Doing Qualitative Research in Psychology

A Practical Guide

Cath Sullivan, Michael A Forrester, Cath Sullivan, Michael A Forrester

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781526453358
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Forschung & Methodik in der Psychologie

This book is not available as a print inspection copy. To download an E-inspection copy click here or for more information contact yourlocal sales representative. Taking you through each aspect of the research process and explaining the unique challenges of using qualitative methods in psychology, this book offers a complete guide to successfully conducting a qualitative psychological research project.

Clear, concise and accessible, this'how to' manual folds key skills like research design and using technology and software into each chapter. This second edition offers: - A thorough introduction to foundational concepts that support you through each step of the research process - New chapters onthematic and narrative analysis - A set of digital resources designed to make learning about qualitative methods as easy and interactive as possible, including video recordings and transcripts to build key analysis techniques Through a pragmatic, practical lens, this book provides the perspective and the tools you need to recognize, collect, interpret, and communicate quality qualitative psychological data.

Michael A. Forrester is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Kent, Canterbury. Cath Sullivan is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Central Lancashire.

1 This Book and How to Use It

Cath Sullivan

Michael A. Forrester

Introduction

This book is all about qualitative methods in psychology and how these methods can be applied to help answer research questions. The first thing to note about the book’s title, of course, is the focus on ‘doing’, that is learning how to conduct research studies using qualitative methods. There are numerous other books that focus on qualitative approaches in psychology; however, some tend to focus on theory rather than practice. The second thing to note about this book is that it has a specifically designed accompanying data set that was produced to enhance your understanding of what can be achieved by using the various research methods covered in the book. This introductory chapter is best seen as a brief introduction to qualitative methods in psychology followed by a guide on how to get the best out of the various sections of the book.

The book is divided into four parts – ‘Formulating research questions’; ‘Collecting qualitative data’; ‘Practical examples of qualitative analysis’; and ‘Outcomes and results’. The chapters that make up this text cover the logic, procedures and practices surrounding the whole process of doing qualitative research in psychology. You can see, with a quick glance through the chapter headings, that every stage of the research process is given due consideration. By paying considered attention to all sections of the book you will be in an excellent position to understand exactly what to do to conduct a study employing qualitative methods. The most significant feature of this book, however, is the data set that accompanies it (which is described, including details of how to access it, in Chapter 8).

The teaching and learning ethos we adopted for this book reflects our recognition of a key challenge in learning about qualitative research methods, which we are aware of through our experience as researchers and as lecturers. That challenge is being able to see precisely, in practice, what different qualitative methods might accomplish when answering a research question. To solve this problem, we produced a set of video recordings of research interviews, with accompanying transcriptions, on the everyday topic of friendship. We have made the video recordings, audio recordings and transcripts of these interviews available online (as described in Chapter 8). In this book, we present a detailed outline and description of six commonly used qualitative methods; using the same data set we highlight the nature of these different approaches, the procedures they use, the theoretical perspectives they adopt and the distinct forms of analysis they employ. By showing how each of these methods would approach the same data, we aim to give you a good sense of their practical application and also to highlight key differences between them. A major feature of this text, therefore, is the six chapters in Part 3 where the friendship interview data is analysed using each of the six qualitative methods: thematic analysis, interpretative phenomenological analysis, narrative analysis, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and grounded theory.

While learning to analyse data is a key part of learning about qualitative research, this also needs to be accompanied by learning about other stages of the process (such as ethics, design and writing up). These are dealt with in Parts 1, 2 and 4 of the book. It is important to see the links between each section of the book and to recognise that to complete an appropriately conducted qualitative research study you will need to draw upon elements from many of the chapters. Before outlining some important links between the various sections and chapters, we provide an overview and some background to qualitative methods in psychology.

Overview of Qualitative Methods in Psychology

Background to the Role of Qualitative Research in Psychology

Qualitative research techniques have a long history of use in psychology. In clinical psychology, for example, we find the clinical case study as well as examples of observational and participant-observational studies. Similarly, in developmental psychology there is a long history of diary studies, observational methods, single-case studies of children and research looking at children in naturalistic surroundings (such as playgrounds). Other examples are to be found in the discipline: in personality research we have personal construct methods such as repertory grid analysis; in applied psychology, verbal protocol and related forms of content analysis; and in ergonomics, qualitatively based methods such as usability analysis.

Qualitative methods are now a standard part of the techniques used in psychological research. This is evidenced in the UK, for example, by their inclusion in the subject benchmarks and accreditation criteria that are used as the basis for deciding what is taught on psychology degrees (Gibson and Sullivan, 2018). However, for many years psychological research was dominated by quantitative methods and debates are still common about the relative merits of quantitative and qualitative methods in psychology. It is fair to say, though, that qualitative methods have increased in their prominence within psychology in recent decades and there are a number of reasons why this has happened. These can be summarised as:

• growth in the popularity of philosophical and theoretical positions that lead researchers more towards qualitative methods than quantitative;
• critiques of the social-cognitive perspectives, and their accompanying reliance on certain kinds of research methods, that have dominated psychology in recent decades;
• increasing recognition of the limitations of quantitative research methods;
• the influence of forces from outside psychology (such as other social science disciplines and research funding bodies).

Let us consider each of these factors that have influenced the emergence of qualitative methods in psychology.

Growth in Theoretical Positions Consistent with Qualitative Approaches

In early psychology, ideas about science and research, and basic theoretical ideas about psychology, that led people to favour quantitative methods were dominant. As you will see in Chapter 2, philosophical ideas such as positivism dominated in the past and led psychologists to prefer quantification. However, in recent decades these ideas have met with challenges and there has been a rise of perspectives such as social constructionism (see Chapter 2) and phenomenology (see Chapter 10) that have led some psychologists to move towards qualitative techniques.

An example of the kinds of theoretical shifts that have led to an increase in qualitative methods is the ‘turn to language’ that occurred in psychology in the 1980s and beyond. Within psychology, the study of language had traditionally been dominated by the early work of Noam Chomsky on grammar, the emergence of an experimentally focused psycholinguistics, and the view that language should be considered very much as an individualistic, formal means of reflecting thought processes occurring during communication. However, within disciplines such as English, social anthropology, sociology and linguistics this view of language had been supplanted by approaches that focused very much on language as a social practice. This ‘turn-to-language’ placed centre stage the study of collective discursive practices and saw language as a way of creating the reality of the world we inhabit rather than as a way of reflecting outwards our inner psychological stages. You can see the consequences of this ‘turn to language’ particularly in the qualitative methods referred to collectively as discourse analysis (see Chapter 12 for more detail).

Critique of Social-Cognitive Approaches to Psychology

A second driving force that has led many social psychologists in particular towards qualitative methods is an increased dissatisfaction with the social-cognitive way of approaching psychology. A classic example of this was the seminal work of Potter and Wetherell (1987) that presented an alternative way of understanding behaviour, particularly that relating to discrimination and prejudice, which relied not on the notion of attitudes but on language and discourse. Psychologists in this tradition argued that psychological research should focus on what people actually say and do – not on trying to discover the mental processes that might lie ‘behind’ people’s actions and interactions. Studying people in context, and recording and analysing in detail how they make sense of, construct and describe their social worlds, became the primary research focus. This was seen as an alternative to the individualistic, de-contextualised experimental methods of the social-cognitive approach to psychology (see Stainton-Rogers, 2011, for a more detailed discussion of this shift, and also Chapter 12).

Recognition of the Limitations of Quantitative Methods

Alongside these other developments there was also growing disquiet over the extent to which psychological knowledge was based on results from relatively artificial experimental situations and quantitative measures. Many argued that, whilst quantitative methods have their uses, they produce a certain kind of knowledge that, when relied on exclusively, only really illuminates part of what we could know about psychology. An example of the points made is concerns about ‘ecological validity’ and experimentation. Ulrich Neisser (1976) coined the term ‘ecological validity’ to draw attention to the fact that all too often it was very hard to tell if what happened under controlled experimental conditions necessarily approximated to other situations. For many these concerns led to a desire to carry out more naturalistic studies that can give rich information that is sensitive to context. For many, qualitative methods allow this (see, for example, the discussion of nomothetic and idiographic research in Chapter 10).

Another example of this kind of driver for qualitative methods relates to the importance of understanding the role of meaning in psychological processes. In health psychology, for example, it was argued that the exclusive use of quantitative techniques meant a failure to illuminate the meanings people attribute to health and wellness, which in turn led to an impoverished understanding of health psychology. For example, Gilbert et al. (2013) showed that to understand the impact of cancer on men’s sexuality it was important to use qualitative methods to understand what sex means to men in terms of their gender identity.

Influences from Outside Psychology

Another important set of influences have been those coming from outside psychology; for example, from those disciplines closest to psychology in the social sciences. Within sociology, where many now common qualitative procedures first originated (for example, participant observation studies and narrative analysis), qualitative methods have had a long and distinguished history. The qualitatively focused work of sociologists such as Ervin Goffman and Harold Garfinkel have had considerable influence, not least on psychology’s use of conversation analysis (see Chapter 13). Arguably, the lesson that has been learned from seeing how, when and why these disciplines have employed qualitative methods is that psychologists began to recognise how procedures sensitive to the task of detailing, describing and analysing people’s sense-making practices could be usefully employed in psychology. And most importantly, the strategies and procedures that made up these methods could be employed in the service of producing research findings that were logical and defensible (see Chapter 4).

Another set of influences from outside psychology that has recently been influential in highlighting the important role of qualitative methods in psychology relates to research funding and research training. For example, as Gibson and Sullivan (2018) note, funding bodies such as the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) now view training in qualitative and quantitative research methods as essential for social scientists.

All the above factors have together influenced the emergence and growth of qualitative methods in psychology. Alongside quantitative approaches, qualitative methods are now an essential part of the research methods that psychologists employ. The aim of this book is to help you learn how to use them successfully.

Key Elements of Qualitative Research

As you will see from exploring the chapters of this book, qualitative research methods constitute a broad and varied set of techniques and perspectives. To really understand how we might answer the question ‘what is qualitative research?’, we would encourage you to read the rest of this book! However, you may find it useful to start with a more concise and brief summary of the key features that are more commonly occurring in qualitative research studies than in quantitative studies. A simple summary like this may be helpful, although the danger is of course that this will hide the diversity that exists in qualitative research. So, you should remember that not all qualitative methods have all of these features, or approach them in the same way. These commonly occurring features of qualitative research can be summarised as follows:

• a tendency to use relatively unstructured data (this is considered in more detail in Chapters 6 and 7 in particular);
• an approach to theory that involves generating theories that are localised and context specific, rather than testing large-scale theories that seek to explain psychological process in all people (as exemplified by the method described in Chapter 14 in particular);
• a tendency to use data-analysis practices that seek out themes in the data (as exemplified best by the method discussed in Chapter 9, and with Chapter 13 providing a nice example of a method that does not do this!);
• a focus on language and the way things are represented in text (as perhaps best illustrated by the methods in Chapters 12 and 13);
• an interest in the perspectives, sense-making and individual experiences of people (as illustrated by the method detailed in Chapter 10 in particular).

How This Book Is Structured

The book is divided into sections reflecting five questions asked by many students (Figure 1.1):

Figure 1.1 Questions students ask

Part 1 focuses on the business of formulating research questions in qualitative psychological research: the theoretical underpinnings of the methods used and the topics, themes and issues addressed; the ethical issues; the question of quality; and the role of literature reviewing. In Part 2 we move to the pragmatics of collecting data for qualitative research: what is involved in collecting data of many different kinds; and a more detailed discussion of how interviews are conducted. Part 3 describes six qualitative methods in detail and shows you how analysis will differ not only because of the questions you might be asking, but also because of the specific analytic focus the approach has. Finally, in Part 4 we highlight how you would write up a qualitative report in psychology, one that summarises the research you have carried out according to conventions and formats appropriate to the discipline.

How Might I Read This Book and Why?

First of all, before you make a start on learning how to conduct qualitative research in psychology, it makes a lot of sense to consider how d...