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This paper describes a UK based longitudinal qualitative study following approximately 100 young people over 9 years. It provides an overview of the research design, methods of data collection and analysis as well as reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of the strategies employed. We focus on the value of a devolved research design, complementary cross-section and temporal analytic approaches and the effects of being involved in a longitudinal study on researchers and participants. The paper aims to contribute to a growing understanding of the practical, ethical and epistemological challenges presented by longitudinal qualitative methods, and highlights those challenges that are specific to this method as well as those which are amplified by this kind of approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the possibility of accurately measuring the numbers of persons homeless in a given location, at particular times. It is maintained that such data are necessary to the efficient apportioning of resources, but hitherto have been unobtainable through 'traditional' methods of counting. In recent years researchers have advocated the use of the method of 'capture-recapture', a technique which utilizes information from duplicate cases to allow the number of people otherwise unobserved to be calculated. This paper describes and critically evaluates the use of this method in two studies in Plymouth and Torbay, UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the difficulties encountered by researchers attempting to measure the prevalence of negative workplace behaviours and how these might be overcome. Drawing on the first stage of a major ESRC-funded study of workplace behaviours in Britain, we demonstrate the importance of improved sampling and data collection methods. We show how judicious use of qualitative data derived from cognitive testing of survey questions can improve substantially the reliability and validity of data. In particular, we explain how a battery of questions devised by social psychologists and used as a standard measure in surveys was tested and revised following a series of 60 in-depth interviews. These revisions ranged from fairly minor changes in wording, in order to make questions better understood, to the elimination of questions which our qualitative work persuaded us were not capturing data in the way that other researchers might have assumed they did. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]