Kevin Swartout (PhD from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro) is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the School of Public Health at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA and he leads Rankin Climate, an agency focused on assessing and improving organizational climate. His research focuses on social influence of harassment and violence, as well as trajectories of violent behavior and victimization across the lifespan. He has received early-career awards from the International Society for Research on Aggression, Southeastern Psychological Association, and Georgia State University.

Dr. Swartout has published numerous peer-reviewed research articles and frequently speaks at national and international conferences. He has been a qualitative research consultant with ResearchTalk Inc. for over ten years. In this capacity, he has regularly taught short courses on qualitative and mixed methods research and frequently serves as a scholar at ResearchTalk’s Qualitative Research Summer Intensive and as a mentor at ResearchTalk’s Qualitative Data Analysis Camps. Dr. Swartout is a co-author on two recently published articles that provide an overview of the Sort and Sift approach: “Sort and Sift, Think and Shift: Let the Data Be Your Guide: An Applied Approach to Working with, Learning from, and Privileging Qualitative Data” – 2021 (https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol26/iss6/20/) and “The Sort and Sift, Think and Shift Analysis Method” in Richards, K. A., Hemphill, M. A., & Wright, P. M. (Eds.) (2024.) Qualitative research and evaluation in physical education and sport pedagogy, Jones & Bartlett Learning. He is also a co-author on Dr. Ray Maietta’s Sort and Sift, Think and Shift forthcoming publication.