Coyle- INTRODUCTION TO QUALITATIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Question 1

What is meant by qualitative research?

Answer 1

At its most basic, qualitative psychological research may be regarded as involving the collection and analysis of non-numerical data through a psychological lens (however we define that) in order to provide rich descriptions and possibly explanations of people’s meaning-making how they make sense of the world and how they experience particular events.

Question 2

What is meant by epistemology? How is this related to qualitative research?

Answer 2

Qualitative research is bound up with particular sets of assumptions about the bases or possibilities for knowledge, in other words epistemology. The term ‘epistemology’ refers to a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the theory of knowledge and that tries to answer questions about how we can know and what we can know. All research approaches and methods are based on a set of epistemological assumptions that specify what kinds of things can be discovered by research which uses those approaches and methods. Different research approaches and methods are asso­ciated with different epistemologies.

Question 3

What branch of philosophy is epistemology often discussed alongside?

Answer 3

ontology, which refers to the assumptions we make about the nature of being, existence or reality

Question 4

What kind of factors can affect which epistemology is adopted by a particular study? (2)

Answer 4

A researcher may have a favoured epistemological outlook or position and may locate their research within this, choosing methods that accord with that position (or that can be made to accord with it). Alternatively, the researcher may be keen to use a particular qualitative method in their research and so they frame their study according to the episte­mology that is usually associated with that method

Question 5

How does the epistemological position picked for the study affect the rest of the report?

Answer 5

Whatever epistemological position is adopted in a study, it is usually desirable to ensure that you maintain this position (with its assumptions about the sort of knowledge that the research is producing) consistently throughout the write-up to help produce a coherent research report. Sometimes a more flexible position on this is needed for example, when using methods

Question 6

experimental approaches or other research approaches adopt an epis­temology that is often taken for granted both in research and in life more generally. What is epistemology? (2 names)

Answer 6

positivist-empiricist and hypothetico-deductive (although positivist and empiricism are slightly different)

Question 7

What is meant by positivism?

Answer 7

Positivism holds that the relationship between the world (that is events, objects and other phenomena) and our sense perception of the world is straightforward: there is a direct correspond between things in the world and our perception of them provided that our perception is not skewed by factors that might damage that correspondence, such as our vested interests in the things we are perceiving.

Question 8

What is meant by empiricism?

Answer 8

The related domain of empiricism holds that our knowledge of the world must arise from the collection and categorisation of our sense perceptions/obser­vations of the world.

Question 9

Why do scientist rarely adopt an unqualified view of positivism or empiricism?

Answer 9

observations and perceptions do not provide pure and direct ‘facts’ about the world.

Question 10

Despite this, what fundamental claim from empiricism is central in research today?

Answer 10

the idea that the development of knowledge requires the collection and analysis of data.

Question 11

“Researchers and students who have been exposed to a traditional methodological socialisation within psychology (especially experimental psychology) will be very familiar with the theory of knowledge that developed in response to the shortcomings of positivism and empiricism “

Name and describe this theory

Answer 11

hypothetico-deductivism; The figure most closely associated with the development of hypothetico-deductivism, Karl Popper (1969), believed that no scientific theory could be definitively verified. Hence, the aim is not to obtain evidence that supports a theory but rather to identify theoretical claims (hypotheses) that are false and ultimately the­ories that are false. Research that adopts a hypothetico-deductive stance therefore operates by developing hypotheses from theories and testing these hypotheses. The assumption is that by identifying false claims, we can develop a clearer sense of the truth.

This approach involves deductive reasoning. In research, this means reasoning which begins with theories, which are refined into hypotheses, which are tested through observations of some sort, which leads to a confirmation or rejection of the hypotheses.

Question 12

What method encapsulates positivism, empiricism and hypothetico-deductivism? What ontological assumption does this employ?

Answer 12

the ‘scientific method’.This assumed that a reality exists independent of the observer (the ontological assumption of realism) and that we can access this reality through research.

Question 13

How does this approach affect how people write up reports?

Answer 13

the.researcher was usually erased from the research process by the use of the passive voice rather than personal pronouns. Hence, rather than saying ‘I developed a questionnaire’ researchers would write ‘A questionnaire was developed’, erasing the agent in the process and creating the impression that the work was ‘untainted’ by human involvement on the researchers side.

Question 14

What assumptions are made in this scientific method in psychology regarding measurement? (2)

Answer 14

Precision measurement was assumed to be possible for any psychological dimension that existed. It was assumed that, through the development of progressively refined tests and measures, any psychological dimension that actually existed could be measured with precision.

Question 15

When is qualitative work used under the scientific method? (2)

Answer 15

As a prerequisite to the “real” research (e.g constructing questionnaires)

Other methods such as content analysis

Question 16

What is content analysis an example of?

Answer 16

small q qualitative research (Kidder and Fine, I987). This is research that uses qualitative tools and techniques but within a hypothetico-deductive framework. In contrast ‘Big Q’ qualitative research refers to the use of qualitative techniques within a qualitative paradigm which rejects notions of objective reality or universal truth and emphasises con­textualised understandings.

Question 17

Distinguish nomothetic research and idiographic research

Answer 17

Nomothetic research approaches seek generalisable findings that uncover laws to explain objective phenomena
idiographic research approaches seek to examine individual cases in detail to understand an outcome.

Question 18

in their 1972 book The Explanation of Social Behaviour, what concerns did Harre and Secord express regarding quantitative research methods in psychology?

Answer 18

They saw this as reflecting a limited, mechanistic understanding of human beings whose complex humanity could never be captured by such an approach to research

Question 19

Why did many women turn to phenominological methods in feminist psychology? What is meant by this?

Answer 19

In a desire to explore women’s experiences on their own terms and to allow women’s voices to be presented without imposing pre-existent, ill-fitting frameworks of meaning, many feminist psychologists turned to qualitative methods that had a phenomenological ) emphasis. Such methods focus on obtaining detailed descriptions of experience as under-stood by

Such methods focus on obtaining detailed descriptions of experience as understood by those who have that experience in order to discern its essence. These methods arc not concerned with producing an objective statement of an experience but rather with obtaining an individual’s personal perception or account of the experience on their own terms.

Question 20

Name and describe an example of this phenomenological form of research

Answer 20

One explicitly feminist qualitative method that was developed was the voice relational method, which has as one of its aims the hearing of voices that have often been suppressed and silenced such as those of adolescent girls (McLean Taylor et al., 1996). It does this through a careful, guided ‘listening’ to transcripts of interviews with those whose voices are not usually listened to and hence who have played no meaningful role within public debate.

Question 21

What form of reasoning do these methods employ?

Answer 21

Inductive; this means reasoning that begins with data, which are examined in light of a study’s research questions. Patterns in the data are discerned and labelled. Some approaches link these patterns to existing theory or use them to create new theory.

Question 22

What name is given to any type of qualitative research that seeks to uncover people’s meanings ? Does this method employ realism?

Answer 22

Any type of qualitative research that seeks to uncover people’s meanings and expe­riences in an inductive way has been described as embodying an ‘experiential’ approach (Braun and Clarke, 2013). Most of these forms of qualitative research have retained the realist commitment of the scientific method to some degree. They assume that a reality exists independent of the observer which can be accessed in some way through research and that participants’ language provides us with a ‘window’ to that reality. This is not a straightfor­ward, unqualified realism: many of these methods have adopted a critical realist outlook which assumes that, while a reality exists independent of the observer, we cannot know that reality with certainty.

Question 23

Both the voice-relational method and IPA permit this critical realism but the major focus for those who wanted to undertake thoroughly critical work was research methods that had a radically different epistemology- what was this epistemology?

Answer 23

Social constructionism- adopts a critical stance towards the taken-for-granted ways in which we understand the world and ourselves, such as the assumption that the categories we use to interpret the world correspond to ‘real’, ‘objective’ entities. From a social constructionist perspective, the ways in which we understand the world and ourselves are built up through social processes, espe­cially through linguistic interactions, and so there is nothing fixed or necessary about them:

Question 24

What form of ontological stance is this?

Answer 24

This is a relativist stance in which ‘reality’ is seen as dependent on the ways we come to know it.

Question 25

What does research conducted with a social constructionist framework look like?

Answer 25

Research conducted within a social constructionist framework focuses on examining the ways of constructing social reality that are available within a particular cultural and historical con­text, the conditions within which these ways of constructing are used and the implications that they hold for human experience and social practice

Question 26

How does this framework contrast with other quantitative frameworks?

Answer 26

Relativism and social constructionism contrast with the ontology and epistemology of other approaches to qualitative research which tend to assume that there is some relationship between the outcome of the analysis of research data and the actualities of which the analysis speaks. Many approaches may see the cor­respondence between the analysis and those experiences as not being an exact one because the men may have forgotten some of the details of what they described or because they engaged in particular self-presentations or because the analysis represents an interaction between the data and the interpretative framework (that is my professional and personal investments in the research) that I brought to bear on the data. Nevertheless, some relationship is usually assumed between the analysis and truth or reality from these realist and critical realist perspectives. From a social constructionist perspective data on emotions are not seen as reflecting some reality about emotions. Instead they are seen as accounts that construct emotions in particular ways and that use ‘emotion talk, to perform particular social functions.

Question 27

What is meant by reflexivity?

Answer 27

Reflexivity refers to the acknowledgement by the researcher of the role played by their interpretative framework or speaking position (including theoretical commitments, personal understandings and personal experiences) in creating their analytic account.

Question 28

How does reflexivity differ in qualitative and quantitative research?

Answer 28

The role of the researcher’s interpretative framework in generating data and producing the anal­ysis is often regarded as a contaminating factor in most quantitative research particularly the personal aspects of that framework. In contrast, many qualitative methods are characterised by an expectation that the researcher will make explicit their speaking position.

Question 29

When are these personal reflections often used and when are they not, in regards to the purpose of the article?

Answer 29

While personal reflections can and should be included in student research reports, it is usually a different matter when writing for publication. Relatively few academic journals carry articles that feature analyses that include consistent personal reflections.

Question 30

Positivist-empiricist, hypothetico-deductive, quantitative psychological research tends to be assessed in terms of what criteria?

Answer 30

reliability and internal and external validity. These rely on an assumption of objectivity - that the researcher and the research topic can be independent of each other. Hence the aim in this research paradigm is to limit researcher ‘bias’, with ‘bias’ being defined in terms of deviation from some definitive truth or fact

Question 31

What seven criteria did Elliott et al. (1999) develop that are considered common to qualitative and quantitative methods?

Answer 31

• Explicit scientific context and purpose
• Appropriate methods
• Respect for participants
• Specification of methods
• Appropriate discussion
• Clarity of presentation
• Contribution to knowledge

Question 32

What seven criteria did Elliott et al. (1999) develop that are more tailored to qualitative methods?

Answer 32

• Owning one’s perspective
• Situating the sample
• Grounding in examples
• Providing credibility checks
• Coherence
• Accomplishing general versus specific research tasks
• Resonating with readers

Question 33

What four looser criteria did Yardley (2000) develop that are more tailored to qualitative methods?

Answer 33

• Sensitivity to context
• Commitment and rigour
• Transparency and coherence
• Impact and importance

Question 34

What is meant by the criteria “sensitivity to context”?

Answer 34

Among other matters, the research should make clear the context of theory and the understandings created by previ­ous researchers using similar methods and/or analysing similar topics; the socio-cultural setting of the study (for example, the ideological, historical and socio-economic influences on the beliefs, expectations and talk of all participants, including the researchers); and the social context of the relationship between the researchers and the participants

Question 35

What is meant by the criteria of commitment and rigour?

Answer 35

‘Commitment’ is said to involve demonstrating prolonged engagement with the research topic and ‘rigour’ relates to the completeness of the data collection and analysis.

Question 36

What is involved in the transparency and coherence criteria?

Answer 36

Transparency’ entails detailing every aspect of the processes of data collection and analy­sis and disclosing/discussing all aspects of the research process; ·coherence’ refers to the quality of the research narrative, the ‘fit’ between the research question and the philosophi­cal perspective adopted, and the method of investigation and analysis undertaken.

Question 37

What is involved in the impact and importance criteria?

Answer 37

impact and importance relate to the theoretical, practical and socio-cultural impact of the study.

Question 38

generic evaluative criteria risks having qualitative studies evaluated by criteria that do not suit the particular form of qualitative research they have employed. What solution is there to this?

Answer 38

This assumes, however, that the researcher exerts no control over the criteria that are applied to their work. The evaluative schemes that have been suggested should be seen as giving the researcher a range of credible criteria that have been tested through usage. The researcher can select those criteria that are most appropriate to their study, Justify their choice of criteria and allow readers to assess that rationale and, if they agree, evaluate the study using those criteria.

Question 39

What important criteria is usually involved in the impact and importance criteria?

Answer 39

The “so what “ question (practical implications)

Question 40

What challenge is posed by mixing both qualitative and quantitative methods?

Answer 40

Integrating qualitative and quantitative findings that may have been generated by approaches and methods based on quite different epistemo­logical assumptions. Ifwe see integration as requiring all the findings from a research project to be united within one framework, that will be difficult to achieve.