Abstract
Reviewed by: Michelle Lafrance, St. Thomas University, Canada
Crafted by two highly accomplished researchers, this text is an invaluable resource for students and seasoned researchers alike. Students will appreciate the inviting and accessible step-by-step guidance it offers throughout the research process, from generating researchable questions to report writing. For established researchers, it offers an inspiring exemplar of the kind of detailed attention and rigorous process required for high quality research and reporting. Dealing exclusively with interview-based research, it provides a fulsome exploration of this approach to inquiry, and includes excellent chapters on four key approaches to analysis: thematic analysis, narrative analysis, conversation analysis and discourse analysis. Magnusson and Marecek are pillars in feminist and qualitative scholarship, and in this book they have generously provided a ‘backstage pass’ to their research processes – opening up their extensive repertoire of research projects and sharing journal notes, examples of interview prompts, sections of transcripts, and practical suggestions for avoiding pitfalls and ensuring high quality work. This is an indispensable guide for researchers across the social sciences and health disciplines including psychology, social work, nursing, education, counselling, and public health.
I discovered this book when reviewing texts in preparation for teaching a class in qualitative methods and adopted it for a number of key reasons. What sets this book apart from the host of excellent texts available is the refreshingly direct and clear way in which the authors shepherd the reader through the complex issues and considerations inherent in interpretative work. Rather than getting bogged down in arguments in defence of qualitative methods (vs. the quantitative norm) and all of the epistemological debates required to make such a defence, the authors launch in by describing interpretative work in a direct, compelling, and unapologetic way. They explain: “the goal of these methods is to understand – that is, to interpret – the meanings that people ascribe to events and actions, how they make these meanings their own, and how they negotiate these meanings in interpretations with other people” (p. 1). People are “always located in social contexts” and are always “engaged in making sense of their experiences” (p. 2). Given this, “the best way to learn about people’s meanings and meaning-making is to listen to people talk about their experiences in their own way and in their words” (p. 2). After laying out these key assumptions in the first chapter, the authors immediately go on (by p. 3) to provide a host of examples of research projects that bring these assumptions to life. They then unpack some key terms (culture, meaning, talk and language, and interviews) to set the stage for a deeper examination of interpretative qualitative research.
Chapter 2 enables this deeper exploration by providing detailed descriptions of six different projects representing a range of topics and geographical locations (self-esteem as folk theory, comparing mothers in Taiwan and the USA; repeated hospitalization for severe mental disorders in an American community; the spiral of suicide-like behaviour among adolescent girls in Sri Lanka; heterosexual couples in the Nordic countries forming their identities within and against gender equality ideologies; Canadian women’s medicalized accounts of depression). The authors helpfully return to these examples throughout the text to illustrate key issues across the research process. It is only after this extensive exploration of interpretative research that the authors address issues that often arise from a quantitative perspective (e.g. sampling, generalizability, subjectivity, bias, etc.). This presentation reminded me that the epistemological assumptions underpinning interpretative work ‘make sense’ and do not necessarily require extensive theorizing to get the learner started. It is only when set in opposition to the empiricist and positivist assumptions of the scientific method that complications for students often arise. Thus, in structuring the book in this way, the authors are able to initially side-step (but not ignore) the myriad of theoretical issues involved in quantitative-qualitative debates and get right to the work of explaining interpretative research. This decidedly positive and non-defensive stance allows the reader to focus on understanding interpretative qualitative research and avoid getting mired in the often-unhelpful dichotomies and complex debates that are unnecessary for beginning learners. Given that the undergraduate course in qualitative methods that I will be teaching will take place within the parameters of a 12-week semester, I was exhilarated by the positive stance and pedagogical freedom this book affords to ‘dive right in.’
Further strengths of this book derive from the authors’ extensive experience in both conducting and teaching qualitative research. As they point out, “[q]uite a lot of what goes on in research is omitted in research publications” (p. 10), and this text makes all these important pieces of the research puzzle visible. The authors generously offer detailed examples from across their extensive repertoire of projects to provide a behind-the-scenes look at the decisions and considerations researchers make in conducting high quality research. However, what really shines through in this book is their extensive experience and expertise as teachers. Magnusson and Marecek show tremendous care and attention to the needs of learners that can only come from a student-centred pedagogy and significant experience in the classroom. I was repeatedly and pleasantly surprised by the level of attention they showed in anticipating learners’ questions, challenges, and misunderstandings. They articulate crucial steps in the research process that have become so second nature to me that I would not have thought to point them out (e.g. different ways to read the literature, the difference between the researchable question and interview questions). This level of detail is often overlooked in methods texts and provides the intricate scaffolding required for rigorous and sound research.
Following the immersion in interpretative research provided in the first two chapters, subsequent chapters walk the learner through the research process from question to report. What I love about these chapters is that they offer clear direction without being prescriptive – they demonstrate the need to be both methodical and flexible. Chapters are accessible, inviting, and relatively short, allowing ample room to supplement the text with additional readings.
Chapter 3 deals with “planning and beginning an interpretative research project” and provides useful guidance on using a research journal, the different ways to read the literature (for findings, framework, methods, and questions), and considerations around feasibility and safety. Chapter 4 explores the host of considerations involved in recruiting participants, and includes many expert tips often unacknowledged in writing about qualitative methods. For instance, the authors helpfully explore the intricacies of language choice and how this shapes the knowledge produced (p. 41). They also provide a very useful list of issues to address in the first contact with a potential participant. Designing an interview guide is an often daunting-task for students, and Chapter 5 deals with this crucial step in detail, offering multiple sentence stems and examples to get students started, and exploring how to put questions in order. The discussion of how to conduct interviews in Chapter 6 is exemplary and should be compulsory reading for all interviewers. Here, the authors have crafted an evocative sense of the research interview, how to engage participants in rich talk, and what it ‘feels like’ to be an interviewer. They also address opening and closing interviews and how to deal with challenges. I found their discussion of the interview relationship and tone particularly useful and will direct students to read and reread this chapter in preparation for conducting their own interviews. Chapter 7 offers a wealth of practical advice on preparing for analysis, including transcription and managing audio and word-processing files.
Chapters 8 to 11 then go on to detail different approaches to analysis that map onto different researchable questions. Titled not in terms of methods but research goals – finding meaning in people’s talk (thematic analysis), analyzing stories in interviews (narrative analysis), analyzing talk-as-action (conversation analysis), and analyzing for implicit cultural meanings (discourse analysis) – each of these is an invaluable stand-alone resource. As a thesis supervisor and journal reviewer, I deeply appreciated the ways these chapters clearly demonstrate how tight a good analysis should be – not just itemising a list of themes but developing a rich and thoughtful analysis that fits together, accounts for exceptions, and makes a contribution to the scholarship.
The book ends with an extremely useful chapter on writing research reports that I will give to all of my students. The authors usefully suggest that students begin report writing with the methods section, and later work through the introduction and discussion together (a radical suggestion for students used to writing according to the assumptions of hypothesis testing). In outlining how to write the report, they then describe a list of helpful suggestions (e.g. how to use material from interviews, safeguard anonymity of participants and communities, translate between languages) including a crucial list of things to avoid (formal pompous language, imprecise and misleading terms, discriminatory language, plagiarism). Students who follow their advice will produce clear and detailed reports.
There are a few features that would enhance the book and that I would like to see in the next edition. For instance, definitions of keywords (e.g. epistemology, phenomenological, participatory action) could be inserted in the margins and at the end of the book as an appendix. A methods chapter on grounded theory would be a nice addition, rounding out the complement of interpretative and interview-based methods. It would also be helpful to suggest additional readings (especially for the four methods chapters). Suggestions of questions for class discussions or issues to consider as learners develop their own research projects would also be beneficial. Such additions would fit well with the learner-centred focus of the book and would provide another level of direction for students to follow. I plan on using the book in combination with a set of readings (see forthcoming Virtual Special Issue on qualitative methods to appear in Feminism & Psychology) and will assign a research portfolio in which students reflect on and make decisions about a project of their own design. Working with this book feels like I will be co-teaching with two of the best in the field and that they have already done the lion’s share of the course preparation. Doing Interview-Based Qualitative Research is a remarkably generous contribution to the teaching and learning of qualitative methods.