Author Profile

Greg Guest

Former Director, Global Health Research

Greg Guest was the Director of the Global Health Research Department at FHI 360. Guest has over 20 years of international research experience, across all four of the major research sectors – academic, corporate, government, and non-profit. Throughout his career, Guest has researched a broad range of topics including Maya mythology, human ecology, economic development, and the social-behavioral aspects of family planning and HIV/AIDS. Before coming to FHI 360 in 2003, Guest worked as a researcher at various organizations including the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Sapient Corporation, Duke University, and East Carolina University.

Greg has an MA and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Calgary and the University of Georgia, respectively. He has published several dozen articles and book chapters, in addition to five books.

Select methodological publications
  • Guest, G., Namey E., Taylor, J, Eley, N. & McKenna, K. In press. Comparing focus groups and individual interviews: findings from a randomized study. International Journal of Social Research Methodology.
  • Guest, G., E. Namey, K. McKenna. 2016. How many focus groups are enough? Building an evidence base for non-probability sample sizes. Field Methods, April 28. DOI: 10.1177/1525822X16639015.
  • Namey, E., Guest, G., McKenna, K. & Chen, M. 2016. Evaluating Bang for the Buck: A Cost-Effectiveness Comparison between Individual Interviews and Focus Groups based on Thematic Saturation Levels. American Journal of Evaluation, 37:425-440.
  • Guest, G. and E. Namey (editors). 2015. Public Health Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  • Guest, G. 2015. Sampling and selecting participants in field research. In, Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology, 2nd ed., H. Bernard and C. Gravlee (eds.). Pp. 215-250. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Burke, H., Fleming, P., Guest, G. 2014. Assessment of the psychometric properties of HIV knowledge items across five countries. AIDS Education and Prevention 26: 577-587.
  • Guest. G., E. Namey and M. Mitchell. 2013. Collecting Qualitative Data: A Field Manual for Applied Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  • Guest, G. 2013. Describing mixed methods research: an alternative to typologies. Journal of Mixed Methods Research 7: 141 – 151.
  • Guest, G., K. MacQueen and E. Namey. 2012. Applied Thematic Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  • Guest, G. and K. MacQueen (editors). 2008. Handbook for Team-based Qualitative Research. Lanham, MD: AltaMira.
  • Guest, G., A. Bunce and L. Johnson. 2006. How many interviews are enough? an experiment with data saturation and variability. Field Methods 18:59-82.