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The article considers the way that digital research technologies and online environments increasingly support new forms of qualitative research that have emerged as a result of new user groups taking up the practice of social research. New practitioners of qualitative research have entered the field from societies where qualitative research is a newly-established practice, and new cadres of 'citizen researchers' have turned to qualitative methods for non-academic purposes. These groups challenge accepted understandings of qualitative methods. The article uses the example of qualitative software as a case study of how qualitative research is enabled by new digital tools that help new user groups extend the application of qualitative research methods.

In a recent article in Qualitative Research, Norman Denzin discussed a variety of threats to qualitative research posed by institutional and professional organizational actors who would elevate Randomized Control Trials and associated practices as the gold standard indexing the quality of all social research. Informed by his long established contributions to the constantly changing field of research methodology, Denzin brought passion, and a rich variety of arguments, to the debate. I argue that this also brought some lapses of rigour that require attention if qualitative methodologists are to put their best case against the narrow and intolerant vision offered by the proponents of gold standards.

Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit dem Stellenwert qualitativer Forschungsmethoden im Universitätscurriculum unter Berücksichtigung sich wandelnder Nutzungsweisen. Hierzu gehören zunächst der Beginn und die Frühzeit qualitativer Methodologie – insbesondere die Chicagoer Schule und die Schöpfungsmythen qualitativer Soziologie – und deren Einordnung in das sozialwissenschaftliche Curriculum. Mit Strukturalismus und Funktionalismus und deren makrosoziologischer und quantitativer Affinität ist es dann zu einer zunehmenden Marginalisierung qualitativer Methoden gekommen. Erst mit der Entwicklung und Etablierung der Grounded Theory war ein beschleunigtes Wiederaufleben qualitativer Sozialforschung zu verzeichnen, dies in allerdings teilweise unterschiedlicher Weise für Nordamerika, Großbritannien und den kontinentaleuropäischen Raum. Für die Gegenwart sind wachsende Legitimationsbemühungen bis hin zur Institutionalisierung qualitativer Methodik charakteristisch. Die Rolle, die qualitative Forschung dabei aktuell im universitären Curriculum spielt, wird vor dem Hintergrund nordamerikanischer Evaluationsprogramme, neuer Forschungstechnologien und veränderter Infrastrukturressourcen verstehbar.

Der Text beschäftigt sich mit dem Beitrag, den qualitative Softwareprogramme zur Re-Analyse qualitativer Daten leisten können. Hierzu werden zum einen einige Vorteile der Sekundäranalyse auch für qualitative Daten erläutert, und zum anderen werden methodenkritische Einwände gegen Re-Analysen im Feld qualitativer Sozialforschung diskutiert. Die Hauptaufmerksamkeit gilt Fragen der Forschungspraxis. Zugleich werden aber auch mögliche Gründe für die bisher ungenügende Nutzung der Potentiale von PC-gestützten Sekundäranalysen aufgezeigt. Hier scheint den sozialen Kontexten von Forschung eine besondere Bedeutung zuzukommen.

The article responds to the Macpherson Inquiry into the police investigation of the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence by assessing the prospects for the recruitment and advancement of ethnic minority officers in British police forces. It notes the central importance under the common law of a police force which reflects the norms and standards of the community, and traces the relative impact on police/public relations of attempts to change police practice by policy and by statute. It highlights aspects of police culture which have obstructed the career advancement of both female and ethnic minority officers and compares the British experience with that in the U.S.A. A parallel is drawn between the 'threshold' analyses of the recruitment and advancement of female officers as a means to change the police organisation and the conditions under which ethnic minority officers could challenge racialism within the police. The article closes by considering the importance of career progression of those ethnic minority officers who have been recruited, and notes a puzzling lack of research into their career pathways.

Assessments of the achievement of competence in organisations often obscure the relationship between external or formal criteria of competence and those of members. Efforts to reform police practice may founder on the lack of fit between the terms in which outsiders and members construe `competent' practice. In order to approach this matter it is initially necessary to specify the terms in which members attribute competence to practice at incidents, and to examine the formal and informal constraints and goals which influence their action. This article pursues the issue in the context of ethnographic research into policing in American and British urban settings.

Abstract: In light of the present and enduring interest in the role of the community in social control it is argued that an assessment is needed of the potential for change in existing arrangements. The article focusses on policing and probation counselling, and considers the implications of recent research and comparative studies of social control in societies where the community plays a different role to that in the Western democracies. Change in this area must be sensitive to the heterogeneity and variations of interest in modern communities, and several potential innovations are assessed from this perspective.

The article discusses judicial activism in the light of research into the attitudes of English judges, and a comparator group of US judges, towards judicial selection, judicial training and sentencing practice. Noting commonalities and shared perspectives, it is argued that the findings indicate enduring features of occupational culture that originate in relations within the legal workgroup and the practical craft of judging. Against the context of highly conventional attitudes, a conservative form of judicial activism is found in respect of resistance to legislative and policy innovation.