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Counting as a Qualitative Method

Grappling with the Reliability Issue in Ethnographic Research

  • Book
  • © 2020

Overview

Authors:
  1. Wayne Fife

    1. Department of Anthropology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Canada

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  • Teaches researchers how to use counting as a regular part of qualitative research projects

  • Offers a methodology for up-and-coming and established researchers to increase reliability of ongoing and completed qualitative analyses

  • Draws upon decades of field work to explore research dilemmas, the “reliability issue,” analytical challenges, and beyond

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
    Download chapter PDF

  2. The Reliability Issue

    • Wayne Fife
    Pages 1-21

  3. Creating a Counting Schedule

    • Wayne Fife
    Pages 23-31

  4. Success, Failure, and a Missed Opportunity

    • Wayne Fife
    Pages 33-46

  5. Counting Qualitative Results

    • Wayne Fife
    Pages 47-62

  6. Counting in the Archives

    • Wayne Fife
    Pages 63-80

  7. Tourism: Counting the Overlooked

    • Wayne Fife
    Pages 81-98

  8. Making Fiction Count

    • Wayne Fife
    Pages 99-119

  9. The Importance of Counting for Qualitative Research

    • Wayne Fife
    Pages 121-128

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 129-140
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Keywords

About this book

This book aims to explore counting as an often-overlooked research tool for qualitative projects. Building off of a research method invented by the author in 1986 called counting schedules, this volume provides instruction on how to use counting not only to enhance fieldwork results, but also as a form of analysis for extant field notes, interview results, self-reporting diaries or essays, primary archival material, secondary historical texts, government sources, and other documents and narratives, including fictional work. The author buttresses his discussion of counting schedules with extensive examples from previous fieldwork and research experiences, drawing on three decades of anthropological experience in Canada and the Pacific Islands. Counting as a Qualitative Method provides ethnographic researchers with the answer to the number-one question asked by qualitative and non-qualitative researchers alike: How can a qualitative researcher know his or her results are reliable?

Reviews

“This book will be very valuable for teaching students how to use counting in the context of research and analysis in sociocultural anthropology. It is full of very vividly described examples from the author’s own research that make the book’s explanation of counting as a research method clear and engaging.”

—Vanessa Fong, Professor of Anthropology, Amherst College, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Anthropology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Canada

    Wayne Fife

About the author

Wayne Fife is Professor of Anthropology at Memorial University, Canada. He is the author of Doing Fieldwork (2005) and some two-dozen peer-reviewed journal articles. He has done research and written about aging in Ontario, education in Papua New Guinea, Pacific Island missionaries, ecological and heritage tourism in Newfoundland, imaginary worlds, and research methods and theory.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Counting as a Qualitative Method

  • Book Subtitle: Grappling with the Reliability Issue in Ethnographic Research

  • Authors: Wayne Fife

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34803-8

  • Publisher: Palgrave Pivot Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-34802-1Published: 03 January 2020

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-34805-2Published: 03 January 2021

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-34803-8Published: 02 January 2020

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: IX, 140

  • Topics: Research Methodology, Methodology of the Social Sciences, Social Anthropology, Ethnography

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