| Qualitative Methods in Environmental Health Research Phil Brown Department of Sociology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Abstract
Public health researchers increasingly turn to qualitative methods either on their own or in combination with quantitative methods. Qualitative methods are especially important to community environmental health research, as they provide a way to produce community narratives that give voice to individuals and characterize the community in a full and complex fashion. This article first traces the legacy of qualitative research in environmental health, then uses a case study of the author's experiences studying the Woburn, Massachusetts, childhood leukemia cluster to provide personal and scholarly insights on qualitative approaches. That material then informs a discussion of important components of qualitative methods in environmental health research, including flexible study design, access, trust, empathy, and personal shifts in the researcher's worldview, bias, and the nature of the researcher's roles. A concluding discussion addresses issues in funding policy and research practices. Key words: community-based participatory research, environmental health, ethnography, multisite research, popular epidemiology, qualitative methods. Environ Health Perspect 111:1789-1798 (2003) . doi:10.1289/ehp.6196 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 19 June 2003] This article is part of the mini-monograph "Ethical, Legal, and Policy Issues in Environmental Health Research." Address correspondence to P. Brown, Brown University, Dept. of Sociology, Box 1916, Providence, RI 02912 USA. Telephone: (401) 863-2633. Fax (401) 863-3213. E-mail: phil_brown@brown.edu R. Gasior, A. Grodzins Gold, S. Krimsky, B. Mayer, and D. Quigley read the manuscript and provided valuable comments. B. Mayer also provided research assistance. This research is supported by a grant to D. Quigley from the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Grant Program for Research Ethics (grant T15 A149650-01) , under which the author is a consultant. Additional support comes from grants to the author from the Brown University Graduate School, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research Program (grant 036273) , and the National Science Foundation Program in Social Dimensions of Engineering, Science, and Technology (grant SES-9975518) . The author declares he has no conflict of interest. Received 7 January 2003 ; accepted 25 April 2003.
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