"It was a wonderful experience interacting with you and appreciate the way you have planned and executed the whole publication process within the agreed timelines.”
Subrat SaurabhAuthor of Kuch Woh Pal
This book is based on our experiences from various community-based projects and educational research done in rural Wardha and Puducherry. As a part of our commitment to the mainstream qualitative research methods in health and education research in India, we have been facilitating national-level workshops on qualitative research methods for various health professionals such as clinicians, nurses, social workers, physiotherapists, and staff of national health programmes. We realized that most of them were demanding for a book which would orient them to the use of qualitative research methods in the Indian context. There is a dearth of material that provides an overview and understanding of qualitative methods to novice researchers, especially in India. Keeping in mind the current need and gap, we have taken a small step to compile information from various sources in a single book and contextualize it with our experiences, to remain as close as possible to the expectations of its readers. The present book is a humble effort to throw light on the qualitative research process, definition of basic terms, paradigms, approaches, methods, basic steps in the analysis, ethical issues, and the reporting of qualitative research. We do hope that this book might act as a practical guide to novice researchers as they go through their first project on qualitative research. We solicit your support and constructive comments for its further improvement.
Amol Dongre, Pradeep Deshmukh
Dr Amol Dongre is currently working as Head of Department of Extension Programmes, Professor in Community Medicine and Medical Education, Pramukhswami Medical College (PSMC), Bhaikaka University, Karamsad. Right from the beginning of his career, he has been passionate about teaching students in community-setting and empowering rural communities for self-care. To begin with, he used qualitative methods in community-based research and teaching under his mentor – Dr Pradeep Deshmukh. Later, he converted his work experience into a teaching scholarship as workshops on qualitative and mixed methods research. He supports his students and colleagues in using qualitative methods in their research work through workshops and one-to-one mentoring.
Dr Pradeep Deshmukh is currently working as Professor & Head of Department of Community Medicine at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Nagpur. He has 22 years of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and community-based research experience. Most of his research projects had a strong component of qualitative methods as these projects were meant for community empowerment. He has published more than 100 research papers out of which about half are based on qualitative research. Together with Dr Amol Dongre, over the last 10 years, he has been conducting workshops on qualitative research methods to empower post-graduate students and young faculty. The book is based on the experiences drawn from the research projects and the workshops conducted over last two decades.
