Qualitative Research recent issues

Editorial -- Special issue: qualitative research and methodological innovation

Taylor, C., Coffey, A. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:34 PST

A psycho-discursive approach to analysing qualitative interview data, with reference to a father--son relationship

Gough, B. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:34 PST

I want to make a case, following some recent social psychological thinking (Georgaca; Frosh et al.; Hollway and Jefferson), for using psychoanalytic concepts to inform qualitative interviewing and (particularly) the analysis of interview data. More specifically, I wish to advocate the use of both discursive and psychoanalytic perspectives in facilitating qualitative data analysis: the deployment of psychoanalytic concepts directs us to interviewee biographies and subjectivity, complementing the discursive emphasis on the language use and function during interviews. To illustrate the benefits of this ‘psychodiscursive’ approach, I draw upon interview data on a father-son relationship, derived from a wider ESRC-sponsored Node project on family resemblances, to trace defensive as well as discursive patterns in the interview data. I will be arguing that both discursive and psychoanalytic frameworks can offer valuable, and not necessarily incompatible, levels of interpretation, while either perspective presented in isolation will lead to an impoverished analysis.

Beyond the standard interview: the use of graphic elicitation and arts-based methods

Bagnoli, A. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:34 PST

This article reviews three visual methods based on drawing that I applied in my research on young people: the arts-based projective technique, the self-portrait, and the graphic elicitation methods of the relational map and the timeline. Examples of these methods are drawn from their application in two studies, the Narratives of Identity and Migration project, exploring young people and identities in England and Italy, and the Young Lives and Times. The article argues that applying these drawing methods in the context of an interview can open up participants’ interpretations of questions, and allow a creative way of interviewing that is responsive to participants’ own meanings and associations. The article discusses the analytical potential of graphic elicitation and arts-based methods, by making reference to the insights that they offered in the contextual analysis with more traditional text-based data. The efficacy of these methods is critically discussed, together with their limitations, and their potential within the context of qualitative longitudinal research.

Footwork: moving and knowing in local space(s)

Hall, T. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:34 PST

This article is concerned with movement and terrain and with the ways in which qualitative inquiry might engage with and combine these in local studies of people and places. Movement is at a premium today — no shortage of social and cultural commentators insist on it — and bids fair to provide the social sciences with a new conceptual paradigm. Mobile actors abound and what were once spaces of place are now reckoned spaces of flows; space itself, emancipated from territory, becomes mobile and is deployed as a capacity. Qualitative research, having always allowed its actors to deploy a richer and more fluid world, is well placed to respond — but for one significant snag. The article sets the question: What happens to the qualitative commitment to the local, to grounded research and fieldwork, now that processes of mobility are said to transcend setting and location? Rather than look to ways in which to extend the reach of the qualitative researcher — across space, between places — the article considers how qualitative research, while remaining local, might nonetheless be brought together with movement. Two first-hand empirical examples of local qualitative inquiries directed to movement (as object and method) are used to develop this line of argument. A focus on pedestrian movement in particular aligns the article with widening inter-disciplinary and methodological interest in walking practices.

Coming to our senses? A critical approach to sensory methodology

Mason, J., Davies, K. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:34 PST

In light of the recent upsurge in the popularity of sensory, and particularly visual, methods, this article makes a case for a sensory methodology that remains attuned to the complex ways in which the senses are tangled with other forms of experience or ways of knowing. Drawing on a project investigating the social significance of family resemblances, we look at how our methods (a combination of visual methods and creative interviewing) emphasized the interplay between tangible and intangible sensory experience, including elements of the sensory that were visible, audible, touchable, etc., in the present as well as those which people conjured in their sensory imaginations and ethereal or mystical ways of resembling. We suggest that ‘sensory intangibility’ is vital to how we see resemblances and to the practice of sensory methodology.

Moving stories: using mobile methods to explore the everyday lives of young people in public care

Ross, N. J., Renold, E., Holland, S., Hillman, A. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:34 PST

In this article we explore the ways in which mobile research methods can be utilised to create enabling research environments, encounters and exchanges, generating time and space for participants and researchers to co-generate and communicate meaningful understandings of everyday lives. The article focuses on the use of two mobile methods, ‘guided’ walks and car journey interactions, and the productiveness of these methods in contributing to the substantive and methodological aims of the (Extra)ordinary Lives project, an ethnographic and participatory research study that explored the everyday lives and relationship cultures of a group of young people in public care. Through this account we discuss the possibilities that mobile research encounters offer for the exploration of sensitive topics, as contexts through which intimacies can be interwoven within narratives of the mundane ordinariness of the everyday.

Qualitative research and deliberative methods: promise or peril?

Evans, R., Kotchetkova, I. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:34 PST

This article explores the relationship between qualitative research and public engagement with science and technology by critically evaluating a deliberative exercise incorporating several aspects of contemporary science studies. The project used in-depth interviews, reconvened focus groups and a roundtable workshop to simulate ‘upstream’ public engagement by investigating how patients, carers and lay citizens evaluated different treatment options for Type One diabetes. By comparing how these treatments were discussed in focus groups and a roundtable workshop we show how the choice of research method makes a significant difference not just to the data collected but also to the role of the researcher in analysing those data. In particular, we note how deliberative methods erase the traditional role of the qualitative researcher as an analyst who synthesizes and interprets data, leaving them as little more than a facilitator who enables citizens to synthesize and interpret experience in their own terms. In reflecting on this outcome we suggest that an unintended consequence of citizen empowerment might be the disempowerment of the academy.

Chasing shadows: defining network boundaries in qualitative social network analysis

Heath, S., Fuller, A., Johnston, B. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00:34 PST

Defining network boundaries is a key challenge in social network analysis. In our recent qualitative study of network influences on educational decision-making — based on interviews with 107 individuals from 16 case study networks — the set of members with whom interviews were secured in each case represented only a sub-set of the broader networks from which they were drawn. Following an introduction to our study and an outline of our approach, we consider some of the processes of filtering and selection that affected the specific composition of our network sample, and reflect upon what this tells us about the processes by which participants in network-based research make decisions about the representation of their networks within research contexts. We then explore the question of whether the partiality of our data actually matters, and conclude that it reflects the permeable, partial and dynamic nature of social networks, characteristics which are central to qualitatively-informed understandings of SNA.

'Caught in the act': ethics committee review and researching the sexual culture of schools

Allen, L. — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:08:06 PDT

This article explores ethics committee review as part of a system of government directing the behaviour of researchers and possibilities of research. Drawing on the work of Halse and Honey (2007) it argues ethics committees represent one of the governing practices of an institutional discourse of ethical research. This discourse has constitutive effects for researcher identities that are ‘ethical’ and what in practice might represent ‘ethical’ research. This analysis is undertaken with reference to visual research with youth about ‘the sexual culture of schools’. How ethics review constituted this research as ‘risky’ and young people as ‘irresponsible’ and ‘recalcitrant’ is examined. These discursive practices undermined a youth-centred methodology committed to valuing the agency and competency of youth and left the researcher feeling she had acted ‘unethically’ towards participants. These effects demonstrate a paradox whereby compliance with ethics review can produce what this process seeks to prevent, ‘unethical’ researchers and research.

The politics of names: rethinking the methodological and ethical significance of naming people, organizations, and places

Guenther, K. M. — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:08:06 PDT

This article examines how the decision to use real names or pseudonyms for people, organizations, and places involves consideration of the ethics of confidentiality, the power of naming, and strategies for fieldwork and presentation of findings. While these issues are infrequently discussed in published work, qualitative researchers need to attend to how we decide what names to use in presenting our findings. Rather than avoiding discussions of confidentiality, qualitative researchers should address the implications of their decisions regarding the use of pseudonyms or real names for the confidentiality of our respondents, for our relationships with respondents, for our commitments to transformative social science, and for our findings.

Stuck in the middle: research ethics caught between science and politics

Baarts, C. — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:08:06 PDT

The literature on research ethics tends to overlook the influence of the specific subject matter on the ethical dilemmas that emerge during the research process itself. In this article, the specific subject matter is complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). The article discusses the ethical dilemmas that derive from controversies about research within this highly politicized field, in which scientific knowledge is a potential object of misuse. The article shows that research ethics is no longer a matter of internalizing professional codes of conduct. Rather, it is embedded in the totality of scholarly practice. Ethically aware practice depends to a considerable extent on the qualities and skills of the researcher. The particular skills needed are discernment, imagination, partiality and personal authenticity.

The visual image as discussion point: increasing validity in boundary crossing research

Liebenberg, L. — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:08:06 PDT

This article is based on a larger study exploring the use of visual methods as a communication tool in research where the researcher is often a ‘border crosser’ (Giroux, 1992). To illustrate the value of this methodology, particularly in instances where power imbalances are heightened in the research context, a case study was conducted with five teenage mothers from a sub-economic community outside Cape Town, South Africa. This article will explore how use of visual methods contributes to increased validity of data. Specifically, this discussion will consider how the use of images as a communication tool, increase participant control over the research process, and incorporates participant self-representation via a period of self-exploration, improving contextual accuracy and relevance of data.

Looking at and looking back: visualization in mobile research

Murray, L. — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:08:06 PDT

This article discusses mobile and visual methodologies and the use of visual and mobile methods in the context of a study exploring the negotiation of risk on the journey to school. It sets out an epistemological approach that encompasses the ‘mobilities turn’ in the social sciences and current debates on visual methods, arguing that ‘mobile’ and ‘visual’ methods are not only compatible, but often indivisible. This argument is developed through the researcher’s experience of using mobile and visual methods to explore the range of social, emotional and sensorial responses to mobile space. In particular, it is argued that methods that are both mobile and visual produce insights into everyday life experiences, especially of excluded groups such as children and young people, which are not available using more traditional methods.

Preliminary field-work: methodological reflections from northern Canadian research

Caine, K. J., Davison, C. M., Stewart, E. J. — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:08:06 PDT

In the Canadian North researchers of all disciplines are increasingly finding that local communities are neither uninterested nor ignorant of the potential for research to benefit their communities. We propose preliminary field-work as the early stages of research in the field that allow for exploration, reflexivity, creativity, mutual exchange and interaction through the establishment of research relationships with local people often prior to the development of research protocols and ethics applications. Based on a review of field research literature combined with our own personal research narratives from northern Canadian community research, we initiate a much needed discussion on the topic of preliminary field-work in order to understand more clearly its functions and contributions. We reflect on and examine our own experiences providing methodological guidance to other researchers who are contemplating community-based field research. Preliminary fieldwork acknowledges the increasingly intertwined standards of research quality, integrity and broader research ethics.

Doing extra-ordinariness: trans-men's accomplishment of `authenticity' in the research interview

Yeadon-Lee, T. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:29:24 PDT

Discussions concerning transsexual identities consider the self representations of transsexuals as either determined through medical discourses and practices, and thus as constructed and inauthentic or, alternatively, as expressive of an interior and thus `authentic' essential self. In contrast to each of these arguments, this article highlights the significance of social interaction to transsexual authenticity and explores, specifically, how this can be analytically captured and presented in the context of interview-based research. The article applies analytic techniques drawn from fine-grain discourse analysis to research interviews carried out with female to male transsexuals. Through this method of analysis transsexual authenticity is treated as neither determined through medical discourses nor as interior to the self, but rather as a `live' interactional accomplishment. By revealing the discursive identity work undertaken by the interviewees, the article demonstrates a constructionist approach to transsexual authenticity which, contrary to essentialist critiques, succeeds in foregrounding transsexuals as `constructing subjects'.

Narratives as a tool to study personnel wellbeing in corporate mergers

Syrjala, J., Takala, T., Sintonen, T. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:29:24 PDT

This article presents the methodological solutions used in a study investigating personnel wellbeing in the context of mergers and acquisitions in the Nordic electricity business. There have happened rapid changes in working conditions in general and in the electricity business today in the Nordic countries as on a global scale. As a result, the notion of a secure job with the same employer lasting a whole lifetime career seems to have lost its meaning also in the Finnish electricity distribution sector. This has challenged the traditional idea of wellbeing. We wanted to see how a corporate integration is experienced by those whom it affects most: namely, personnel at different levels of the integrating organization. We were interested to learn how the change affected their wellbeing. A narrative research method was selected for data collection and analysis, focusing on employees' stories about their own wellbeing and the company HR strategy in organizational change. The choice of a narrative methodology was expected to yield stories that convey an understanding about wellbeing which would be difficult to gain by other methodologies. People's feelings and experiences of wellbeing are a fundamental part of the texture of everyday life, which are mediated and reflected by their personal stories.

From data archive to ethical labyrinth

Carusi, A., Jirotka, M. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:29:24 PDT

Researchers in the social sciences are increasingly encouraged or obliged to deposit data in digital archives for greater transparency of research or for secondary use by other researchers. However, digital archives raise many ethical challenges at the institutional, disciplinary and personal level, and researchers can find themselves caught between conflicting requirements. This article considers the ethical challenges of qualitative data in particular showing what specific ethical challenges qualitative researchers face. There is generally a lack of policy or guidelines as to how to deal with digital data, or else there are conflicting requirements set by funding and academic institutions and by the law. In the face of this, researchers themselves need to be aware of the ethical and legal dimensions of their data, so that they are in the best position to enter into negotiations concerning whether and how it is archived. The options for archiving are outlined, and an interdisciplinary approach is recommended.

Learning from Dumbledore's Pensieve: metaphor as an aid in teaching reflexivity in qualitative research

Gerstl-Pepin, C., Patrizio, K. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:29:24 PDT

This article suggests that the Pensieve — a magical instrument featured prominently in the Harry Potter books — is a useful metaphor for teaching qualitative researchers about reflexivity. Teaching naturalistic forms of inquiry poses many challenges. Drawing upon their experiences as teachers and students of qualitative research, the authors examine how a reflexive journal can serve as a much needed repository for a qualitative researcher's memories and reflections. The authors suggest that by documenting the researcher's perspective over time, the Pensieve can aid in the development of reflexivity by providing a space for metacognitive reflection on the research process, and creating an opportunity to engage others in the interpretation of data.

Ways of seeing: using ethnography and Foucault's `toolkit' to view assessment practices differently

Hill, M. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:29:24 PDT

Tamboukou and Ball ask, what value can genealogy and/or ethnography add to the other? This article illustrates, through an educational exemplar study, how being genealogically driven can produce new ways of seeing and thinking about practices, within the field of educational assessment. To date, neither the qualitative nor the quantitative methods customarily applied to the assessment field have been able to illuminate why, since the late 1980s, accountability demands have caused New Zealand primary school teachers to prioritize the use of summative classroom assessment practices when research indicates that formative practices are clearly more productive of learning. Using ethnographic data gathering techniques and grounded theory in combination with Foucauldian tools and notions of genealogy, discourses, surveillance, and `the history of the present', it is argued, enabled new ways to think about why teachers have normalized particular assessment practices in New Zealand's self-managing schools. In short, this article argues that it is extremely helpful to mix modernist ethnographic methods that focus on the micro-practices of teaching with post-modernist theoretical tools in order to provide different ways of seeing.

Edward Rose and linguistic ethnography: an Ethno-inquiries approach to interviewing

Carlin, A. P. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:29:24 PDT

This article discusses the `Ethno-inquiries', founded by Edward Rose, and the analytic affinities with Harold Garfinkel and Harvey Sacks established in the formative development of Ethnomethodology. The article introduces the Ethno-inquiries approach to sociological interviews. Using a project that captured ordinary, oral accounts of the 1996 bombing of Manchester, England, this article shows how the epistemological and methodological attitude of the Ethno-inquiries towards talk — recognizing the linguistic constitution of the social world, avoiding methodological irony, letting informants rather than analysts organize topics — affords fine-grained analyses of ordinary actions within extraordinary events. This article discusses important aspects of interviewing including data gathering and the nature of `interview data', the selection of interviewees and getting the story. A series of vignettes demonstrates the enabling potential of this analytic attitude towards people's accounts.

Problematics of grounded theory: innovations for developing an increasingly rigorous qualitative method

Wasserman, J. A., Clair, J. M., Wilson, K. L. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:29:24 PDT

Our purpose in this article is to identify and suggest resolution for two core problematics of grounded theory. First, while grounded theory provides transparency to one part of the conceptualization process, where codes emerge directly from the data, it provides no such systematic or transparent way for gaining insight into the conceptual relationships between discovered codes. Producing a grounded theory depends not only on the definition of conceptual pieces, but the delineation of a relationship between at least two of those pieces. Second, the conceptualization process of grounded theory is done in hierarchical fashion, where individual codes emerge from the data but then are used to generate insight into more general concepts and thematic statements. But various works on grounded theory have failed to provide any systematic way of using data specific levels of scale (the codes) to gain insight into more macro levels of scale (concepts and themes). We offer fractal concept analysis as a means of resolving both of these issues. By using a logic structure generator, fractal concept analysis delineates self-similar conceptual frameworks at various levels of abstraction, yielding a method for linking concepts together within and between levels of scale encountered in the grounded theory coding and categorization process. We conclude that this fractal analytic technique can bolster the aims of grounded theory as a formalized and systematic process for generating theory from empirical data.

Book review: NORMAN K. DENZIN and YVONNA S. LINCOLN, The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (3rd Edition). London: Sage, 2005. 1288 pp. ISBN 07619 2757 3 (hbk) {pound}85.00

Drazin, A. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:29:24 PDT

Book review: NORMAN K. DENZIN and YVONNA S. LINCOLN, The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (3rd Edition). London: Sage, 2005. 1288 pp. ISBN 07619 2757 3 (hbk) {pound}85.00

Hughes, C. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:29:24 PDT

Book review: NORMAN K. DENZIN and YVONNA S. LINCOLN, The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (3rd Edition). London: Sage, 2005. 1288 pp. ISBN 07619 2757 3 (hbk) {pound}85.00

Gregory, M. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:29:24 PDT

The elephant in the living room: or extending the conversation about the politics of evidence

Denzin, N. K. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:15:22 PDT

The controversies surrounding the evidence-based research movement are reviewed from a critical pedagogy framework. Standards for assessing quality are forms of interpretive practice that enact a politics of evidence and truth. Moral and ethical criteria for judging qualitative research are reviewed.

New methods, old problems: A sceptical view of innovation in qualitative research

Travers, M. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:15:22 PDT

Qualitative research has to market itself aggressively, both because academic publishers face more pressures to sell books, and because of the competitive funding climate where one often has to demonstrate methodological innovation as a condition for obtaining a grant. This article considers how social theorists have understood the issue of `newness' and the pursuit of innovation as a cultural problem. It explores the issue in qualitative research through examining how we accomplish and recognize `newness' in the texts we read and produce as academics, which include publisher's catalogues and grant applications, and through considering technological advances such as internet ethnography and video analysis.

Multiple text analysis in narrative research: visual, written, and spoken stories of experience

Keats, P. A. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:15:22 PDT

Using multiple means of expressing stories about observations, ideas, emotions, and activities can expand a researcher's opportunity to better understand the complex narrative participants construct about how they experience life events. This article includes a description of three types of narrative texts (written, spoken, and visual) and an analysis process that includes a variety of readings for each type of text as well as a relational reading for a combination of texts. A narrative research study is used to illustrate the model. Discussion includes the challenges and benefits of using multiple texts in narrative research and suggests other forms of research design where multiple texts may be appropriate.

The truthful messenger: visual methods and representation in qualitative research in education

Galman, S. A.C. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:15:22 PDT

The problems of representation in qualitative research have been widely documented and multiple means of addressing them have been offered. The purpose of this article is to illustrate ways in which employing collaborative visual methods may present one way to address such problems. While this approach is not without complications, a recent pilot study application suggests that the complexity of participant data is well-handled by integrating the graphic novel as a collaborative visual text in data collection, analysis and presentation.

Being Fred: big stories, small stories and the accomplishment of a positive ageing identity

Phoenix, C., Sparkes, A. C. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:15:22 PDT

This article is informed by recent trends in narrative research that focus on the meaning-making actions of those involved in describing the life course. Drawing upon data generated during a series of interactive interviews with a 70-year-old physically active man named Fred, his story is presented to illustrate a strategic model of narrative activity. In particular, using the concepts of `big stories' and `small stories' as an analytical framework, we trace Fred's use of two specific identities; being fit and healthy , and being leisurely to analyse the ways that he accomplishes an ontological narrative where the plot line reads; `Life is what you make it'. The ways in which this narrative enables Fred to perform a narrative of positive self-ageing in his everyday life is illustrated. Finally, the analytical possibilities of being attentive to both big and small stories in narrative analysis are discussed.

Book review: GEOFFREY WALFORD (Ed.) Doing a Doctorate in Educational Ethnography. JAI Elsevier, 2002. 214pp. ISBN: 0 7623 0906 7 (hbk) GEOFFREY WALFORD (Ed.) Methodological Developments in Ethnography. JAI Elsevier, 2007. 226pp. ISBN: 978 0 7623 1437 9 (hbk)

Delamont, S., Salisbury, J. — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:15:22 PDT