Researching Social Change: Qualitative Approaches
About this ebook
The authors showcase a range of methods that explore temporality and the dynamic relations between past, present and future. Through case studies, they review six methodological traditions: memory-work, oral/life history, qualitative longitudinal research, ethnography, intergenerational and follow-up studies. It illustrates how these research approaches are translated into research projects and considers the practical as well as the theoretical and ethical challenges they pose. Research methods are also the product of times and places, and this book keeps to the fore the cultural and historical context in which these methods developed, the theoretical traditions on which they draw, and the empirical questions they address.
Researching Social Change is an invaluable resource for researchers and graduate students across the social sciences who are interested in understanding and researching social change.
About the author
Julie McLeod is Professor in Records Management at Northumbria University. She is the Programme Leader for the MSc and BSc in Information and Records Management distance learning courses. Her research is in records management, specifically the people, process, systems, and governance aspects, and she has directed many projects including AC+erm, the largest AHRC grant awarded for records management research. She plays an active role in the profession. See
Rachel Thomson is Professor of Social Resaerch in the School of Health and Social Welfare. Rachel has been involved in a major longitudinal qualitative study of young people transitions to adulthood, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council since 1996 through the Children 5-16 and the Young People, Citizenship and Social Change programmes. The study is currently being archived with the support of a grant from the ESRC, and will be made available for secondary analysis (see www.lsbu.ac.uk/inventingadulthoods). Her research interests focus on gender identities, social change, sexuality, values, transitions and popular culture.
