Susan ayers cambridge handbook of psychology he

attempts to gain an insider view point, engaging with and making
sense of participants’ own personal accounts and understandings
(Smith, 1996). This approach requires the researcher to be open to
participants’ perspectives and to use their own interpretative skills
to produce a co-construction (between researcher and participant)
of participants’ experiences. Interpretative Phenomenological
Analysis is an idiographic approach in that the primary focus is on
the experiences of individual participants, and it is only in the later
stages of analysis that researchers look for patterns of themes across
individuals.
Smith et al. (2002) used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis
to investigate perceptions of risk and decision-making about genetic
testing in Huntington’s disease. They showed that their interview
participants (five women, all of whom had children), found it
difficult to deal with the objective 50% risk of having the disease
and that this risk was often reinterpreted and situated within considerations
of the family context and the women’s own beliefs about
inheritance. The process of decision-making that women went
through concerning whether or not to have genetic testing was
removed from and in some cases inconsistent with the model of
informed decision making favoured by current healthcare systems.
By analyzing individual women’s accounts and then making comparisons
between and examining common themes across the different
accounts the analysis provided insight into the complex issues
which the participants were dealing with and suggested ways
in which genetic testing and counselling might address patients’
perspectives (see ‘Screening: genetic’).
Discourse analysis
Discourse analysis involves a focus on ‘discourse’, or language,
as the way in which the social world is created and maintained.
Discourse analysis is not a single unified method, but it is beyond
the scope of this chapter to explore the range of forms of discourse
analysis (see Willig, 2001). From a discursive perspective, psychological
entities such as attitudes and beliefs have no existence
beyond their expression, and in the expression of attitudes people
are not reporting on an internal state but are engaged in a social
act which achieves certain things (Wetherell et al., 2001). Discourse
analysts draw on a range of data sources, including naturally occurring
dialogue, interviews, focus groups and documentary evidence.
Spoken data, such as interviews, are transcribed in full, in other
words features such as laughter, pauses, intakes of breath, loudness
and emphasis are included in transcriptions. Analysis consists of
examining texts for patterns of discourse, paying attention to the
possible and actual effects of language both in the immediate
context (e.g. the interview) and in the wider social context.
Discourse analysis can provide valuable insights into how people
talk about their experiences and the implications this has, and analysis
can focus on levels ranging from one phrase to complete
discourses.
Wilkinson and Kitzinger (2000) carried out a discourse analysis
of cancer patients’ talk, focusing on the phrase ‘thinking positive’.
Previous research had investigated positive thinking as a coping
strategy related to adjustment to illness. By taking a discursive
perspective Wilkinson and Kitzinger showed that rather than being
a report of an internal cognitive state, the phrase thinking positive
could be interpreted as a conversational idiom which, when used,
demonstrates a speaker’s awareness of the socially normative
requirement of cancer patients to be optimistic and fight their
cancer. Lupton (1994) demonstrated a similar theme in her analysis
of media representations of breast cancer, showing how the media
linked fighting spirit to cancer survival. Here discourse analysis
was able to show how coping strategies are represented in the
mass media, and the potential for such discourses to shape social
requirements for women to adopt certain attitudes.
Evaluation
Well established criteria for judging the quality of quantitative
research, such as statistical validity and reliability, are not appropriate
for the evaluation of qualitative work and a number of authors
have suggested alternative criteria (e.g. Mays & Pope, 2000; Yardley,
2000). The quality of qualitative assessment can be judged on
the clarity, coherence and systematic nature of data collection and
analysis. A number of specific individual criteria can also assist
in evaluation.
1. Transparency refers to the ability of a reader to follow exactly
what a researcher has done, both in the collection and analysis
of their data. The provision of excerpts from interview transcripts
and worked through examples of the process of analysis can
help to create paper trails which enhance the transparency of
qualitative work.
2. The role of the researcher in qualitative research is often
acknowledged and it is important to know about any techniques
used to examine, account for or minimize the impact of the
researcher on the data collection and analysis. This enables readers
to judge for themselves the influence of the researcher on
the project.
3. Negative or deviant case analysis is a technique which involves
searching a qualitative data set for instances that do not fit with
emerging analytical or explanatory frameworks. This demonstrates
rigour and openness to alternative explanations and
can help to determine the limits of an analysis.
4. Triangulation involves the use of multiple sources of data or
types of data, or multiple analytic strategies or analysts, in
order to examine phenomena from a range of angles. Rather
than being a technique to examine the reliability of findings,
triangulation may be used to provide more complete understandings
of phenomena.
5. Respondent validation can be appropriate for some forms of
qualitative assessment, and involves feeding back the analysis
to participants to check if the results of the analysis correspond
to participants’ own understandings. This can be particularly
important for approaches which seek to explore participants’
own subjective understandings and systems of meaning, but
may be less appropriate for approaches such as discourse analysis
where technical analyses are used which do not focus
on participants’ meanings.
6. It is important to be able to judge the transferability of qualitative
findings, in other words the extent to which findings might hold
true in other settings, contexts or population groups. Transparency
in terms of the provision of adequate detail about settings
and participants can facilitate this process.
Qualitative assessment 317