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Qualitative Research Methods for Everyone

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Qualitative Research Methods for Everyone - An Essential Toolkit; Bridging theory and practice, this is an essential guide to qualitative research. Written by renowned sociologist Karen O’Reilly, the book distills decades of experience into valuable lessons and expert insights. Packed with exercises and summaries, it transforms research challenges into exciting opportunities for exploration.

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Search here for qualitative research training, including my own 

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Courses run live online using Zoom, and are not recorded. Some employers won't allow you to access Zoom from work computers; please check before booking, as you may need to use a non-work computer. Please note that smartphones are not suitable to attend courses.

One-day courses cost £220; SRA members pay £165. Two-day courses cost double. VAT: not added (the SRA is an educational charity). Find out about Membership

Cancellation policy: full refund (or cancelled invoice) if you tell us 21+ days in advance.

IMPORTANT: Please check in junk/spam for confirmation emails.

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Courses run live online using Zoom, and are not recorded. Some employers won't allow you to access Zoom from work computers; please check before booking, as you may need to use a non-work computer. Please note that smartphones are not suitable to attend courses. One-day courses cost £220; SRA members pay £165.

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Essex Summer School (I'm teaching Ethnography)

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Essex Summer School (I'm teaching Ethnography)

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Please note: This course will be delivered in person at the Colchester campus. Online study is not available for this course.
Karen O'Reilly is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Loughborough University, Professor II at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, and a Freelance Researcher and Training Provider. She has taught ethnographic and qualitative methods for almost 30 years, including the Essex Summer School, the Swiss Summer School in Social Science Methods, in Lugano, and at universities in the UK, Germany, Norway, and Hong Kong. Karen is a highly experienced ethnographer and qualitative researcher whose many publications include two widely cited books on ethnography: Ethnographic Methods (Routledge, 2nd ed. 2012) and Key Concepts in Ethnography (Sage, 2009). Her new book, Qualitative Research Methods for Everyone, is published with Policy Press in 2025. Her research centres on sociological understandings of lifestyle migration, harvest migration, and social practice theories.

Website: https://academics.org.uk/ProfKarenOreilly/
Course content
Ethnography is an increasingly popular style of research, employed in both long-term and short-term studies in creative ways across the social sciences. This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the technical, practical and philosophical issues that arise when employing traditional and innovative ethnographic methods. Ethnographers typically immerse themselves in a setting for a period of time, listen, ask questions; and supplement observation with the analysis of interview data, documents, and visual and digital data. Such an intrusion into the social setting presents a challenge to the 'received view of science' but ethnographic methods have proven, over time, to provide valid, valuable and rich contextual data with which to understand complex social issues. This course covers the following topics: participant observation and contemporary applications; hypotheses, abductive logic, and serendipity; accessing the field; writing fieldnotes; making sense of observational data and telling credible stories; multi-sited, virtual, visual and sensory ethnography; applied ethnography; and reflexivity, ethics, and the emotions in fieldwork.

The course is applied, encouraging participants to think intellectually about each topic area in relation to their own research interests, and to carry out and begin to analyse micro-observational studies. However, for ethical reasons, we rarely work directly on our own projects during the course.
Course objectives
By the end of the course participants should: be confident to make close, theory-oriented observations through participation, observation, and conversation; be equipped to record and analyse the data produced through diverse methods; take a critical and creative approach to ethnographic methods and understand how they can be combined with other methods of data collection for a range of social, political and policy research areas; take a reflexive and ethical approach to ethnographic encounters; be in a position to present and defend the quality and value of ethnographic interpretations.
Course Prerequisites
The course is introductory but intensive, rapidly taking participants from a beginner to an advanced level. Some prior familiarity with qualitative methods and a background knowledge of the philosophy of social science is required. Participants should be aware that the practical decisions to be made when conducting ethnographic research are necessarily theoretically-informed and will vary with each practitioner's disciplinary orientation. The course aims to equip participants with the knowledge required to make those decisions for themselves in practice.
Representative Background Reading
This is a list of options you can dip into if you wish. Participants are not required to do any prior reading

O'Reilly, K. 2009. Key Concepts in Ethnography, London: Sage

O'Reilly, K. 2012. Ethnographic Methods, 2nd. Ed. London: Routledge (or 1st ed.) (a copy of this book will be provided by ESS)

Pink, S. et. al. 2022 Design Ethnography. Research, Responsibilities, and Futures, London: Routledge

Browse the journals: Ethnography, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Entanglements.

Sessions
The Summer School Course is practical, teaching the theory and practice of ethnographic research through lectures, practical sessions, and discussion. The ethnographic approaches we cover can be applied in all fields that depend on social research, such as education, social work, criminal justice, sociology, psychology, communications and political science. The course encourages you to intellectually relate what is taught to your own research interests. There is a demand on participants in the course to participate: these methods are learned by trial and error and through experience rather than through chalk and talk methods. Many of the themes we wish to raise and discuss will, we hope, be raised naturally as you attempt to do your own field research and interviews. The below is a guide. Actual delivery and exercises will be responsive to the needs of the participants. Readings will be made available through open access.
Session 1. What is ethnography? Plan and design
Traditional and contemporary approaches to ethnography and the history of the methods. Planning and designing and the role of the literature review. Iterative-inductive research. The role of serendipity.
Session 2. Ethical Practice
Thinking about our role and responsibility. Consent, harm, data storage, anonymity. Credibility, accountability, fame, fortune, and the law.
Session 3. Doing participant observation
What is participant observation in practice. Gaining access, selecting sites and participants. Finding a role. Making field notes.
Session 4. Trust, rapport, and embodiment
Issues of field relations, insider ethnography, and autoethnography. Transcribing and translating. Entanglements.
Session 5. Reflexive Practice
The reflexive turn in anthropology and ethnography. Writing culture. Audiences and genres. How to do and write reflexivity.
Session 6. Interviews in ethnography Session 7. Adjectival ethnographies
Individual and group interviews; conversations; opportunistic interviewing; the ethnographic interview and the art of listening. Ethnography and biography.
Session 8. Applying ethnography
Visual, virtual, mobile, and global ethnography. Friction as a metaphor for the diverse and conflicting social interactions that make up our contemporary world.
Session 9. Evaluating ethnography
Short-term ethnography. Dealing with limitations and opportunities, and revising the key principles. Flexible and creative design. Multi-modal ethnography.
Session 10. Presentations
Assessing the validity of ethnography and producing insights for design or policy.

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Please note: This course will be delivered in person at the Colchester campus. Online study is not available for this course. Karen O'Reilly is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Loughborough University, Professor II at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, and a Freelance Researcher and Training Provider.

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Let it go: Changing your mind as you do research is both ethical and practical - Transforming Society

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Keren O’Reilly, author of ‘Qualitative Research Methods for Everyone’ shows how flexibility in qualitative research is essential for ethical, empathetic, and effective inquiry, as rigid, positivist approaches risk imposing the researcher’s biases and missing crucial insights.

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This new edition of Karen O’Reilly’s popular Ethnographic Methods provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the technical, practical and philosophical issues that arise when employing traditional and innovative research methods in relation to human agents. Using a wide range of case studies and source material to illustrate the dilemmas and resolutions that an ethnographic researcher may encounter, this textbook guides the reader from the initial design and planning stage

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Focus Groups and Group Discussions

Interviews and Conversations

Key Informants and Gatekeepers

Multi-sited and Mobile Ethnographies

Participant Observer Oxymoron

Where to find other ethnographic concepts

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Focus Groups and Group Discussions Interviews and Conversations Key Informants and Gatekeepers Multi-sited and Mobile Ethnographies Participant Observer Oxymoron Where to find other ethnographic concepts

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Reflexive practice in live
sociology: lessons from
researching Brexit in the
lives of British citizens
living in the EU-27

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Reflexive practice in live
sociology: lessons from
researching Brexit in the
lives of British citizens
living in the EU-27

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Click for open access article

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Here you will find some of my publications but I am not very good at keeping this one up to date...the blog is better

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Staff profile for Professor Karen O’Reilly, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Loughborough University