Qualitative Geography Research Methods
Qualitative geography research methods for dissertations — interviews (semi-structured and in-depth interview design, purposive sampling, interview guide construction, transcription — Otter.ai or manual, thematic analysis — Braun and Clarke 2006, NVivo or Atlas.ti for coding), focus groups (participant selection, facilitation techniques, power dynamics), ethnography and participant observation (extended fieldwork, field notes, reflexivity — positionality statement), participatory methods (participatory GIS — PGIS, photovoice, community mapping), visual methods (photo elicitation interviews, landscape interpretation), and discourse analysis (Foucauldian discourse analysis of planning documents, critical discourse analysis of media representations of place). Ethics: BERA guidelines for educational research, university ethics committee, informed consent, anonymisation, data storage (GDPR for interview data).