Aim. In this paper, I call into question the widely-held assumption of a single, more or less unified paradigm of ‘qualitative research’ whose methodologies share certain epistemological and ontological characteristics, and explore the implications of this position for judgements about the quality of research studies.

Background.  After a quarter of a century of debate in nursing about how best to judge the quality of qualitative research, we appear to be no closer to a consensus, or even to deciding whether it is appropriate to try to achieve a consensus. The literature on this issue can be broadly divided into three positions: those writers who wish qualitative research to be judged according to the same criteria as quantitative research; those who believe that a different set of criteria is required; and those who question the appropriateness of any predetermined criteria for judging qualitative research. Of the three positions, the second appears to have generated most debate, and a number of different frameworks and guidelines for judging the quality of qualitative research have been devised over recent years.

Discussion.  The second of the above positions is rejected in favour of the third. It argues that, if there is no unified qualitative research paradigm, then it makes little sense to attempt to establish a set of generic criteria for making quality judgements about qualitative research studies. We need either to acknowledge that the commonly perceived quantitative–qualitative dichotomy is in fact a continuum which requires a continuum of quality criteria, or to recognize that each study is individual and unique, and that the task of producing frameworks and predetermined criteria for assessing the quality of research studies is futile.

Conclusion.  Some of the implications of this latter position are explored, including the requirement that all published research reports should include a reflexive research diary.

Validity, trustworthiness and rigour: quality and the idea of qualitative research

Handbook of Interview Research

This article adopts and extends a meaning-based approach to advertising. We emphasize the consumer's perspective and seek to address important factors that motivate and shape actualized advertising meanings. A graphic model is delineated that focuses on consumers' life themes (e.g., being true vs. being false) and life projects (e.g., what it means to be an educator). The model is assessed through a phenomenological inquiry into the life stories of three individuals and their respective experiences of contemporary magazine advertisements. Findings corroborate the proposition that many actualized ad meanings are a function of the consumer's salient life projects as conjoined by life themes. Discussion focuses on the implications for advertising theory and consumer research.

A Meaning-based Model of Advertising Experiences

CLINICAL NEUROSURGERY Edited by Barnes Wordall. Vol. 18. (Pp. 557; illustrated; £8 25.) Churchill Livingstone: Edinburgh. 1971. CLINICAL NEUROSURGERY Edited by G. T. Tindall. Vol. 19. (Pp. 598; illustrated; £12.) Churchill Livingstone: Edinburgh. 1972. The Congress of Neurosurgeons began in 1951 on the initiative of a group of younger neurosurgeons. In the last 20 years its membership has grown from 69 to over 1,000, but it has retained its original intentions and virility by a constitution which ensured that the office bearers and organizers were always young men. Residents in training are encouraged to join, financial concessions make it possible for them to attend meetings, and these are organized as an educational exercise, by inviting established authorities to give lectures on selected topics, chosen to provide a balanced programme. As a result Clinical Neurosurgery is a valuable volume which all neurosurgeons look forward to each year; it is in quite a different class from the usual conference tome, full of brief and unconnected papers of widely varying quality. As the title suggests Clinical Neurosurgery includes excellent clinical reviews but the two recent volumes include also a section of seminars on fundamental research-in volume 18 on coma and sleep, in volume 19 on basic mechanisms of memory. It is also the custom to invite a senior neurosurgical citizen as guest of honour and his two or three papers afford an opportunity for historical and philosophical reflections as well as an experienced perspective on clinical and experimental work. Add to this the refreshing presidential address, from one of the (angry?) young men of neurosurgery and it will be clear that these volumes really do include something of interest for every neurosurgeon, whatever his own interests or prejudices. It is a relief to be able so warmly to recommend these books, when the question posed by so many other books is whether anyone would really want to read them. The most recent volume has a more consistent theme than former ones, and that is 'head injury'. It includes papers on mechanisms as revealed by animal experiment and by a pathologist who visited the scene of the accident before examining the brains of head injury fatalities. There are chapters on engineering and socio-psychological aspects of accident prevention, as well as down to earth clinical accounts of metabolic disorders, testing for acoustic vestibular 36 damage, and aspects of prognosis. This is a significant contribution to the literature on head injury.

https://jnnp.bmj.com/content/jnnp/37/3/361.3.full.pdf

The working brain (an introduction to neuropsychology)

Comprehension strategies are being taught in schools, with important similarities across some schools that are teaching them well. Strategy teaching typically occurs daily in these schools as part of group instruction. It is long term and complex since students are taught to coordinate traditional memory and comprehension strategies with interpretive processes. Consistent with both reader response theories and psychological theories, we refer to this approach as transactional strategies instruction: Student and teacher transactions with text are the heart of this form of instruction, with classroom discourse consisting of teachers providing support and guidance to students as they attempt to use strategies to learn regular elementary content. The limited evidence available suggests that this approach is effective and deserves research. Longitudinal experiments and quasi experiments are required, as are detailed descriptive analyses. There are many potential effects of transactional strategies instruction ...

Beyond Direct Explanation: Transactional Instruction of Reading Comprehension Strategies.

Reading a poem or a novel, seeing a play or a film, is a special kind of experience. Yet the essential nature of that experience has remained a mystery. Philosophers have discussed the writer s role, and critics the writer s craft, but there has been little disciplined inquiry into the relation of literature to people s minds the way in which people re-create within themselves the literary experience. Norman Holland approaches the problem armed with a thorough understanding of psychoanalytic concepts, and develops a comprehensive theory of the psychology of literature that deals with poetry, theater, and film, as well as with fiction, myth, pornography, and humor."

The dynamics of literary response

5 readers reading

Understanding the receptivity of literature, how one work admits many readers, begins with an analogy: unity is to text as identity is to self. Unity here means the way all a text’s features can be related through one central theme. Identity describes a person’s sameness within different behaviors as variations on one identity theme (Lichtenstein). To find unity or identity, however, the interpreter himself plays a behavioral variation on his identity theme. In interpreting, his identity re-creates itself as he shapes the text to match his characteristic defenses, fantasies, and coherences. Thus, what a poet says about fictional, political, or scientific texts expresses the same identity theme as the poems he writes. To understand reading, criticism, and any knowing or making in symbols, then, we need to let go the Cartesian craving for objectivity and accept the themes in ourselves with which we construe the world—including literary works.

Unity Identity Text Self

Laughing, a psychology of humor

Asserting that literary theory needs a dose of common sense, this treatise attacks Saussurean linguistics as outmoded and discredited in its elimination of its subjects. It claims that postmodernist ideas of the individual rest on false linguistic and psychological premises.

Norman N. Holland

Papers

The dynamics of literary response

5 readers reading

Unity Identity Text Self

Laughing, a psychology of humor

The critical I