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Chapter Three – Research methods and their use - Page 97
the methodology of the study, is my observations of (and reflections on) experiences
salient to the study (collected since 2002). Effectively, I have regarded myself for the
duration of the project and since as being on continuous fieldwork assignment, and my
accumulated notes over this period as data.
I believe the use of audio-tape recordings is relatively uncontroversial, and aside from
the well known limitations of such data (such as their restriction to the auditory
modality), unproblematic. I am aware that the same is not true for my other source of
data, my observations of (and reflections on) experiences salient to the study. With this
source of data, as is commonly the case in qualitative methodology, many of my
observations and reflections are part of the next stage of the research, the transformation
of the data, which is considered in the next section of this chapter. However, from my
perspective as a group-analytic ethnographer, I am choosing to regard some of my
observations and reflections as data in their own right. This stems from the idea
explored in Chapter Two Parts One and Two, that in some forms of therapy and
research, the subjectivity of the clinician/researcher (notably, the experience of the
relationship with the patient(s)/research participant(s)) is a valid and at times crucial
source of data about the patient(s)/research participant(s). I have given examples of
using my observations and reflections in the data chapters, eg on Pages 147 -151, 153-
158, 161 and 162, where I have recorded relatively ‘raw’ or unprocessed associations to
the transcripts of sessions, based on a combination of my memory of the experience in
which I participated and a post-hoc response to reading the transcript, and then offered
some illumination of what I am making of this data. These illuminated aspects are then
picked up, for example in the comments at the end of the transcript in Chapter Five, and
in the more experience-distant reflection that follows in each respective chapter.