The Craft of Qualitative Longitudinal Research

The craft of researching lives through time

Bren Neale

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781473995444, 9781473995437
• eBook ISBN: 9781526455147
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Research & Methodology in Psychology
• Index: Social Sciences

Brimming with life maps, life history calendars, and extracts from transcripts and diaries, this book illustrates by example the unique principles, challenges, and applications of qualitative longitudinal research.

Synthesizing current literature on qualitative longitudinal research, it brings together sociological theory and empirically driven longitudinal studies while also highlighting a range of possible research approaches. With a consistent balance of conceptual discussions with hands-on advice, it provides readers with the foundation to adapt lessons-learned from other researchers to fit their own qualitative longitudinal studies.

Supported by research tools such as conceptual road maps, short data extracts, consent forms, and other data organization tools, this book provides everything postgraduate researchers need to transition from the classroom to the field. 

Part 1 Introducing Qualitative Longitudinal Research

The opening chapters in this book explore the methodological foundations for QL research, focusing in particular on its history and development, its conceptual underpinnings, and the ways in which QL theory and method are intertwined. Overall, the chapters trace the development of key interpretive, temporal and processual ideas, from the early 20^th century through to the present day, thereby locating QL methodology within established bodies of theoretical knowledge.

Chapter 1 (Qualitative Longitudinal Research: Mapping the Field) establishes the distinctive features of this mode of research, and traces its historical development as a form of real-time (longitudinal) and real-world (qualitative) enquiry. Its place within the broad canons of longitudinal enquiry and socio-historical research is mapped out here. In the process, the distinctive ways in which QL research engages with temporal processes, its capacity to ‘walk alongside’ people, to mirror the flux of the world and ‘follow reality in all its windings’ (Bergson 1946 [1903]) comes into sharper focus.

Chapter 2 (Time and the Processual Turn: Fluid Enquiry) establishes the place of QL research in the interpretivist tradition of social research. Human agency, subjectivity and lived experiences are central sources of explanation, enabling an understanding of real world processes ‘from the inside’. QL research is also part of a broad processual ‘turn’ in social enquiry, which has brought a shift in focus from the form that social pheonomena take, their structural components, to their relational and dynamic elements. As key thinkers such as Bergson and E. P. Thompson saw, it is the dynamic relationship between things that matters, not the things in themselves. More specifically, the chapter explores the temporal underpinnings for QL research, highlighting time not simply as a ‘fixed’ linear entity, but as a fluid, non-linear and experiential phenomenon. Re-thinking time in this way transforms our understanding of change, continuity and causality. Causality emerges here as a complex phenomenon, with multiple, fluid and relational dimensions. Throughout, the value of QL research as a mode of fluid enquiry, with the capacity to discern how complex causal processes unfold, is clarified.

In Chapter 3 (Time and the Life Course) the rich ideas on fluid time and complex causality developed in Chapter 2 are applied to the empirical study of life course processes. This field of enquiry is particularly well suited to the application of longitudinal methodologies. How biographies and collective biographies are shaped are important questions for QL researchers. The discussion introduces three temporal horizons, turning points, transitions and trajectories, which are commonly used to trace how lives unfold. The intersecting nature of these temporal constructs is explored. The chapter concludes with a broader consideration of how time, as a theoretical construct, can be woven into empirical enquiry. Five intersecting flows of time, or timescapes, are outlined here as a conceptual tool kit that researchers can draw upon to craft their own studies. Establishing the methodological credentials of QL research in these chapters creates a bridge between temporal theory and method. The overall aim is to provide a solid conceptual foundation upon which QL research design and practice can be built.

1 Qualitative Longitudinal Research: Mapping the Field

Key Points

• Defining qualitative longitudinal research: QL research follows the same individuals or groups in real-time as their lives unfold, turning a diachronic ‘snapshot’ of social life into a longitudinal ‘movie’. The methodology is grounded in an interpretive, processual logic of enquiry: longitudinal methods that follow participants through time are combined with in-depth, narrative, ethnographic and/or case study methods that give insights into lived experiences. This creates an intimate, up-close-and-personal movie.
• The development of QL research: QL research is part of the longitudinal canon, but has evolved over the decades from three main fields of socio-historical research: longitudinal ethnographies carried out by anthropologists; community re-studies carried out by sociologists; and biographical studies (life history, oral history and narrative studies) that merge sociological, historical and humanistic insights. The methodology is commonly employed in studies of people who are the focus of health, social care or welfare concern; in studies of life course transitions; and in studies of change management processes in organisations and groups.
• QL studies may be conceived and developed in varied ways. They may take the form of prospective QL studies, designed from the outset as processual, through-time studies. Alternatively, they may opportunistically follow up earlier ‘snapshot’ studies to create QL re-studies; or they may take the form of nested QL studies, which are embedded within a large-scale, longitudinal survey. Designs vary in their scale, intensity and longitudinal reach.
• QL research is both prospective (forward looking) and retrospective (backward looking). Both prospective and retrospective lenses are needed in the generation and analysis of QL data. Cases may also be followed intensively through regular or frequent visits to the field, or extensively through ‘punctuated’ revisits. These two tempos may be combined as a study unfolds. QL research is rooted in a micro-understanding of the unfolding lives of individuals. The wider socio-historical contexts in which these processes occur are an important part of the picture.

Introduction

In the first decade of the 21st century … what was an area of work scarcely acknowledged beyond groups of committed oral historians, occasional sociologists, auto/biographers and ethnographers has become a vast and constantly changing and expanding ferment of creative work … [that] thrive[s] on invention. (Bornat 2008: 344)

In our opening quotation, a leading oral historian reflects on the rapid and creative development of biographical forms of socio-historical research since the turn of the millennium. Much the same could be said for the way QL enquiry has evolved and flourished over the past two decades. The aim of this introductory chapter is to map out and delineate the contemporary field of QL research, and to trace its development through varied strands of socio-historical scholarship over the past century. In the process, its distinctive features are highlighted.

The discussion begins with longitudinal and life course research, and goes on to consider a range of studies that make up the broad field of qualitative socio-historical studies: longitudinal ethnographies, socio-historical re-studies, and biographical enquiry (life history, oral history and narrative research). The differences between these fields are more a matter of disciplinary tradition than strong methodological divisions. Since they are not static or set in stone, there is scope for a creative blending of approaches over time.

Engaging with Time: Key Dimensions

All temporal research constructs a moving picture of social processes, turning a frozen moment in time, a ‘snapshot’ of social life, into a ‘movie’ (Leisering and Walker 1998: 265; see also Giele and Elder 1998; Berthoud 2000; Weis 2004). While a snapshot is created synchronically, in the moment, a qualitative movie develops diachronically, telling an unfolding story through time. However, temporal movies can be created in a rich variety of ways. How they are produced and what they tell us about social processes vary across different disciplinary traditions. Their similarities and differences stem from their engagement with three planes of time that are set out in Box 1.1.

Box 1.1 Foundational Planes of Time

Prospective–Retrospective (Past, Present, Future)

This plane of time is concerned with how people orient themselves to the past, present and future: either prospectively (looking forward), retrospectively (looking back), or both. In its purest form, longitudinal research is prospective: it follows the same people in real-time, capturing changes and continuities as they occur and anticipating them in the future. A retrospective approach, on the other hand, explores dynamic processes through hindsight, a gaze backwards in time from the vantage point of the present day. In QL research, the temporal gaze is directed back and forward in time, oscillating between the two. Both of these temporal lenses are essential in the generation and analysis of QL data.

Intensive–Extensive (Time Frames and Tempos)

This plane of time is concerned with the time frames or duration of temporal processes, alongside the tempo of events, their spacing and regularity, and whether they occur intensively over the short term, or extensively over longer-term horizons. For our purposes in this volume, the time frame of a QL study reflects the overall time span through which it is conducted, while its tempo reflects the number, spacing, frequency and duration of visits to the field. Taken together, time frames and tempos constitute the longitudinal frame for a QL study. A spectrum of approaches may be discerned: cases may be traced intensively via frequent or continuous visits to the field; or they may be traced extensively through regular, occasional or ‘punctuated’ revisits over many years or decades (Burawoy 2003). In QL research, these two tempos may be combined as a study evolves.

Micro–Macro (Scales of Time)

Events and experiences unfold at different scales of the social fabric (personal, interpersonal, institutional, biographical, generational, historical). Any rounded analysis of unfolding processes will need to explore how different facets of the social fabric, operating within different domains of experience, intersect; how, for example, lived experiences mesh with, and unfold against, a backdrop of shifting policy processes. This requires creative approaches to research design and sampling. Understanding the micro–macro plane through a temporal lens is vital. The relationship between agency and structure, biography and history is essentially dynamic: it is only through time that we can understand how these different scales of the social fabric are interconnected, and how they come to be transformed. In QL enquiry, wider socio-historical processes are anchored in and understood through the unfolding lives of individuals and groups.

The planes of time outlined in Box 1.1 form core elements in a framework for mapping and visualising time that is set out in Chapter 3. They can be designed into QL research in flexible and creative ways, as Chapter 4 will show. QL researchers are likely to gaze both forward and backward in time, enabling a more nuanced understanding of dynamic processes, and they may combine intensive and extensive tempos in their research designs. In mapping the field of QL research, this chapter illustrates how temporal researchers use these flows of time in their study designs. The exercise begins with a consideration of longitudinal and life course research, before going on to consider the broad canon of qualitative socio-historical studies.

Longitudinal and Life Course Studies

Longitudinal research, whether quantitative or qualitative, has a prospective design: it produces ‘movies’ that unfold in real-time, charting dynamic processes as they occur. Prospective tracking is commonly combined with a retrospective gathering of data on past times (Scott and Alwin 1998). While the focus of enquiry may straddle individuals, collectives or wider socio-historical processes, the purest form of these studies is the panel design, which follows the same individuals, households or other collectives (a longitudinal ‘panel’ of participants) as their lives unfold (Ruspini 2002: 4). A panel study is synonymous with, and a good short hand for, a prospective longitudinal study.

The alternative is a recurrent cross-sectional design that recruits different cohorts at each wave and interviews them just once. To give one example, a mixed methods longitudinal study of 20 social housing estates in the UK, conducted over 25 years, involved four waves of visits and interviews that were carried out in 1982, 1988, 1994 and 2005 (Tunstall and Coulter 2006). Data were gathered via observations, in-depth interviews with local housing managers and senior local authority officials, joint discussions with resident groups, and brief street interviews with random local residents. Supplementary legacy data (census returns, local housing policy documents, and so on) also informed the study and were analysed after each wave. The result was a series of snapshots that revealed changes in the nature of the housing associations at each point in time. Standard community-based re-studies commonly utilise this design (see below).

Such studies generate time series data, often gathered over relatively extensive periods of time, that can discern broad patterns of change at an aggregate or population level, but not at the micro-level of individual biographies (Ruspini 2002: 4; Grossoehme and Lipstein 2016; discussed further in Box 10.6). A useful distinction between this approach and panel designs is provided by Abbott (1995b), who uses the metaphor of a school of fish swimming in a lake (the ‘variable’ space). The recurrent cross-sectional approach explores changes in the composition and shape of the whole school of fish at each point in time. The panel approach, in contrast, looks at the paths of the individual fish over several time periods (Abbott 1995b: 206). While both forms of longitudinal design yield insights into dynamic processes (and may be effectively combined; see Box 4.9), the biographical continuity offered by panel designs gives unique insights into processes of change and continuity within the life course, between generations and through history (Elliott 2005; Neale et al. 2012). They also allow wider processes of social change to be anchored in and understood through the changing lives of individuals and small groups. These panel designs are the main focus of this book.

The life course is a central organising framework for the conduct of longitudinal panel studies. This is explored in more detail in Chapter 3, but some salient points are drawn out here. As the name implies, the focus is on how the course of a life unfolds through time. This can be understood biologically (an age-related process from birth to death) and biographically (how a life is individually crafted and socially constructed from cradle to grave). It can also be understood collectively (how lives are shaped, socially and institutionally, within and across the generations), historically (the chronological times into which people are born and live out their lives) and geographically (the places and local cultures that give shape and form to unfolding lives). In other words, while individual biography is integral to life course research, so too is a concern with how lives unfold collectively, and how individual and collective lives shape and, in turn, are shaped by wider socio-historical processes (Elder 1994; Elder and Giele 2009).

The life course is a vital lynchpin for discerning the links between biography and history. The impetus for exploring these dual processes and their complex intersections was provided by Wright Mills (1959), who saw this as the central challenge of the sociological imagination. His concern was to translate the personal troubles of biography into public issues of history and society:

Neither the life of an individual, nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both. … We cannot hope to understand society unless we have a prior understanding of the relationship between biography and history … [the task is to] continually work out and revise your views on the problems of history, the problems of biography and the problems of social structure in which biography and history intersect. (Wright Mills 1959: 3, 225)

It is generally accepted among life course researchers that the complex intersection of these factors is best understood through a longitudinal lens. Yet, teasing out the varied factors that shape unfolding lives across the micro–macro plane is also a perennial challenge (see Chapter 3). How life course research is approached depends on how these micro–macro domains are understood, and the relative priority accorded to them, creating a diverse and amorphous field of study (Neale 2015).

Quantitative Longitudinal Research

Thus far, our discussion has focused on features that are common to longitudinal enquiry, whether quantitative or qualitative. While both are prospective in their orientation to time, they operate at different scales, tempos and time frames of enquiry. This produces different kinds of movie. Quantitative longitudinal survey, cohort and panel studies began to develop in the United States in the late 1920s, primarily in the fields of medicine and child development, although on a relatively small scale (for overviews of developments, see Phelps et al. 2002, Ruspini 2002 and Pearson 2016). Regardless of their precise scale, quantitative longitudinal studies chart changes in broad patterns of social behaviour through the generation of big ‘thin’ data that can be analysed statistically, using event history modelling and other techniques (Elliott et al. 2008).

The scale of such studies varies: a community-based study will recru...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Acknowledgements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Acknowledgements
• Table of Contents
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1 Introducing Qualitative Longitudinal Research
• 1 Qualitative Longitudinal Research: Mapping the Field
• 2 Time and the Processual Turn: Fluid Enquiry
• 3 Time and the Life Course
• Part 2 Crafting Qualitative Longitudinal Research
• 4 Design and Sampling in Qualitative Longitudinal Research
• 5 Longitudinal Ethics: Walking Alongside
• 6 Generating Qualitative Longitudinal Data
• Part 3 Journeys with Data
• 7 Managing Qualitative Longitudinal Data: Ethics and Practicalities
• 8 Working with Legacy Data: Ethics and Practicalities
• 9 Qualitative Longitudinal Analysis: Basic Strategies
• 10 Cases and Themes in Qualitative Longitudinal Analysis
• 11 Process and Synthesis in Qualitative Longitudinal Analysis
• Part 4 Conclusion
• 12 Looking Back, Looking Forward: The Value of Qualitative Longitudinal Research
• Glossary
• References
• Index