Showing papers in "Qualitative Research in 2010"

Using the telephone for narrative interviewing: a research note

Abstract: Much social science research dictates that the most productive mode for producing narrative data is through face-to-face interviews, with other modes of data production assumed to be ‘second best’. This research note makes a unique contribution to this debate by reflecting on a research project which used telephones to produce participant narratives. It draws on data from both the researcher’s field notes and the participants themselves, who were asked after the narrative interview about their experiences of participating in a seemingly ‘strange’ research encounter. Furthermore, it describes the particular ideological, methodological and practical benefits that using telephones produced and reflects how such findings speak to Stephens’ (2007) recent work concerning telephone interviewing. This research note concludes that the use of telephones should be seriously considered as a preferred alternative to face-to-face interviews when considering how to conduct narrative interviews with particular groups of participants.

Considering quality in qualitative interviewing

Abstract: Within the field of qualitative inquiry, there has been considerable discussion of how ‘quality’ might be demonstrated by researchers in reports of studies. With the growth in the application of qualitative methods in social research, along with the proliferation of texts available to qualitative researchers over the last four decades, there has been increasing diversity in how quality has been demonstrated in reports. In this article, I focus on the use of qualitative interviews in research studies, arguing that with a growing array of theorizations of the qualitative interview, researchers must demonstrate the quality of their work in ways that are commensurate with their assumptions about their use of interviews. I sketch a number of possibilities for how qualitative interviews might be theorized, and show the different ways in which quality might be demonstrated from each perspective. I propose this typology as one means by which novice researchers might begin to work through design decisions involved...

Making the familiar strange: can visual research methods render the familiar setting more perceptible?:

Abstract: The centrality of the researcher and their position in relation to the research setting has been subject to controversy and long standing debates threaded with the narratives of insider and outsider myths. Insiders are often charged with the tendency to present their group in an unrealistically favourable light, and their work is often considered to be overshadowed by the enclosed, self-contained world of common understanding. This paper draws upon data generated by six participants from a research project, which aimed to explore and represent the everyday experiences of working-class mothers and daughters residing on a peripheral social housing estate. The paper describes how I, as an indigenous researcher, employed visual methods of data production in order to suspend my preconceptions of familiar territory, and facilitate an understanding of the unique viewpoints of mothers and daughters on the margins of contemporary Britain. The paper focuses the usefulness of the approach for making the familiar strange when the researchers own experience mirrors that of their participants.

Putting it in context: the use of vignettes in qualitative interviewing:

Abstract: The article draws on two separate studies employing developmental vignettes (hypothetical scenarios which unfold through a series of stages) to interview research participants. One study used the ‘Davie’ vignette, which was a conventional fixed narrative, while in the second, the ‘Jack and Jenny’ vignettes were made interactive by hyperlinking a series of PowerPoint scenarios and making the choice of the succeeding slide dependent on the interviewee’s reaction to its predecessor. Our analytic standpoint, in respect of both vignettes, is that of Schutzian phenomenology. We point to differences in both topical and motivational relevances in the processes of interpretation undergone by participants in considering the vignette scenario and in the situation of action. However, we show that research participants’ responses to vignettes can yield data of interest in their own right as participants perform ‘Thou-orientations’ and ‘They-orientations’ in their consideration of the stimuli. We close with a comparative evaluation of the fixed ‘Davie’ and the interactive ‘Jack and Jenny’ vignettes.

Focus groups as social enactments: integrating interaction and content in the analysis of focus group data

Abstract: This article argues that there is a need for more methodological discussions and examples upon how to include the social interaction element in analysing focus group data. It is suggested that from a practice theoretical perspective, focus group data (like other types of qualitative data) are understood as social enactments. The article gives examples of four different but related methodological tools of analysis that can help integrating interaction and content in analysing focus group enactments, namely tools from Goffman-inspired interaction analysis, conversation analysis, discourse psychology and positioning theory. The examples are unfolded on focus group data-material from a qualitative empirical research project on how Danish women cook and relate to normative issues in cooking, and the choice of specific examples of tools of analysis are linked to the specific knowledge interests of this research project.

Benefits of ‘observer effects’: lessons from the field

Abstract: This article responds to the criticism that ‘observer effects’ in ethnographic research necessarily bias and possibly invalidate research findings. Instead of aspiring to distance and detachment, some of the greatest strengths of ethnographic research lie in cultivating close ties with others and collaboratively shaping discourses and practices in the field. Informants’ performances — however staged for or influenced by the observer — often reveal profound truths about social and/or cultural phenomena. To make this case, first we mobilize methodological insights from the field of science studies to illustrate the contingency and partiality of all knowledge and to challenge the notion that ethnography is less objective than other research methods. Second, we draw upon our ethnographic projects to illustrate the rich data that can be obtained from ‘staged performances’ by informants. Finally, by detailing a few examples of questionable behavior on the part of informants, we challenge the fallacy that the pr...

Reproducing or constructing? Some questions about transcription in social research:

Abstract: Audio- and video-recordings are the major sources of data in qualitative research today There is now a substantial literature about the task of transcribing these recordings, though this mainly relates to socio-linguistic and discourse analysis In general, this takes the view that transcripts construct the talk or action that they portray rather than reproducing what is given In this article I argue that while this is true in important respects, in that many decisions are involved in producing transcripts, there is also an important sense in which both the strict transcription of words used and the descriptions of speakers’ behaviour are aimed at capturing something that exists independently of the transcription process ‘Construction’ and ‘givenness’ are both metaphors and we must take care not to be misled by either of them

A difficult negotiation: fieldwork relations with gatekeepers

Abstract: This article explores the challenges the researcher faced when undertaking ethnographic fieldwork within a Probation Approved Premises. How access to research sites is achieved is increasingly being discussed, particularly in ethnographic accounts. These discussions often focus on the practical and ethical challenges of entering fieldwork sites. In contrast, how researchers leave study populations or sites is rarely explored, although perhaps as complex and sensitive to negotiate as access. This article reflects upon the practical, ethical and emotional dilemmas experienced by the author when conducting research with sex offenders and staff in a probation hostel. The focus of the article is on how access was gained and how the site and the people who took part in the research were left at the end of the fieldwork. Key issues include: formal and informal gatekeepers to study sites; participants and forms of data; rapport; attachment to researchers and; deciding when to end fieldwork. Issues of gender are a...

Pluralism in qualitative research: the impact of different researchers and qualitative approaches on the analysis of qualitative data

Abstract: Qualitative approaches to research in psychology and the social sciences are increasingly used. The variety of approaches incorporates different epistemologies, theoretical traditions and practices with associated analysis techniques spanning a range of theoretical and empirical frameworks. Despite the increase in mixed method approaches it is unusual for qualitative methods to be used in combination with each other. The Pluralism in Qualitative Research project (PQR) was developed in order to investigate the benefits and creative tensions of integrating diverse qualitative approaches. Among other objectives it seeks to interrogate the contributions and impact of researchers and methods on data analysis. The article presents our pluralistic analysis of a single semi-structured interview transcript. Analyses were carried out by different researchers using grounded theory, Foucauldian discourse analysis, interpretative phenomenological analysis and narrative analysis. We discuss the variation and agreement in the analysis of the data. The implications of the findings on the conduct, writing and presentation of qualitative research are discussed.

Analysing group dynamics within the focus group

Abstract: Focus groups are routinely used as a research tool in a wide variety of settings. Based on recent experience with poverty research, we argue this method needs to be problematized and further rethou...

‘I like this interview; I get cakes and cats!’: the effect of prior relationships on interview talk

Abstract: Research interviews are a form of interaction jointly constructed by the interviewer and interviewee, what Silverman (2001: 104) calls 'interview-as-local-accomplishment'. From this perspective, interviews are an interpretative practice in which what is said is inextricably tied to where it is said, how it is said and, importantly, to whom it is said (Holstein and Gubrium, 2004). The relationship between interviewer and interviewee, then, is fundamental in research interviews. But what happens when the relationship between interviewer and interviewee is not only that of researcher-informant but also involves other roles such as colleague and friend? In this article we will show how prior relationships are invoked and made relevant by both parties during educational research interviews and how these prior relationships therefore contribute to the 'generation' (Baker, 2004: 163) of interview data. © 2010 The Author(s).

Favourites and others: reflexivity and the shaping of subjectivities and data in qualitative research:

Abstract: This article discusses some of the dilemmas still surrounding researcher subjectivity and reflexivity in qualitative research. It explores the example of qualitative research into British migration to Tenerife, which involved ethnographic data collection in two principal employment areas: lap dancing and timeshare sales. It explains the setting and methodology of the research project, exploring the especially thorny ground of researching into a group whose ‘otherness’ on some levels manifests in ‘good’ data, partly because the group’s opinions and discourses jar with one’s own political ideology. Exploring the British migrants’ reasons for moving to Tenerife was central to the research, and the data showed that these migration motives were couched in ideas about class, gender, and race identity. Collecting data of that nature brought to the fore ideas about inequality, othering and difference and these ‘outed’ notions became pivotal to my relationships with the migrants in the field. The article considers...

Institutional ethnography, autoethnography, and narrative: an argument for incorporating multiple methodologies:

Abstract: In this article, I discuss the methodological issues arising from both my research aims and my research context of a western national defence force First, I discuss the uniqueness of my research c

On ‘being researched’: why do people engage with qualitative research?:

Abstract: While there has been some anecdotal discussion that hints at what motivates people to engage with qualitative research, little research has systematically explored the role of research engagement f...

Home truths: ethical issues in family research

Abstract: This article interrogates the shifting ethical contours of research on contemporary childhood and family living. I reflect on increases in ethical regulation and the role of ethics review panels. Drawing on original data from empirical research I examine some of the ethical issues that arise in studies of family life with particular attention to qualitative mixed methods research and the use of psychosocial approaches. I propose that multilayered in-depth approaches require us to consider carefully ethical standpoints, affecting how we thread together individual and/or family case studies. Unsettling stories in research on emotional—social worlds refine our understandings of ‘harm’ and ‘distress’ and reconfigure ideas of ‘responsible knowing’. Qualitative mixed methods research situates ‘messy’, conflicting and unfavourable data as part of ordinary parenthood, reformulating ethical and epistemological dilemmas for researchers of personal lives.

Apples and oranges: ethnography and the IRB

Abstract: This article outlines the trials and tribulations encountered in negotiating institutional review board approval of ethnographic research among undercover police officers and recreational drug user...

Using visual methodologies to explore contemporary Irish childhoods

Abstract: Drawing on the use of children-centred visual research methods, primarily artwork and photography, in Irish primary schools, this article compares the use of artwork and photography as visual metho...

Positioning place: polylogic approaches to research methodology

Abstract: This article focuses on the difference that place makes to methodological practice. It argues, following Sin, that the spatial contexts in which methods are carried out remain ‘largely excluded from any theorization of the social construction of knowledge’ (2003: 306). Through viewing ‘place’ as both a social and a geographical entity (following Cresswell, 1996), this article argues that although the importance of social relationships in methodology is widely accepted (through, for example, processes of researcher reflexivity), the influence of the ‘where of method’ has received less attention. The article addresses this issue by arguing for the explicit consideration of the geographical dimension of place in methodology. It does so by introducing the notion of a polylogic approach to method. The polylogic approach moves away from the conventional configuration of method as a dialogue (e.g. between researcher and researched) and towards method explicitly including researcher, researched, and the geographic place of methodology.

Interviews as encounters: issues of sexuality and reflexivity when men interview men about commercial same sex relations

Abstract: Few qualitative sociologists have considered how men who have sex with men hold diverse understandings of sexuality and how these matter in research encounters, especially as it regards ‘touchy’ interview topics such as intimacy, intercourse and men’s bodies. Drawing from transcripts and field notes concerning my experiences of interviewing 30 male-for-male internet escorts in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto (Canada), Houston and New York (USA), as well as London (England), I analyse moments where, as the interviewer, I was sexualized by respondents. A first question was often posed to me at the start of interviews: ‘are you gay?’ The ‘are you gay?’ question not only seeks out a singular identity declaration but also flips over established researcher-respondent roles, indicating that the reflexivity of the respondent is as important as the reflexivity of the researcher in shaping the conversation to come. My analysis demonstrates why it is important to consider the impact of researcher bodies and speech acts du...

Qualitative method and compromise in applied social research

Abstract: The article discusses the findings of interviews with researchers who use qualitative methods in social research contracts with public sector clients. Issues arising in research projects in relation to understandings of, and implementation of, qualitative methods are discussed. Researchers’ reasons for choosing qualitative methods, conceptions of quality in qualitative research, and how they believe qualitative methods are perceived and used by commissioners are considered. There is great diversity between researchers in their level of confidence in using qualitative methods and their commitment to particular philosophical positions in social science. There is widespread disillusionment with the processes whereby qualitative work is reduced in quality by pressures towards quasi-quantification and superficiality. Particularly where a previous occupational identity instils greater confidence, there is also evidence of hidden resistances of researchers committed to a view of qualitative work as emancipatory ...

Telling tales? Using ethnographic fictions to speak embodied ‘truth’

Abstract: This article traces my journey into embodied methodologies as I endeavoured to accurately and ethically research and represent experiences of body-marking practices (i.e. body modification and self-injury). Because of the fundamentally embodied nature of body-marking, I sought methodologies which were equally embodied and able to contain and represent the complex, emotive, fluid and dynamic nature of these experiences. It was also essential to me that the knowledge forms I produced, in empirical and epistemological terms, avoided the dualism and hierarchy which pervade our logocentric norms. Both the form and practice of my research, then, required an ethic which was specifically embodied and which grew out of corporeal experience. Here, I describe the research journey which drew me into the strategy of ‘ethnographic fiction’, and how this practice answered many of the issues and dilemmas posed by the specific and bodily nature of my work, and my own relationship with it.

Producing children’s corporeal privacy: ethnographic video recording as material-discursive practice:

Abstract: This article discusses the use of video cameras in participant observation drawing on approximately 300 hours of video data from an ethnographic study of Swedish family life. Departing from Karen B ...

Process evaluation: the new miracle ingredient in public health research?

Abstract: Good evaluation practice in public health research has become equated with the inclusion of a mixed-methods ‘process evaluation’ alongside an ‘outcome evaluation’ to gather data on how and why interventions are effective or ineffective. While the incorporation of process evaluations in randomized controlled trials is to be welcomed, there is a danger that they are being oversold. The problematic position of process evaluations is illustrated by data from an evaluation of an unsuccessful schools health promotion intervention. The process evaluation data (designed to ‘explain’ the outcome evaluation results) must be collected before the outcome evaluation results are typically available: unanticipated outcomes cannot always be addressed satisfactorily from prior process data. Further, qualitative process data draw inductively general inferences from particular circumstances and the generalizability of those inferences is therefore uncertain: qualitative data can deepen our understanding of quantitative data, but the commensurability of the two classes of data remains problematic.

Documenting classroom life: how can I write about what I am seeing?:

Abstract: The article is located within a UK based ethnographic research project where the central aim is to understand the processes by which 4— 5 year-old children begin to develop an identity as ‘naughty’ within school. This article considers certain practices that are embedded within the act of documenting data and how these relate to and are connected with identity. Having foregrounded what could be regarded as tactics for ‘authenticating’ data we then move to offer alternative sets of practices where data is considered more in terms of a ‘montage’ where ‘several different images are superimposed onto one another’ (Denzin and Lincoln, 2003: 6).

On Elephants and gold standards

Abstract: article in this journal (Denzin, 2009a). He correctly identifies lapses, contradictions, errors, over-generalizations, and inconsistencies inmy arguments. His re-reading of my text improves my arguments, and clears the way for an even stronger critique of the new gold standard. I will work backwards through his comments, ending with Point One. The elephant inmy essay wasmulti-sided, symbolically standing in for several different problems: (1) evidence-based methodological criteria attached to No Child Left Behind legislation (NCLB); (2) the response of variousNorthAmerican professional associations, and institutes to these models; (3) arguments concerning the politics of truth and evidence. I intended to apply the same interpretive criteria to each version of the elephant. That is, none of the existing US models, including SREE, CochraneCampbell, AERA, successfully resisted the NRC gold standard model. I reacted in detail to the NRC recommendations concerning data sharing, peer reviews, and reviewer criteria because I felt these proposals represented bureaucratic overkill. I felt they did not get to the heart of the matter, which turns on the moral and political issues involved in critical inquiry. Point 2: I gave short shrift to the European models, relying on a small number of secondary sources. Indeed, Fielding contends that I misrepresent European and American situations when it comes to support for qualitative research (Points 2, and 3). I am delighted to learn that the UK ‘Competency Framework for Social Research’ specifies that ‘anyone employed by the government as a social researcher must understand and demonstrate competence in qualitative methods.’ I do not know what qualifies as competence, but I know of no US federal agency that imposes this requirement! The UK is far ahead of the US in this regard. Still, I do not believe that the British RAE is indifferent to methodological debates, because I believe methodological indifference is a political position. R E S PON S E 269

Everyday risks and professional dilemmas: Fieldwork with alcohol based (sporting) subcultures

Abstract: This article discusses some of the everyday risks and professional dilemmas encountered when conducting participant-observation based research into the use and meaning of alcohol among fans of Australian Rules football. The key risks and dilemmas were those that emerged from female researchers entering into a predominantly male football subculture in which alcohol is routinely (and often excessively) consumed, the negotiation of key gatekeepers, the potential dangers of conducting research with participants who are inebriated and the duty of care to research participants. The article draws on an eighteen-month period of ethnographic fieldwork to highlight the risks and dilemmas negotiated and re-negotiated throughout the research process. The article argues that a failure to attend to these and other risks and dilemmas can threaten the viability of research among drinking-based communities and subcultures.

Personal narrative and the ethics of disclosure: A case study from elite sport

Abstract: In this article the ethics of disclosure through personal narrative are explored through a relatively benign autobiographical vignette concerning the background to a doctoral study on referee commu...

Online petitions: new tools of secondary analysis?

Abstract: Since the 1990s, internet-mediated research has been gradually gaining ground in the Social Sciences due, in part, to the expanding use of the internet by public and private organizations and indiv...

And where were your brothers in all this? a psychosocial approach to texts on 'brothering'

Abstract: This article offers a psychosocial analysis of interview material from a larger study on ‘brothering’, making an empirically grounded contribution to what are frequently abstract debates on the use of psychoanalysis to ‘read’ narratives. Recent psychosocial approaches which employ psychoanalysis alongside discursive psychology are reviewed, including a Lacanian approach which has been described as a less certain and potentially less individualizing and pathologizing gaze to take up in psychosocial studies. The authors put forward the notion of concentric reflexivity to apply Lacanian theoretical concepts to narrative material, ‘troubling’ sense-making, alongside recent calls for psychoanalysis to be employed in psychosocial work as a tool for ‘disintegrating’ and ‘disrupting’ text. The discussion argues for the interruptedness of narrative as an ethical necessity and for acknowledging fragmentation as central to the construction of an ethical subject.

Revealing and Concealing Secrets in Research: The Potential for the Absent

Abstract: Qualitative research accounts are characterized by absences; absences resulting from what can not be told because it is not known and from what can not be repeated because it should not be stated. ...