Research Lectures

Question 1

What does qualitative look into the most?

Answer 1

Talk and text

Question 2

What do qualitative approaches result in?

Answer 2

Developing a contextualised understanding of people

Question 3

What psychology’s is qualitative research associated with?

Answer 3

Social, humanistic, critical and applied psychology

Question 4

What does qualitative research recognise?

Answer 4

Social, cultural and historical

Question 5

What does qualitative research look into a lot of the time?

Answer 5

1. Identity and the self
2. Interaction and relationships
3. Interventions and practice

Question 6

What is social constructionism?

Answer 6

We live in a world of shared but changing ideas which frame our individual lives and relationships

Question 7

What is reflexivity?

Answer 7

Requires researchers to think of their role as a researcher and how their personal opinions affect the research - critical awareness of our values and assumptions

Question 8

What are the systematic approaches to doing qualitative research?

Answer 8

1. Content analysis - can be either qualitative or quantitative
2. Grounded theory
3. Narrative analysis
4. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA)
5. Discourse analysis

Question 9

What is thematic analysis?

Answer 9

A way of systematically identifying meanings, a process of interpretation of those meanings and by developing themes we represent the data

Question 10

What are codes a process of?

Answer 10

Breaking down the data - to recognise similar ideas and use these similar ideas to create themes across the data

Question 11

Coding =?

Answer 11

Systematic interpretation

Question 12

What happens in first round of coding?

Answer 12

Can be descriptive and continues the familiarisation phase

Question 13

What happens in the second round of coding?

Answer 13

Develops meaning - becomes more interpretive

Question 14

Where does coding and thematic analysis fit into psychology?

Answer 14

1970s - constructionist ideas and concerns about experimental social psychology
Crisis in social psychology (Parker 1989)

Question 15

What was the result of the revolution in psychology

Answer 15

Coding

Question 16

How do we know what people think about life and events?

Answer 16

We could measure their attitude about the topic or generate some data for a qualitative analysis

Question 17

What is an attitude?

Answer 17

Mental and neural state of readiness

Question 18

Instead of a scale, coding processes allow what…

Answer 18

Allow us to listen to people and see how they talk and write about things to understand how they are constructed

Question 19

What happens in the layers of coding?

Answer 19

Each coding layer becomes more organised
1st - primarily descriptive
2nd - interpretative - capturing meaning by sorting
3rd - overarching patterns to create psychological understanding (themes)

Question 20

How is thematic coding coded?

Answer 20

Top down - often theoretically informed and used when you are seeking specific language

Question 21

What does semantic mean?

Answer 21

Surface meaning ‘what is said’

Question 22

What is latent?

Answer 22

Hidden meaning

Question 23

Does coding use semantic or latent coding?

Answer 23

Depends on the research question - psychology usually moves from semantic into latent meaning

Question 24

What is the first round of coding?

Answer 24

Semantic

Question 25

What are subsequent rounds of coding

Answer 25

Semantic and latent

Question 26

What is a theme?

Answer 26

A pattern of shared meaning, underpinned by a central concept

Question 27

What should a theme be representative of?

Answer 27

The dataset as a whole

Question 28

What is internal homogeneity?

Answer 28

Data within themes should be clearly orientated around the organising concept

Question 29

What is external homogeneity?

Answer 29

There are clear and identifiable distinctions between different themes

Question 30

3 problems with reviewing using collaged data

Answer 30

1. Mismatch - where what you say the theme is about is not represented by the data
2. Overlap - where you are too attached to candidate theme to combine / remove them
3. Lack of internal consistency - themes are not organised around a central concept

Question 31

What can writing a definition about your theme tell you?

Answer 31

The theme works
The theme is too thin and there isn’t enough to write about
The theme is too dense and there is too much going on