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In dit omvangrijke en ambitieuze boek proberen de auteurs de lezers in 440 pagina's inclusief een cd-rom uit de doeken te doen hoe een interactieve kwalitatieve analyse uitgevoerd kan (en moet) worden, met als resultaat een zogenaamd 'System Influence Diagram' (SID). Een SID is een representatie van de werkelijkheid of zoals de auteurs omschrijven: 'The SID is a visual representation of the "theory in perception", grounded in the specific experiences and logic of the participants' (pagina 48).

Beyond navel-gazing and narcissism.Ferrell's auto-ethnography as part of ethnography
Beyond navel-gazing and narcissism.Ferrell's auto-ethnography as part of ethnography
The labeling of auto-ethnography as navel-gazing does not do justice to the variety with which auto-ethnography is applied. A distinction should be made between emotional and analytical auto-ethnography. In the first form the central person of the researcher plays the central role, in the second auto-ethnography is applied to get a better understanding of the social world which is being studied. In this article the author discusses the second approach by using the work of Jeff Ferrell. Ferrell is a well-known cultural criminologist, who focuses critically on the cultural understanding of social life. By looking at how Ferrell applies auto-ethnography, insight is gained into the added value of this method for qualitative studies: (1) the integration of the personal experiences of researchers in texts in order to achieve a richer description of the social worlds they explore, (2) making explicit the role of the researcher in publications, and (3) developing new (more appealing) forms of representation.

Trust in citizens' outlooks
Trust in citizens' outlooks
Since 2008 the Netherlands Institute for Social Research | SCP conducts the Citizens' Outlooks Barometer (COB), which explores current trends in public opinion in the Netherlands. In the COB quantitative and qualitative research methods are combined to signal trends and new issues, to explain group differences, and to investigate the feelings and arguments behind public concerns. We use focus groups and open-ended survey questions for qualitative research. A main topic in COB has been the development and diversity of trust in political institutions. By combining numbers and arguments, we have tried to put political trust in perspective (it is often more a diffuse image than a deep conviction) and give a better understanding of the (asymmetric) reasons for trust and for distrust. We deal with the usual problems of representation and generalization in qualitative research as good as we can by discussing interpretations in our diverse research team. A main challenge is now to develop more systematic and less time-consuming ways to analyze large sets of open answers in surveys.