Below are some methods texts recommended by qualitative workshop leaders from the UC Berkeley Library and the D-Lab:
Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design by John W. Creswell and Cheryl N. Poth explore the philosophical underpinnings, history, and key elements of five qualitative inquiry approaches: narrative research, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, and case study. The authors compare the approaches and relate research designs to each of the traditions of inquiry in a highly accessible manner.
Qualitative Research: Bridging the Conceptual, Theoretical, & Methodological by This book helps readers understand what the authors call "criticality" in qualitative research by communicating the foundations and processes of qualitative research... the book humanizes the qualitative research endeavor, illustrates the types of scenarios that arise, and emphasizes the importance of actively considering paradigmatic values throughout every stage of the research process. The authors illustrate the qualitative research process as decidedly ideological, political, and subjective using themes of criticality, reflexivity, collaboration, and rigor.
Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive Approach by This book provides researchers and students with a step-by-step guide to planning qualitative research. It shows how the components of design interact with each other, and highlights key design issues. The new Third Edition incorporates examples and hands-on exercises.
Paradigms of Research for the 21st Century by What is research and who is a researcher? Why engage in research and what can be its value? This book addresses questions pertaining to the nature and process of educational research. It offers an insightful and detailed account of Western and non-Western perspectives on reality, knowledge, and values. These accounts form a paradigm - a system of inquiry, a model, or a way of knowing. Empirical-analytic, pragmatic, interpretive, critical, poststructuralist, and transcendental paradigms are distinguished as an alternative to a quantitative-qualitative typology of paradigms in educational research.
Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook by Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña's book is the authoritative text for analyzing and displaying qualitative research data... As the authors demonstrate, when researchers "think display," their analyses of social life capture the complex and vivid processes of the people and institutions studied.
The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers by Johnny Saldaña's manual demystifies the qualitative coding process with an assessment of different coding types, examples and exercises. It guides you through the multiple approaches available for coding qualitative data. For each code, Saldaña provides information about the method's origin, gives a detailed description of the method, demonstrates its practical applications, and sets out a clearly illustrated example with analytic follow-up.
Thinking Qualitatively: Methods of Mind by This book addresses not just how to collect and analyze data, but how to actively think about them. Each chapter presents one "method of mind" (thinking analytically, realistically, symbolically, ethically, multidisciplinarily, artistically, summarily, interpretively, and narratively), together with applications, a vignette or story related to the thinking modality, points to remember, and exercises. Designed to help researchers "rise above the data," the book explores how qualitative research designs, data collection, data analyses, and write-ups can be enriched through over 60 different lenses, filters, and angles on social life. The book reveals how the researcher's mind thinks heuristically to transcend the descriptive and develop "highdeep" insights about the human condition.