ABSTRACT
By this point, hopefully you have developed a question to focus your study, which means you are ready to think about the next stage of the research process: finding answers to your questions. This chapter offers strategies that will help you plan a qualitative research study. We address how to write a problem statement and expand that into a research proposal; how to review the literature; and how to get started with your research, including how to select research sites and how to obtain access, permissions, and human subjects approval for those sites. In the two chapters that follow, we extend this discussion to carrying out your research (e.g., how to observe a setting, how to prepare for and carry out interviews, how to design and administer a survey or questionnaire). In short, we present in this and the next two chapters the nuts and bolts of planning and carrying out a qualitative study, the tools of the trade that are essential for finding answers to your research questions.
