DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

Nonetheless it could also be argued that the qualitative methodology camp
has contributed to its ongoing peripheral status by continued internal debate and
arguments within itself. Discourse analysis, grounded theory, IPA, narrative
analysis and other qualitative methods are often seen to be opposed; differences
are magnified and reified while the inherent similarities that these methods share
are lessened or ignored. Indeed there are even strong debates about the nature of
each qualitative method, for example Glaser and Strauss’ ongoing disagreements
about the nature of Grounded Theory (Glaser, 1992). This sense of opposition in
the qualitative movement has fuelled inward-looking debates on the nature of
knowledge, theory and analytical process, which has been undoubtedly valuable,
but it may also have prevented a more outward-focused voice of the qualitative
movement as a whole, leading to a lack of uptake of the new ideas across the
discipline. Encouragingly though, a report in The Psychologist on the qualitative
section of the 2007 British Psychological Society conference quoted a number of
psychologists calling for a drawing together of qualitative psychology. Dr. Lucy
Yardley described the importance of using qualitative methods in combination
through a “composite analysis” approach and so moving towards qualitative
integration. Prof. Robert Elliott stated that all qualitative analysis involves the
same basic activities and that researchers should concentrate on the
commonalities rather than differences. Prof. Jonathan Smith was also quoted at
the same conference as describing how methodological exclusivity in qualitative
psychology can be counterproductive, and that researchers can judiciously
combine approaches to best serve the research problem in question (Haywood,
2007).
In this spirit of continuing the ongoing evolution of qualitative methods
and following the trend towards methodological synthesis, a composite
qualitative methodology is attempted in the current investigation. In biology
there is a phenomenon called hybrid vigour, which describes the increased
strength in offspring when two different breeds or sub-species are combined. It is
hoped that something similar will be achieved here; by bringing the respective
strengths of two different but compatible methods into a composite, the result is
hoped to be a strong and adaptable hybrid. These two source methods are
described below.
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