DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

4.
A Composite Qualitative Methodology
In this chapter, I present a composite qualitative methodology that employs
techniques and procedures from several existing qualitative methods, and combines
them into a synthesised form that will be used as the methodology for this thesis. I
shall first provide a brief historical reconnaissance of qualitative methods in
psychology, to provide a context for what I am attempting to do.
4.1 The Qualitative Impulse in Psychology
Qualitative research has existed in psychology as a peripheral alternative to
quantitative research since its early days as a discipline. To name a few classic
examples, James wrote The Varieties of Religious Experience, a qualitative
investigation, in 1902; Freud’s texts used a qualitative form of analysis and reporting
(e.g. Freud, 1909); Piaget’s early work in the 1920s used a qualitative approach to
analysis (e,g. Piaget, 1928) and Lewin’s approach to psychology in the 1930s was
qualitative (e.g. Lewin, 1931). In the 1950s and 1960s there was qualitative work
done by influential researchers including Festinger, Riecken and Schacter (1956),
Ainsworth (1967), Erikson (1968, 1969), and Murray (1962). The above examples
have the hallmarks of qualitative inquiry: data collection is not concerned with
measurement but with the finding of patterns, processes, structures, relationships and
meanings; data are not aggregated into group parameters but rather are maintained at
the level of the individual; analysis involves parsing textual or observational data into
meaningful parts and synthesising these parts so that relationships and meaning can be
shown.
In each of the above examples, qualitative methods were innovated to meet the
needs of a specific research problem, for at the time there were no formal
methodological protocols, guidelines or sourcebooks for qualitative research. The
change towards qualitative research being a recognised and formalised methodology
in psychology came from sociology, where in the late 1960s Glaser and Strauss
developed the procedures of Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). This was
arguably the first clear set of protocols and procedures for conducting robust
qualitative inquiry, and started to be found in psychology journals from the 1970s.
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