Ch 2 Epistemological Bases For Qualitative Research

Question 1

Broadly speaking qualitative researchers can aim to create three types of knowledge they are?

Answer 1

Realist knowledge, phenomenological knowledge and social constructionist knowledge

Question 2

Qualitative researchers can use qualitative research methods in order to obtain an accurate picture of (some aspects of) what?

Answer 2

This social world or human psychology

Question 3

An example of qualitative research concerned with understanding a social process might be?

Answer 3

A study that investigates what happens when a new member joins an established reading group

Question 4

An example of research concerned with psychological processes might be?

Answer 4

A study of the way in which people who lost a parent at an early age approach intimate relationships.

Question 5

Realist aspirations to knowledge generation range from what is sometimes referred to as …. to more …varieties.

Answer 5

Naive to more critical varieties.

Question 6

Naive realist approaches, assume?

Answer 6

That there is a relatively uncomplicated and direct relationship between what the research can see (the data, the evidence) and what is really going on (the reality we want to understand).

Question 7

If we want to find out how people make decisions about whether or not to have an HIV antibody test and we interviewed individuals who have recently made such a decision, a naive realist approach would suggest?

Answer 7

That we take our participants accounts at face value and that we accept that the accounts constitute accurate descriptions of how they made the decision.

Question 8

Thinking about the example of the HIV antibody test in terms of naive realistic approaches the task of the research would therefore be?

Answer 8

(1) to ensure that participants feel safe and comfortable enough to provide the researcher with accurate and detailed accounts, and
(2) to analyse the accounts in such a way as to produce a clear and systematic model of the decision making process.

Question 9

What is an argument of the naive realistic approach?

Answer 9

That this approach lacks depth and sophistication and should therefore be avoided.

Question 10

What is the authors argument against the opinion that the naive realistic approach should be avoided?

Answer 10

That there is some very valuable research which aims to give voice to otherwise marginalised individuals and communities and which is underpinned by the assumption that what participants are telling the researcher about their experiences e.g. of suffering, of exploitation, of oppression reflects social reality which needs to be exposed, acknowledged and understood.

Question 11

A less value-laden term for the naive realistic approach is perhaps?

Answer 11

Direct realism.

Question 12

A critical realist approach differs from the more direct or naive version in that assumes that?

Answer 12

That although our data can tell us something about what is going on in the real world it does not do so in a self-evident unmediated fashion.

Question 13

A critical realist approach does not assume that our data constitutes a direct reflection of what is going on in the world rather, it proposes that?

Answer 13

That the data needs to be interpreted in order to further our understanding of the underling structures which generate the phenomenon we are trying to gain knowledge about.

Question 14

From a critical realist approach, if you want to find out why people smoke cigarettes it might not be enough to ask people why they think they smoke and except their answers at face value. From a critical realist perspective it may be necessary to?

Answer 14

It may be necessary to dig deeper and to interpret what the smokers have told the researchers in order to try to identify factors or forces beyond the individual smokers knowledge and or control which drive their smoking behaviour.

Question 15

What is the aim of the phenomenological approach?

Answer 15

Here, the aim of the research is to produce knowledge about the subjective experience of research participants.

Question 16

Phenomenological research is concerned with the quality and texture of experience, with?

Answer 16

With what it is like to have the experience.

Question 17

In terms of the phenomenological approach, we might for example, want to find out how a participant experiences the process of going through a divorce. Finding that a participant experiences himself as rejected by the whole world for example, constitutes phenomenological knowledge irrespective of?

Answer 17

Irrespective of whether or not the participant really is being rejected by everyone he encounters.

Question 18

The aim of research using the phenomenological approach aims to get as close as possible to the research participants experience and to enter the experimental world by?

Answer 18

By stepping into their shoes and looking at the world through their eyes.

Question 19

The role of the researcher within the phenomenological approach context resembles that of?

Answer 19

That of a person-centred counsellor who listens to the client’s account of their experience empathically, with an attitude of unconditional positive regard, and without questioning the external validity of what the client is saying.

Question 20

True or false there are differences in the extent to which phenomenological research concerns itself with the possible meaning (as well as the texture and quality) of experience?

Answer 20

True

Question 21

Phenomenological approaches to knowledge generation range from?

Answer 21

Range from descriptive to interpretive varieties.

Question 22

Finish this sentence. Descriptive phenomenology is concerned with capturing experience….?

Answer 22

Capturing experience precisely as it presents itself, neither adding nor subtracting from it.

Question 23

True or false ,an interpretive phenomenological approach take accounts of experience entirely at face value?

Answer 23

False.

Question 24

An interpretive phenomenological approach seeks to also understand the meaning of account an of experience by stepping outside of the account and …?

Answer 24

And reflecting upon its status as an account and its wider (social, cultural, psychological) meanings.

Question 25

According to an interpretive phenomenological approach if you wanted to gain a better understanding, for example,of the experiences of women who have tried and failed to conceive with the help of IVF treatment, we could start by producing a description of the experience based on the women’s own accounts which capture its quality and texture and which portrays its structure and essence. We could then attempt to share further light on the phenomenon by relating it to Its wide context, for example, by?

Answer 25

By reflecting on the social and economic structures within which women experience reproduction and all the social and cultural expectations and norms which prevail at the time of data collection.

Question 26

True or false interpretive phenomenologist believe that it is possible to produce a pure description of experience and that descriptions don’t need a certain amount of interpretation?

Answer 26

False

Question 27

What approach would you use if you’re asking questions about the true nature of a social or psychological events?

Answer 27

The realist approach to knowledge

Question 28

What approach would you be using if you were asking questions about that the actual quality of experiences?

Answer 28

Phenomenological approach

Question 29

What approach would you be using if you were interested in the way people talk about the world and their experiences?

Answer 29

The social constructionist approach

Question 30

What approach would you be using if you were interested in the way people talk about the world and their experiences?

Answer 30

The social constructionist approach

Question 31

Fill in the missing words. A social constructionist researcher would be concerned with the social construction of …. Itself and how people construct versions of …. through the use of …. .

Answer 31

Knowledge
Reality
Language

Question 32

For social constructionist the type of knowledge aspired to is not knowledge about the world or knowledge about how things really are or even about how they are experienced by individuals but rather knowledge about the ?

Answer 32

About the process by which such knowledge is constructed in the first place.

Question 33

True or false. language plays an important part in the social construction of what we regard as knowledge?

Answer 33

True

Question 34

Qualitative researchers who adopt a social constructionist orientation to knowledge generation tend to study what?

Answer 34

Discourses.

Question 35

A researcher with a social constructionist orientation might analyse the language used in policy documents in order to understand how something like ‘antisocial behaviour’ is constructed within these documents. What may be of particular interest to a psychologist of a qualitative social constructionist orientation?

Answer 35

How these documents construct those who are presented as a target of proposed interventions and how constructions position them (e.g. in relation to other people, the law, The Police etc).

Question 36

The social constructionist perspective is often described as?

Answer 36

Relativist.

Question 37

Why is the social constructionist perspective often described as relativist?

Answer 37

Because it rejects the idea that objects events and even experiences precede and inform our descriptions of them, a social construction perspective replaces the notion of description with that of construction because it argues that language is a form of social action which constructs versions of reality for particular purposes.

Question 38

True or false not all social constructionist researchers would describe themselves as a relativist. There are more or less radical strands of social construction with social construction approaches to knowledge production ranging from radical to more moderate versions.

Answer 38

True

Question 39

The radical version of social constructionist research tends to be particularly concerned with what?

Answer 39

Particularly concerned with the ways in which speakers within very specific social contexts deploy discursive resources in order to achieve a particular interactional objective.

Question 40

The radical social constructionist researcher It’s not interested in a participants experiences or how they may feel or think about it. This researcher assumes that participants will construct different versions of events depending upon what?

Answer 40

Depending upon the social context within which they find themselves.

Question 41

The radical social constructionist researcher assumes that participants will construct different versions of events depending upon what?

Answer 41

Depending upon the social context within which they find themselves.

Question 42

In terms of a radical social constructionist orientation, a socially constructed ‘reality’ does not survive the context within which it has been constructed because?

Answer 42

Because a different ‘reality’ will need to be constructed to suit the next context.

Question 43

Finish this sentence, radical social constructionist researchers aim to understand how and why discursive objects and positions are constructed in particular ways within particular contexts, and …

Answer 43

What they achieve within those contexts e.g. how they may serve the interests of the speakers in a conversation.

Question 44

Finish this sentence. The radical social constructionist researcher is only interested in a particular reality constructed for the purpose of …

Answer 44

For the purpose of a specific conversation (The example used in the textbook refers to when people are introducing themselves at their first psychotherapy appointment.)

Question 45

More moderate approaches to social constructionist research seek to make connections between the discursive construction of a particular localised reality and …

Answer 45

The wider socio cultural context within which this takes place.

Question 46

Radical social constructionist emphasise the flexibility and variability in peoples use of discursive resources as to construct the social realities which suits their needs at a particular moment in time. For more moderate social constructionists, what then is their focus?

Answer 46

More moderate social constructionist focus on the wider social contexts and the way in which this shapes and constrains what can be said, how and when, by individual uses of discourse within specific social contexts.

Question 47

Although the realist approach, the phenomenological approach ,and social constructionist approach to knowledge generation adopt quite different perspectives on how to increase our understanding of social and or psychological phenomena, they are not not necessarily mutually exclusive. It is possible to combine different qualitative methodologies even those which subscribe to different epistemological positions, such an approach has come to be known as?

Answer 47

Methodological pluralism

Question 48

Pluralistic realistic qualitative research recognises that a dataset can tell us about a number of different things depending on?

Answer 48

The questions we ask of it.

Question 49

Using a pluralistic approach, a researcher is interested in what happens when someone is diagnosed with a terminal illness. The first approach applied is a direct approach where the researcher assumes what the participants are telling him or her about their experience reflects what actually happened to them when diagnosed with terminal illness. What kind of approach is?

Answer 49

A realist approach

Question 50

Using a pluralistic approach, a researcher is interested in what happens when someone is diagnosed with a terminal illness. The researcher first applied a realist approach but is now interested in the subjective experience? The texture and quality of the experience of being diagnosed with a terminal illness What kind of approach is?

Answer 50

Phenomenological approach

Question 51

A pluralistic approach to qualitative research Is based on the assumption that human experiences complex, multilayered and multifaceted and that therefore?

Answer 51

That therefore a methodology which is equally complex multilayered and multifaceted is perhaps the most suitable way to find out more about it