Adventures in theory and method

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8 Introducing qualitative research in psychologysuch as ‘emotion’ (e.g. Harré 1986), ‘prejudice’ (e.g. Potter and Wetherell 1987)and ‘psychopathology’ (e.g. Parker et al. 1995) to show how they provide away of constructing reality rather than simply reflecting it.Epistemology and methodologyWhat is the relationship between epistemology and methodology? To whatextent does the epistemological position we adopt prescribe which researchmethods we ought to use? To address these questions, we first need to differentiatebetween ‘method’ and ‘methodology’. Although often used interchangeably,the two terms do, in fact, refer to different aspects of doing research.Silverman (1993: 1) suggests that ‘methodology’ identifies ‘a general approachto studying research topics’, whereas ‘method’ refers to ‘a specific researchtechnique’. (A further distinction can then be made between methods of datacollection and methods of data analysis; see Chapter 2.) It is helpful to differentiatebetween ‘a general approach to studying research topics’ and ‘specificresearch techniques’ because the former is much more directly informed bythe researcher’s epistemological position than the latter. For example, a researcherwho takes a predominantly empiricist view of knowledge acquisitionwill approach research topics through the collection of data rather than throughtheoretical formulations. However, exactly how such data are collected (e.g.through observation, questionnaires, interviews) is another question, and it isnot something the researcher’s empiricist epistemological position prescribes.Hypothetico-deductivism constitutes an exception here, since it offers theresearcher both an epistemological position and a research method, namelyhypothesis-testing through experimentation (but see Chapter 5 for the use ofhypothetico-deductivism in case study research).However, not all research methods are compatible with all methodologies.Even though there is some flexibility in relation to our choice of methods, aresearcher’s epistemological and methodological commitments do constrainwhich methods can be used. For example, a social constructionist methodologyis not compatible with methods that are designed to measure variables ina population. This is because social constructionism problematizes given constructssuch as ‘psychological variables’; it questions their validity and it isconcerned with exploring the various ways in which they are ‘made real’. Thiscannot be achieved through an attempt to ‘measure’ such constructs. Accordingto a social constructionist viewpoint, the measurement of psychologicalvariables is itself one more way of making them real, of constructing them.Qualitative researchThis book is about qualitative research in psychology. Having introduced theconcept of epistemology and having considered, briefly, some major epistemologicalpositions, it is now time to explore how qualitative methodology fitsinto this picture.
From recipes to adventures 9First, it is important to acknowledge that qualitative research methods canbe, and are, used by researchers with quite different epistemological positions.For example, there are empiricist as well as social constructionist qualitativeresearchers. This means that, strictly speaking, there are ‘qualitative methodologies’rather than ‘qualitative methodology’. However, qualitative researchersalso share a number of concerns, and it is these that are commonly referred toas ‘qualitative methodology’. In this section, I shall: (1) identify these sharedconcerns and provide a general characterization of ‘qualitative methodology’;(2) identify epistemological differences between approaches to qualitativeresearch; and (3) introduce the ‘small q/big Q’ dichotomy.Shared concerns: ‘qualitative methodology’Qualitative researchers tend to be concerned with meaning. That is, they areinterested in how people make sense of the world and how they experienceevents. They aim to understand ‘what it is like’ to experience particular conditions(e.g. what it means and how it feels to live with chronic illness or to beunemployed) and how people manage certain situations (e.g. how peoplenegotiate family life or relations with work colleagues). Qualitative researcherstend, therefore, to be concerned with the quality and texture of experience,rather than with the identification of cause–effect relationships. They do nottend to work with ‘variables’ that are defined by the researcher before theresearch process begins. This is because qualitative researchers tend to beinterested in the meanings attributed to events by the research participantsthemselves. Using preconceived ‘variables’ would lead to the imposition of theresearcher’s meanings and it would preclude the identification of respondents’own ways of making sense of the phenomenon under investigation. Theobjective of qualitative research is to describe and possibly explain events andexperiences, but never to predict. Qualitative researchers study people in theirown territory, within naturally occurring settings (such as the home, schools,hospitals, the street). These are ‘open systems’ where conditions continuouslydevelop and interact with one another to give rise to a process of ongoingchange. Participants’ (and researchers’) interpretation of events itself contributesto this process. Therefore, ‘prediction of outcomes’ is not a meaningfulgoal for qualitative researchers. Instead, they ask questions about processes,such as ‘What do people do when they form groups?’, ‘How do people managechange in the workplace?’ or ‘How do people live with chronic pain?’Epistemological differences: ‘qualitativemethodologies’Silverman (1993: 1) argues that ‘without theory there is nothing to research’.This statement draws attention to the role of theory in the interpretation ofdata. For example, if our data consist of several pages of interview transcript,we need to decide what this transcript represents before we can analyse it (seeKvale 1996a: 278). It could represent a factual account of what happened tothe interviewee. On the other hand, it could represent the interviewee’s attempt
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