, the authors provide an account that helps social science researchers to develop new and interesting theories.

"This text presents a comprehensive introduction to developing conventional, mainstream theories derived primarily from qualitative inquiry. It offers various definitions of theory, multiple examples of theories from different disciplines in the author's signature writing style, and includes end-of-chapter activities for exercising the skills necessary to develop an original theory. The book is written for intermediate and advanced courses in qualitative research methods, undergraduate and graduate social and educational theory, and classes that address theory development in their particular areas of study. Saldana extracts from the literature that a theory, most often, is a research-based statement with an accompanying explanatory narrative that contains and/or implies the following six properties; a theory 1. expresses a patterned relationship between two or more concepts; 2. predicts and manages action through propositional logic; 3. accounts for parameters of or variation in the empirical observations; 4. explains how and/or why something happens by stating its cause(s); 5. suggests generalizability and/or transferability to related social contexts; and 6. provides insights and guidance for improving social life. This book describes the properties and fundamentals of theory construction; offers concrete examples of social science theories; and includes activities to develop original theories"--

The Second Edition of this best-selling textbook continues to offer immensely practical advice and technical expertise that will aid researchers in analyzing and interpreting their collected data, and ultimately build theory from it. The authors provide a step-by-step guide to the research act. Full of definitions and illustrative examples, the book presents criteria for evaluating a study as well as responses to common questions posed by students of qualitative research.

Duoethnography is a collaborative research methodology in which two or more researchers engage in a dialogue on their disparate histories in a given phenomenon. Their goal is to interrogate and re-conceptualize existing beliefs through a conversation that is written in a play-script format. The methodology of duoethnography serves as the focus of this book. Duoethnography facilitates stratified, nested, auto-ethnographic accounts of a given research context or question, designed to emphasize the complex, reflexive, and aesthetic aspects of both the work in process and the product. As a curriculum and a research method, duoethnography explores two seminal issues: representation in qualitative research (how to represent findings when findings are created within a dynamic phenomenonological text), and praxis (how research contributes to a sense of personal change). Duoethnography allows researchers to explore their hybrid identities and to see how their lives have been situated socially and culturally. Recent duoethnographic studies have examined a range of topics, including forms of institutionalized racism, beauty, post-colonialism, multicultural identity construction, and professional boundaries between patient and practitioner in mental health professions.

Winner of the 2013 American Educational Studies Association's Critics Choice Award!Thinking With Theory In Qualitative Research shows how to use various philosophical concepts in practices of inquiry; effectively opening up the process of data analysis in qualitative research. It uses a common data set and utilizes various theoretical perspectives

The use of case studies to build and test theories in political science and the other social sciences has increased in recent years. Many scholars have argued that the social sciences rely too heavily on quantitative research and formal models and have attempted to develop and refine rigorous methods for using case studies. This text presents a comprehensive analysis of research methods using case studies and examines the place of case studies in social science methodology. It argues that case studies, statistical methods, and formal models are complementary rather than competitive. The book explains how to design case study research that will produce results useful to policymakers and emphasizes the importance of developing policy-relevant theories. It offers three major contributions to case study methodology: an emphasis on the importance of within-case analysis, a detailed discussion of process tracing, and development of the concept of typological theories. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences will be particularly useful to graduate students and scholars in social science methodology and the philosophy of science, as well as to those designing new research projects, and will contribute greatly to the broader debate about scientific methods.