`This book constitutes a valuable resource for postgraduate students and researchers. Most.... of the chapters succeed in providing a clear and comprehensive introduction to the various approaches and/or methods, thus enabling the reader to make an informed decision about whether or not they wish to pursue the topic further. The book as a whole is also very well referenced and this makes it a source of essential information for students and researchers with an interest in qualitative health psychology' - Health Psychology Update

This book explains the role of qualitative research within health psychology. Theories and methods from a qualitative perspective are highly varied but, in general, differ from the positivist approach which is concerned with quantifying the individual risk factors presumed to cause health and illness behaviour. This book shows clearly how a qualitative approach offers a better understanding of the experience of illness while locating it in its broader social context.

Providing a detailed examination of these issues, the book is organized into three sections - the first considers some of the main theoretical perspectives underlying qualitative research in health psychology including discourse analysis and narrative as well as the social context and embodiment of health and illness; the second examines some of the practical issues involved in conducting qualitative research with different populations, such as children and the terminally ill; and the final section considers a range of analytic issues and specific analytic approaches such as grounded theory and action research, and the evaluation of qualitative methods.

• Cover 2
• Table of Contents 7
• Part I: Constructing Health and Illness Through Language 13
• 1 - Health Psychology and Qualitative Research 15
• 2 - Social Realms and the Qualities of Illness Experience 28
• 3 - Understanding Embodied Experience 43
• 4 - The Storied Nature of Health and Illness 59
• 5 - Discourse, Health and Illness 76
• 6 - Making Sense of Illness Experiences 95
• 7 - Feminist Appraches to Qualitative Health Research 110
• Part II: Conversing about Health and Illness 127
• 8 - Interviewing the Ill and the Healthy 129
• 9 - Talking to Children about Health and Illness 145
• 10 - Qualitative Research in the Field of Death and Dying 160
• 11 - Cross-Cultural Research in Health Psychology 176