Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

Introduction 1. Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle 2. Images of Relationship 3. Concepts of Self and Morality 4. Crisis and Transition 5. Women's Rights and Women's Judgment 6. Visions of Maturity References Index of Study Participants General Index

In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press) 1982.

Since initially writing on thematic analysis in 2006, the popularity of the method we outlined has exploded, the variety of TA approaches have expanded, and, not least, our thinking has developed a...

Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis

Research on theory of mind increasingly encompasses apparently contradictory findings. In particular, in initial studies, older preschoolers consistently passed false-belief tasks—a so-called “definitive” test of mentalstate understanding—whereas younger children systematically erred. More recent studies, however, have found evidence of false-belief understanding in 3-year-olds or have demonstrated conditions that improve children’s performance. A meta-analysis was conducted ( N � 178 separate studies) to address the empirical inconsistencies and theoretical controversies. When organized into a systematic set of factors that vary across studies, false-belief results cluster systematically with the exception of only a few outliers. A combined model that included age, country of origin, and four task factors (e.g., whether the task objects were transformed in order to deceive the protagonist or not) yielded a multiple R of .74 and an R 2 of .55; thus, the model accounts for 55% of the variance in false-belief performance. Moreover, false-belief performance showed a consistent developmental pattern, even across various countries and various task manipulations: preschoolers went from below-chance performance to above-chance performance. The findings are inconsistent with early competence proposals that claim that developmental changes are due to tasks artifacts, and thus disappear in simpler, revised false-belief tasks; and are, instead, consistent with theoretical accounts that propose that understanding of belief, and, relatedly, understanding of mind, exhibit genuine conceptual change in the preschool years.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1132444.pdf

Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: The truth about false belief.

In this paper, we consider the domain of executive functions (EFs) and their possible role in developmental psychopathologies. We first consider general theoretical and measurement issues involved in studying EFs and then review studies of EFs in four developmental psychopathologies: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), conduct disorder (CD), autism, and Tourette syndrome (TS). Our review reveals that EF deficits are consistently found in both ADHD and autism but not in CD (without ADHD) or in TS. Moreover, both the severity and profile of EF deficits appears to differ across ADHD and autism. Molar EF deficits are more severe in the latter than the former. In the few studies of more specific EF tasks, there are impairments in motor inhibition in ADHD but not in autism, whereas there are impairments in verbal working memory in autism but not ADHD. We close with a discussion of implications for future research.

Executive Functions and Developmental Psychopathology

While the importance of being reflexive is acknowledged within social science research, the difficulties, practicalities and methods of doing it are rarely addressed. Thus, the implications of current theoretical and philosophical discussions about reflexivity, epistemology and the construction of knowledge for empirical sociological research practice, specifically the analysis of qualitative data, remain underdeveloped. Drawing on our doctoral experiences, we reflect on the possibilities and limits of reflexivity during the interpretive stages of research.We explore how reflexivity can be operationalized and discuss reflexivity in terms of the personal, interpersonal, institutional, pragmatic, emotional, theoretical, epistemological and ontological influences on our research and data analysis processes. We argue that data analysis methods are not just neutral techniques.They reflect, and are imbued with, theoretical, epistemological and ontological assumptions ‐ including conceptions of subjects and subjectivities, and understandings of how knowledge is constructed and produced. In suggesting how epistemological and ontological positionings can be translated into research practice, our article contributes to current debates aiming to bridge the gap between abstract epistemological discussions and the nitty-gritty of research practice.

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Reflexive Accounts and Accounts of Reflexivity in Qualitative Data Analysis

We gave 3- and 4-year-old children and autistic subjects (plus a group of Down's syndrome children of equivalent ability) a task which measured their capacity for strategic deception. This was a competitive game played between the subject and an experimenter in which the participants tried to win chocolates. In the training phase the subjects learned that it was in their interest to tell the experimenter, by pointing, to look into an empty box for the chocolate, although subjects did not know until after the search which box was empty. In the testing phase, the boxes had windows facing the child so he or she could now see which was the empty box. The 4-year-olds and the Down's children, but not the 3-year-olds and the autistic subjects, generally pointed to the empty box on the first trial. Moreover, the younger children and the autistic subjects frequently continued to point to the baited box for the full 20 test trials. We also found that the ability to apply the correct strategy on the ‘windows task’ was associated with success on a standard ‘false belief’ task and argue from this that both tasks may be difficult because they require subjects to inhibit the tendency of salient knowledge about object locations to overwrite knowledge of epistemic states.

The ‘windows task’ as a measure of strategic deception in preschoolers and autistic subjects

Reflections on a voice-centred relational method: Analysing maternal and domestic voices.

The usefulness of archived qualitative data has been questioned where contextual information surrounding the conditions of its production is not provided. It has been assumed that, without this bac...

The Data are Out there, or are They? Implications for Archiving and Revisiting Qualitative Data:

This article grapples with the question of 'what can be known?' about research subjects and how we can come to know them. Set against a backdrop of theoretical tensions over the concept of subjectivity in feminist theory, our article makes a three-fold argument. First, we argue that theoretical impasses between critical and constructed subjects can be addressed through the evolving concept of a narrated subject. Second, we suggest that this concept needs to be further interrogated by asking what can be known about narrated subjects both inside and outside of narrative. Third, we argue that greater attention must be given to how narrated subjects can be operationalized within research methodology, and we suggest that an emerging interpretive approach, the Listening Guide, provides a multi-layered way of tapping into methodological, theoretical, epistemological, and ontological dimensions of the narrated subject.

/pdf/what-can-be-known-and-how-narrated-subjects-and-the-swh40a5m56.pdf

Natasha S. Mauthner

Papers

Reflexive Accounts and Accounts of Reflexivity in Qualitative Data Analysis

The ‘windows task’ as a measure of strategic deception in preschoolers and autistic subjects

Reflections on a voice-centred relational method: Analysing maternal and domestic voices.

The Data are Out there, or are They? Implications for Archiving and Revisiting Qualitative Data:

What can be known and how? Narrated subjects and the Listening Guide