ABSTRACT
Because family members have been so badly served by ‘expert’ theories and assumptions, the present book puts a premium on qualitative research because of its focus on hearing directly from family members about their experiences. The research project to be described in later chapters used qualitative methods. Although its scope was wider than earlier studies, it was not the first to use qualitative methods, and in this chapter we review previous research in the field that has been broadly qualitative in its methods. We have included work wherever the methods used allowed the voices of family members themselves to be heard, either in the form of direct quotations from family members or in the form of conclusions based on in-depth interviewing or observation.
