Qualitative Research Methods in Psychology
By D. Biggerstaff. 2012
104 citations recorded by the source corpus.
In the scientific community, and particularly in psychology and health, there has been an active and ongoing debate on the relative merits of adopting either quantitative or qualitative methods, especially when researching into human behaviour (Bowling, 2009; Oakley, 2000; Smith, 1995a, 1995b; Smith, 1998). In part, this debate formed a component of the development in the 1970s of our thinking about science. Andrew Pickering has described this movement as the "sociology of scientific knowledge" (SSK), where our scientific understanding, developing scientific ‘products’ and 'know-how', became identified as forming components in a wider engagement with society’s environmental and social context (Pickering, 1992: 1). Since that time, the debate has continued so that today there is an increasing acceptance of the use of qualitative methods in the social sciences (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Morse, 1994; Punch, 2011; Robson, 2011) and health sciences (Bowling, 2009; Greenhalgh & Hurwitz, 1998; Murphy & Dingwall, 1998). The utility of qualitative methods has also been recognised in psychology. As Nollaig Frost (2011) observes, authors such as Carla Willig and Wendy Stainton Rogers consider qualitative psychology is much more accepted today and that it has moved from "the margins to the mainstream in psychology in the UK." (Willig & Stainton Rogers, 2008: 8). Nevertheless, in psychology, qualitative methodologies are still considered to be relatively 'new' (Banister, Bunn, Burman, et al., 2011; Hayes, 1998; Richardson, 1996) despite clear evidence to the contrary (see, for example, the discussion on this point by Rapport et al., 2005). Nicki Hayes observes, scanning the content of some early journals from the 1920s – 1930s that many of these more historical papers "discuss personal experiences as freely as statistical data" (Hayes, 1998, 1). This can be viewed as an early development of the case-study approach, now an accepted methodological approach in psychological, health care and medical research, where our knowledge about people is enhanced by our understanding of the individual 'case' (May & Perry, 2011; Radley & Chamberlain, 2001; Ragin, 2011; Smith, 1998).
Subfields: General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e4b9983acc553f4ec61bc33ad0ede59d0f3fe4c5
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In General Health Professions
In Sociology and Political Science
Citations in the corpus
- “Beyond words”: a researcher’s guide to using photo elicitation in psychology (2017, methodology): “Several previous researchers have discussed the appeal and versatility of PEIs (Biggerstaff 2012; Clark-Ibáñez 2004; Lapenta 2004; Shaw 2013).”
- Understanding optimal human functioning – The ‘call for qual’ in exploring human flourishing and well-being (2017, background): “For many, this is exactly what other areas of psychology are, and have been, doing over recent years (Biggerstaff, 2012).”