This blog post is an excerpt from our new book (Mills, J & Birks, M. Qualitative Methodology: A practical guide, 2014. SAGE Publications). When it came to the final chapter for the book one of the issues I wanted to address was the impact of generational difference on how groups of scholars think about qualitative research. In particular, I wrote about the thorny issue of research impact and how receptive or otherwise qualitative researchers are to appraising the impact of their work and why that might be so. If you are interested in reading more about the politics of evidence and generational difference you can source the book from SAGE, Amazon or Footprint Books in Australia.

The politics of evidence

Current debates, largely conducted within the dominant North American qualitative research community, constitute a backlash against what is conceived as the growing dominance of positivistic science in major western…