Applied Qualitative Research in Psychology

Joanna Brooks, Nigel King

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781137359124
• eBook ISBN: 9781350312470
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Research & Methodology in Psychology
• Index: Social Sciences

With a highly pragmatic, yet rigorous and pragmatically driven approach, this edited book explores demonstrates qualitative research with an applied approach. Using not only theory but real world setting, readers are introduced to the function and relevance of qualitative methods in psychological research. Exemplified through the contributions of various experts from across the different sub-disciplines of psychology, this text takes a versatile approach to explaining methods in research and covers a broad range of methods in a variety of settings. This book will appeal to those with an interest in qualitative methods across the spectrum of psychology and beyond. Offering an introduction to applied qualitative research in psychology with a distinctively applied approach, this title is apt for undergraduate psychology students taking modules in research methods, executing research-based projects or those undertaking Masters and taught doctoral level programs in psychology.

SECTION I

Introducing Applied Qualitative Research in Psychology

1

Applying Qualitative Research in Psychology

Joanna Brooks and Nigel King

The use of qualitative research methods in psychology has proliferated rapidly over recent years. In the United Kingdom, undergraduate psychology courses are expected, according to benchmarks stipulated by the discipline’s professional body (the British Psychological Society [BPS]), to cover qualitative methods, and the great majority of psychology courses include at least one module covering qualitative research methods as a matter of course. The BPS’s Qualitative Methods section (QMiP: Qualitative Methods in Psychology) is now over ten years old and one of the largest sections in the Society. In the United States, the American Psychological Association (APA) set up a new ‘Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology’ (SQiP) as part of their methodology section in 2013. There is increasing international interest in the use of qualitative methods amongst students, academics and clinicians in many sub-disciplines of psychology.

This trend is reflected in the recent and continuing publication of a number of popular and excellent textbooks on qualitative psychology methods (see the recommended reading list at the end of this chapter). So why do we see the need for yet another qualitative psychology textbook? What this book has to offer is its focus on situating qualitative psychological research in real-world settings. We see ourselves as applied psychologists – our focus is on using psychology theory and methods in a wide range of ‘real-world’ settings, undertaking research that addresses practical issues and has a meaningful impact on the society in which we live.

In this book, we situate qualitative psychological research in applied settings, and demonstrate the genuine utility of qualitative research methods. By showing some of the many different ways in which sub-disciplines and areas of psychology have usefully applied qualitative research methods, we very much hope that this book will appeal to those potentially disengaged from the abstract notion of research methods by demonstrating how and why qualitative research matters. In this chapter, we will introduce you to qualitative psychology and discuss how qualitative research differs from other ways of undertaking research in psychology. We will explain why we think qualitative research has an important role to play in applied settings for psychologists, and describe the purpose and structure of this book.

What is qualitative psychology?

Qualitative psychology is often introduced as an alternative to quantitative psychology and it is highly unlikely that you are reading a book such as this without some awareness of the differences between the two approaches. Often, ‘qualitative’ and ‘quantitative’ research are presented to those new to research and to research methods as two very distinct and opposing ways of undertaking research. This is not necessarily the case: sometimes using both qualitative and quantitative methods and taking what is known as a mixed-methods approach can be the most effective way to answer your research question (see Rachel Shaw and David Hiles in Chapter 15 for more on this). And this, of course, is the crux of the matter: your approach to research should be determined by what you are investigating, what you want to know and how you can best find this out. It is not that one type of approach is better than another, but that different research questions require different research methods to provide the best and fullest answer. In this book, we will show you how, in applied psychology research (and we will go on to define what we mean by ‘applied’ research shortly), qualitative work can usefully explore and elucidate real-world issues in a distinctive, informative and valuable way.

However, it is true that there are some key ways in which qualitative and quantitative approaches differ. Biggerstaff (2012, p. 177) suggests that ‘a practical definition [of qualitative research] points to methods that use language rather than numbers’. Quantitative research is primarily concerned with accurate measurement of a phenomenon and with describing things like the frequency of an occurrence, or statistical associations between particular phenomena. Fundamentally, qualitative research in psychology is about the study of meaning. The focus in qualitative psychology is on people as meaning-makers, and on describing and understanding the ways in which we experience and interpret our world. As two distinct research paradigms, then, qualitative and quantitative research offer us rather different ways of thinking about the world (King and Horrocks, 2010).

Historically, the focus in contemporary psychology has been on quantitative research, and the relatively recent increase in qualitative work being undertaken in the discipline does mark a shift in approach. Psychology itself is a relatively new academic discipline, developing in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the early psychologists (such as William James) were certainly interested in thinking about notions familiar to qualitative psychologists such as subjective perception and personal accounts. However, from the beginning of the twentieth century onwards, mainstream psychology became increasingly concerned with establishing itself as a traditional ‘science’, measuring external and observable variables (Ashworth, 2003). Whilst other important fields of psychology such as psychoanalysis are based on qualitative psychology methods (such as the narrative case study), and key figures in psychology (for example, Jean Piaget) certainly made use of qualitative observational methods and interviews, it was not really until the 1980s that there was increased focus on the development of qualitative psychology research as a legitimate and defensible method (Madill, 2015).

As the contents of this book clearly demonstrate, qualitative psychology research is an umbrella term and not a single ‘homogenous entity’ (Smith, 2003, p. 2). There are a number of different qualitative research approaches with different perspectives and procedures (we will go on to look at this in more detail in Chapters 2 and 3). What you want to research and your research question will determine what is a suitable method for you (be that a qualitative or a quantitative method, and if a qualitative method which one) – as we discuss in Chapter 2, it is important that your research question is consistent with the approach you are using and vice versa. In this book, we will show how a number of research questions that one may wish to address in applied settings can be usefully and valuably answered using qualitative methods. Next, we will explain what we mean by ‘applied’ psychology and then we will move on to explain the relevance of qualitative psychology in applied settings.

What is ‘applied’ psychology?

So what is ‘applied’ research and how does it differ from other types of research? Notions of an ‘applied science’ originally derive from distinctions made in the natural sciences between ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ research. Traditionally, the notion of ‘applied’ research refers to taking knowledge derived from ‘pure’ or ‘basic’ research and applying it in the wider world beyond the four walls of the scientific laboratory. In this context, it is fairly easy to distinguish between the ‘pure’ and the ‘applied’ in terms of their focus on either the theoretical (refuting or supporting scientific theory) or the experimental (applying and utilising this knowledge).

‘Applied’ psychology is the application of psychological knowledge to solve practical issues and problems in real-world settings. As psychology covers a wide range of different areas, there are many different possible ‘real-world’ settings including health, clinical, educational, occupational, social and community settings. For qualitative psychologists, whose central focus is often on human experience, notions of ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ research can be difficult to reconcile with an essential concern with human beings as meaning-makers. Traditional notions of moving from basic to applied research are often based on reductionism, the idea that we can understand larger systems by reducing them to their constituent parts. For example, understanding an illness in terms of biochemical activity or in terms of genetics may be very helpful indeed in enabling researchers to identify a cure for that illness. However, reductionism can be more problematic when considered in terms of human behaviour and experience. Take the example of religious or mystical experience. Professor Michael Persinger has suggested that stimulation of the temporal lobes (achieved by wearing a piece of apparatus known as ‘the God helmet’) is associated with subjects reporting ‘mystical experience and altered states’ (Persinger et al., 2010). But even if it is possible to identify which particular part of the brain it is that is ‘activated’ in ‘mystical experience’, this doesn’t mean that such experiences are now explained and understood. Others researching mystical experience might suggest that is how one interprets or frames the experience which is the crucial determinant of the perceived nature of the experience. What qualitative research can do is capture what people make of such experiences – how, for example, such an experience might contribute towards or be impacted on by religious identity, as well as consider what other factors might contribute to this. In the United Kingdom, for example, Professor Adrian Coyle has shown how qualitative research can develop useful insights into the psychology of religion (e.g. Coyle, 2008). An important point here is that, especially for those undertaking research in applied settings, there is no such thing as ‘decontextualised’ experience: experience, mystical or otherwise, does not occur in a vacuum. Trying to create a traditionally scientific ‘objective’ setting for our research may well result in us creating a situation so artificial that it has little to tell us about what happens in the ‘real world’ outside of our controlled environment.

For qualitative psychologists, rather than defining ‘applied’ research as a dichotomous alternative to ‘pure’ or ‘basic’ research, we think that a more meaningful distinction can be made in terms of the main focus of a piece of research. This may vary from those studies aimed primarily at addressing academic debates to those with a very pragmatic and practical research focus. Thus, for qualitative research in psychology, one can consider at what point on this ‘academic to practical’ spectrum a particular piece of work is situated, and consider this in dimensional rather than dichotomous terms. This means that we can think about applied qualitative psychology in terms of applying qualitative psychological approaches to practical issues in the world beyond academia. This does not mean that very practically-focused research cannot contribute to academic knowledge: it means thinking about who the research is principally addressing. We believe that for qualitative psychologists whose work involves them taking a ‘hands-on’ approach to pragmatic research questions in real-world settings, it is essential that the methods they use should be able to genuinely incorporate the concerns of those whom the research is intending to help, as well as being accessible and intelligible to its intended audience. We also think that qualitative research has particular utility in applied settings, and we will now move on to explain why.

Why use qualitative methods in applied psychology?

We have briefly introduced what is meant by ‘qualitative psychology’ (more on this in Chapter 2) and ‘applied psychology’. So why might qualitative methods be an appropriate choice in applied settings?

The first point to make is that qualitative methods will not always be the most appropriate choice. As we have already said, different research methods are appropriate for different research questions. As Willig (2013) points out, research questions are best conceptualised in creative terms rather than in any mechanistic sense – your question should be ‘How can I find out about something?’ rather than ‘How can I apply appropriate techniques to this topic?’ What Kinmond (2012) refers to as the ‘So what?’ test (‘Why is this research relevant and what useful knowledge will this research provide?’) is also likely to be especially pertinent in research undertaken in applied settings.

There may be both practical and philosophical reasons for choosing to use qualitative methods in applied psychological research. We have already suggested that qualitative methods can offer a rather different way of thinking about the world compared to quantitative methods, and we will address this in more detail in Chapter 2. Qualitative methods are often appropriate when a researcher is interested in examining a psychology-related topic in an applied setting in depth rather than in breadth. Qualitative methods can help psychologists and others understand particular cases in rich detail, which may very useful in illuminating what is happening in a particular applied setting, and why – they may well be able to help explain what is going on behind the headline numbers and statistics, or why people are behaving in particular ways. For example, we undertook a qualitative study in which we interviewed people who had back pain and their spouses (Brooks et al., 2013). We were interested in finding out why some of our sample had managed to keep working with their condition, whilst others (with a clinically comparable condition) had not. Our findings highlighted ways in which generally under-researched wider social circumstances, including stigmatising socio-cultural beliefs about ‘benefit cheats’ and ‘malingering’, can contribute to different occupational outcomes. We found that people out of work were so anxious about others being sceptical of their back pain condition that they seemed to have become entrenched in a position whereby it was crucial that they were perceived as completely disabled. This presents an obvious tension with accepted clinical recommendations for the management of back pain which emphasise remaining active – in adopting this stance and limiting activity, the chances of any return to work and economic activity become increasingly remote. Qualitative work may be able to usefully highlight potential limitations of mainstream theory and taken for granted assumptions – for example, discursive approaches (such as those used by Kirsty Budds and colleagues in Chapter 9 of this book in their work on ‘older’ mothers) can effectively challenge taken for granted assumptions and discourses, as well as informing and promoting action and change (Willig, 1999). Qualitative methods are also often very useful in applied settings when a research topic is relatively new and unresearched – for example, in exploratory work which is primarily looking to explore phenomena rather than seeking to confirm hypotheses. Qualitative work can generate new, relevant questions for future research (be that qualitative and/or quantitative). In Chapter 4 in this volume, you can find an example of this type of work: Peter Branney and colleagues describe how the one-day workshop events they ran with men with prostate cancer gave the research team the opportunity to learn more about the topic prior to designing a research programme.

As qualitative methods have become more accepted not just in the field of psychology but also more widely, their utility is increasingly recognised in applied settings. In health settings, for example, incorporating patient views is seen as increasingly important by t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on the contributors
• Section 1: Introducing Applied Qualitative Research in Psychology
• Section 2: Real World Examples of Applied Qualitative Research
• Section 3: Issues in Applying Qualitative Psychology in Real World Settings
• Index