Qualitative studies (Psychology)

Behind supervisory doors: Taught Masters dissertation students as qualitative apprentices

by Alasdair Gordon-Finlayson

Maunder, R.E., Gordon-Finlayson, A.R., Callaghan, J. & Roberts, A.  (2012).  Behind supervisory doors: Taught Masters dissertation students as qualitative apprentices.  Psychology Learning and Teaching, 11(1), pp.30-38.

In this paper we explore the supervision of Masters students undertaking qualitative research dissertations.... more In this paper we explore the supervision of Masters students undertaking qualitative research dissertations. Specifically, we present a model for theorising the nature of the supervisory relationship established with students who are relative newcomers to the qualitative research community. By drawing on reflections from our own practice and situating this within a broader context of the Community of Practice approach to learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991), we argue that the supervision of qualitative Masters dissertations can be seen as an apprenticeship into qualitative research, whereby students begin to take on the identity of a qualitative researcher. Adopting such a model requires that we re-conceptualise how supervisors work with their supervisees, how we prepare students for the requirements of the dissertation, and develop strategies to facilitate their transition from novice to expert. In this paper we explore how we might integrate theoretical and practical concerns in applying the apprentice model to Masters dissertation  supervision, considering the advantages and limitations of such a model.

On psychology and embodiment: some methodological experiments

by john cromby

Social psychology and the empirical body: Rethinking the relationship

by john cromby

Although social science work on the body has demonstrated its thorough socialisation, social psychology has barely... more Although social science work on the body has demonstrated its thorough socialisation, social psychology has barely recognised the mutual interdependence of the physical body and the social world. Accordingly, we propose that social psychology might be enriched and extended by detailed investigation of changes in the activity of the empirical body alongside processes of meaning-making during social interaction. We illustrate our proposal with a case study of changes in blood pressure during conversation, explored in conjunction with analyses using four discursive frames: gaining voice; identity negotiation; joint action/knowing of the third kind; positioning theory. We argue that this approach challenges the artificial separation of social psychology from other sub-disciplines, might inform social psychological analyses of emotion and belief, and allows it to address substantive topics, such as psychopathology, which it typically largely excludes.

Image analysis: An inter-active approach to compositional elements

by Vlad Glaveanu

Co-authored with Derek Hook; forthcoming in Qualitative Research in Psychology

This article proposes an inter-active approach to the analysis of compositional elements of still visuals. This... more This article proposes an inter-active approach to the analysis of compositional elements of still visuals. This approach stems from the argument that the rhetorical efficiency of images is related less to their content per se than to how this content is displayed and organised. As such, we start from the premise that images are ‘active’, performing the visual equivalent of speech-acts (i.e. ‘image-acts’) through which they construct the world and impact upon their viewers. In their turn, the audiences of an image participate in interpreting its meaning and responding to its particular ‘action’. This leads us to formulate a method based on the active engagement of researchers with the image at hand. We suggest a classification of compositional elements and identify ways in such elements can be analyzed and interpreted, casting light thus on the range of rhetorical and ideological effects that images so often achieve.

Keywords: image analysis, image-acts, inter-active method, compositional elements

Affecting Qualitative Health Psychology

by john cromby

Health Psychology Review 5,1, 79-96 (2011)

The ‘affective turn’ is a contemporary movement within the humanities, social science and psychology to investigate... more The ‘affective turn’ is a contemporary movement within the humanities, social science and psychology to investigate affect, emotion and feeling as hybrid phenomena jointly constituted from both biological and social influences. Health and illness are themselves jointly constituted in this way, and many of the topics, concerns and methods of health psychology are strongly permeated by affective phenomena. Qualitative research in health psychology might therefore benefit by engaging with this work. This paper describes some features of the affective turn, and suggests theories, terminology and methods that might be useful.

Amedeo Giorgi and Psychology as a Human Science

by Marc Applebaum

Published 2011 in NeuroQuantology 9(3)

Over the course of the last fifty years Amedeo Giorgi has played a leading role in the movement to redirect... more Over the course of the last fifty years Amedeo Giorgi has played a leading role in the movement to redirect psychological research from an imitation of the natural sciences toward a human science paradigm. He founded the first phenomenological psychological research program in the United Stated at Duquesne University, and continued his development of phenomenological psychology at Saybrook Graduate School. Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological method is a rigorous approach to qualitative research that is founded in the philosophical phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The descriptive phenomenological method makes use of the phenomenological epoché, reduction, imaginative variation, and search for essential psychological structures. Giorgi’s approach to conveying phenomenology embodies a wide-ranging and incisive critique of empirical psychology’s limitations, and seeks to establish scientific criteria appropriate for the study of lived, human subjectivity.

VSAIEEDC - A Cognition-Based Generic Model for Qualitative Data Analysis in Giftedness and Talent Research

by Roland S Persson

Full bibliographic reference for the published article:
Persson, R. S. (2006). VSAIEEDC – a cognition-based generic model for
qualitative data analysis in giftedness and talent research. Gifted and
Talented International, 21(2), 29-37.

The appended paper is the submitted manuscript to the later published article.

Qualitative research is not yet generally accepted in the study of giftedness and talent. Psychometrically oriented... more Qualitative research is not yet generally accepted in the study of giftedness and talent. Psychometrically oriented research tends to dominate. Critics raise concern that in qualitative research analytical models are often vague and therefore replication nighimpossible. The fact that there are many epistemological schools of thought, each proposing its own analytical tradition, adds to the confusion keeping controversy alive and well through philosophical debates. The aim of this article is to bridge the chasm between critics and proponents of qualitative research as valid science in its own right by outlining a generic and explicit model for the analysis of qualitative data, namely
the VSAIEEDC Model. It is based on cognitive function rather then philosophical tenets and therefore also on the assumption that all models for qualitative analysis have a common basis quite irrespective of epistemological tradition. A distinction is
made between unaware analytical behavior as a necessity for everyday-living and formal analytical behavior as intentional, explicit, and applied in Science. In conclusion the need for stringent qualitative research into the socioemotional issues of
the gifted and talented is discussed.

Sex equality in the financial services sector in Turkey and the UK

by Mustafa Ozbilgin

Woodward, D. and Özbilgin M. (1999) Equal opportunities in banking sector in Britain and Turkey, Women in Management Review, 14, 8: 325-332.   

In the UK and other western countries the financial services sector is seen as offering women better career prospects... more In the UK and other western countries the financial services sector is seen as offering women better career prospects than most other sectors. Unprecedented numbers of well-qualified young women are now achieving promotion to first-line and middle management positions. Companies are represented as progressive employers, committed to promoting equal opportunities. However, a cross-cultural study of three Turkish and six UK banks and high street financial organisations explores how organisational ideologies and cultures operate to perpetuate inequality, based on managers’ gendered conceptions of “the ideal worker”. Favoured staff were identified, sponsored, promoted and rewarded, often based on their personal affinity with senior managers rather than objective criteria. This distinction between favour and exclusion operates not only along the traditional lines of gender, class, age, sexual orientation, religion and physical ability, but also along the new dimensions of marriage, networking, safety, mobility and space. Despite local and cross-cultural differences in the significance of these factors, the cumulative disadvantage suffered by women managers and supervisors in both countries was remarkably similar.

Factors Influencing Hospitality Recruiters' Hiring Decisions in College Recruiting

by Linchi Kwok

Kwok, L., Adams, C.R., & Price, M. (2011). Factors influencing hospitality recruiters’ hiring decisions in college recruiting. Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality & Tourism, 10, 372-399.

The purpose of this study was to assess the criteria employed by hospitality recruiters to select entry-level managers... more The purpose of this study was to assess the criteria employed by hospitality recruiters to select entry-level managers among hospitality graduating seniors. This paper introduces the Factors Influencing Hospitality Recruiters’ Hiring Decisions (FIHRHD) Model based on researchers’ review of recruitment and hospitality literature. The FIHRHD Model guided the qualitative inquiry of 14 in-depth interviews with 22 purposefully selected recruiters/managers, who represented 14 companies from five hospitality industry segments. The data were analyzed with the content analysis techniques of phenomenology qualitative research and revealed that leadership, relevant job experience, person-organization and person-job fit, and personality are the most influential factors in recruiters’ hiring decisions.

*** This paper is available upon request ***

Jowett. A. (2010) ‘Just a regular guy’: A discursive analysis of gay masculinities. Psychology of Sexualities Review, 1(1), 19-28.

by Adam Jowett

Please email me if you would like a copy of this paper

As marginalised forms of masculinity, examining how gay men account for their gender is important for the analysis of... more As marginalised forms of masculinity, examining how gay men account for their gender is important for the analysis of masculinities as a whole. Drawing on a UK-based sample of 11 young men who identified as gay, this article explores the participants’ dilemma of producing their identities as masculine within a cultural milieu which constructs homosexuality as the antithesis of masculinity. Using thematic discourse analysis I demonstrate how ‘regular’ masculinity was claimed through resisting essentialist notions of gay male effeminacy and ‘othering’ effeminacy by distancing themselves from other ‘camp’ gay men. I conclude
by suggesting a greater emphasis should be placed on lesbians and gay men as gendered beings, and how gay men resist and are complicit in their own marginalisation.

Jowett A, Peel E & Shaw RL (2011) Online interviewing in psychology: Reflections on the process. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 8(4), 354-369.

by Adam Jowett

Please email me if you would like a copy of this paper

The internet is used across a range of disciplines to conduct qualitative research and qualitative psychologists are... more The internet is used across a range of disciplines to conduct qualitative research and qualitative psychologists are increasingly turning to the internet as a medium for conducting interviews. In this article we explore the first author’s experience of conducting synchronous online interviews using instant messaging or ‘chat’ software. We highlight the costs and benefits of conducting online interviews and reflect on the development of a rapport with participants within this medium. In particular, we consider how researchers can attempt to make online interviewing less abrupt and more conversational, how researchers can demonstrate ‘listening’ and how insider/outsider status of the interviewer affects interaction within online interviews.

Demuth, C. (2011) Review: Günter Mey & Katja Mruck (Hrsg.) (2010). Handbuch Qualitative Forschung in der Psychologie. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. 858 S. Geb.

by Carolin Demuth, Dr. phil.

To appear in: Gesprächsforschung - Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion

Demuth, C. (2011). Die Analyse des Alltagsgeschehens aus kulturpsychologischer Sicht

by Carolin Demuth, Dr. phil.

In: Keller, H. (Hrsg.) Handbuch der Kleinkindforschung (4. komplett überarbeitete Auflage). Göttingen: Huber, S. 746-765

Inhalt:
1. Die Notwendigkeit einer alltagsnahen Kleinkindforschung
1.1 Kleinkindforschung in der... more Inhalt:
1. Die Notwendigkeit einer alltagsnahen Kleinkindforschung
1.1 Kleinkindforschung in der Entwicklungspsychologie
1.2 Kleinkindforschung in der Anthropologie
1.3 Kleinkindforschung in der Soziologie
1.4 Kleinkindforschung in der Kulturpsychologie
1.5 Methodologische Implikationen
2. Methodische Verfahren zur Analyse des Alltagsgeschehens von Kindern
2.1 Ethnographie
2.2 Analyse von Alltagskommunikation
2.2.1 Konversationsanalyse
2.2.2 Diskursanalyse
2.2.3 Dokumentarische Methode
3. Abschließende Überlegungen
4. Literatur

Demuth, C.; Keller, H.; Gudi, H. & Otto, H. (Juni, 2009). Entwicklung von Autonomie und Relationalität über die Lebensspanne – eine Rekonstruktion aus autobiografischen Erzählungen.

by Carolin Demuth, Dr. phil.

Posterpräsentation auf dem 5. Berliner Methodentreffen Qualitative Forschung (BMT), Berlin, 26.-27. Juni, 2009

Demuth, C. (in press) Video-based Discourse and Conversation Analysis in Cultural Developmental Psychology: Mother-Infant Interactions in Kikaikelaki/Cameroon and Muenster/Germany

by Carolin Demuth, Dr. phil.

To appear in, K. Schweizer, T. Feliz, M. Kiegelmann, & T. Schielein (eds.). Beyond text: Video and other medium use in qualitative research (Qualitative Psychology Nexus: Vol. 9). Tübingen: Center for Qualitative Psychology.

The present paper aims at examplifying how discourse and conversation analysis of videotaped mother-infant... more The present paper aims at examplifying how discourse and conversation analysis of videotaped mother-infant interactions can be fruitfully applied in developmental psychology research. Special emphasis is given to cultural orientations that become evident in the organization of those interactions. For this purpose, it compares mother-infant interactions among a farming community of Nso in the Western Grassfields of Cameroon and a North German middle class urban community. The focus of the paper lies on methodological questions rather than on presenting the overall results of the study. It will therefore use empirical findings for examplification purposes of the methodological procedures.

Demuth (2008). Talking to infants: how culture is instantiated in early mother-infant interactions. The case of Cameroonian farming Nso and North German middle-class families.

by Carolin Demuth, Dr. phil.

Doctoral Dissertation (2008), University of Osnabrück, Culture & Development

This study wants to contribute to a better understanding of child development by considering the broader cultural... more This study wants to contribute to a better understanding of child development by considering the broader cultural context in which it is embedded in. It takes a socio-cultural approach and considers child care practices as adaptive to the specific requirements of a given cultural context. Particularly, it is interested in investigating discursive practices in early mother-infant interactions in diverse cultural settings and relating them to prevalent cultural models of child care. A survey of research literature suggests that infant-directed communication varies greatly across cultures. It is suggested that protoconversation as described in the literature might be a cultural manifestation of an underlying innate parenting system prevalent in Western white middle-class context and that there might be other phenotypical forms of protoconversation in non-Western agrarian societies. Moreover, the study takes a practice approach to language and is interested in investigating how the construction of specific versions of the social world is achieved in the process of the ongoing interactions, particularly with regard to the dimensions autonomy and interpersonal relatedness.
The study therefore examines mother-infant interactions from two cultural contexts previously described as prototypically independent (German white middle class families in the city of Muenster) and interdependent (farming Nso families in the Western Grassfields of Cameroon). The data corpus originates from an earlier longitudinal study and consists of video material and transcriptions of 20 Nso and 20 Muenster mother-infant dyads at the infant’s age of 12 weeks.
The data are analyzed following the principles of qualitative social research using strategies from discourse analysis, conversation analysis and documentary method. Different patterns of co-constructing mother-infant interactions were found and are discussed in chapters 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3. Chapter 4.1 presents findings of a pattern of co-operative vs. hierarchical discourse; chapter 4.2 discusses findings of narrative-biographical vs. rhythmic-synchronous structuring; and chapter 4.3 surveys examples of individual-centered vs. socially oriented discursive strategies. The results point to the possibility of innate characteristics of protoconversation as well as culture-specific manifestations of their phenotype. The results are discussed with regard to the specificities of the relevant local socio-cultural contexts and possible implications for the development of culture-specific world views and self-construals.
The thesis concludes by arguing that infants’ ‘narrative envelope’ is a powerful medium to transmit cultural knowledge, even in interactions with pre-verbal infants. Maternal discursive practices are both constituted by culture and constitute culture.
Finally, some of the main implications of the study’s findings for theory and practice are discussed. It is suggested that what is healthy and pathological development needs to be (re-)defined for each specific cultural context. Curricula for training pediatricians, psychologists, teachers and other social workers accordingly need to take a socio- or eco-cultural approach in order to ensure culture-sensitive counseling and teaching. Further studies from socio-cultural contexts that have so far been neglected in academic research are needed that systematically relate infant-care practices with cultural models of child care. The study of discursive practices is suggested to be a particularly promising avenue to this line of research.

La Investigación Etnográfica En Psicología Evolutiva: Una Forma De Abordar La Relación Entre Mente Y Cultura

by Manuel Palomares

Aquí expongo históricamente la incorporación en la psicología del desarrollo de los métodos interpretativos y... more Aquí expongo históricamente la incorporación en la psicología del desarrollo de los métodos interpretativos y etnográficos. Éstos se rescataron para aportar luz a un debate no resuelto: el rol que el ambiente versus la herencia juega en el desarrollo humano. Esta incorporación ha tenido lugar junto con una serie de cambios en la forma de concebir dicho debate y, dentro de éste, en lo que se entiende por ambiente. En el proceso de incorporación he identificado tres fases diferenciadas por la forma de concebir el ambiente; primero entendido como un conjunto de factores externos, después como la ‘cultura’ entendida como un factor estático, y finalmente como la ‘cultura’ entendida como algo dinámico, heterogéneo, inestable, cambiante y describible sólo en términos locales y mediante métodos interpretativos y cualitativos. En la segunda parte de este trabajo, destaco las aportaciones epistemológicas, ontológicas y metodológicas que la etnografía ha hecho a la disciplina. Finalmente, en las conclusiones propongo la utilidad de clasificar la disciplina no sólo atendiendo a los objetos de estudio o a los marcos teóricos sino también a la forma de aproximarse a la génesis del conocimiento científico. Esto puede contribuir a que algunos de los puntos clave de la historia de la psicología sean identificados más claramente.
Palabras clave: Psicología cultural, etnografía, desarrollo humano, ciencias interpretativas.