Abstract
When I was invited to conduct a comparative review of two contemporary research guides, I was excited at the prospect. Having a keen interest in multimodal forms of data collection and creative presentation (Mannay, 2010, 2011), I was curious to explore the signposting set out, for psychology students and practitioners, in relation to research design, data collection and analysis. I was eager to read the books and gain some new insights into the application of psychological research methods, both in terms of my undergraduate teaching and my own practice.
At first, confronted with similar titles and identical publishers, I thought that the review process might not be as dynamic as I had envisioned. The standard preambles offered a practical guide and accessible introduction to the key psychological approaches for students and professionals applying research in their work. In order to test this accessibility, I decided to ask some of my students involved in a group research project to read and compare each book in terms of the method they had selected, namely, discourse analysis. It was at this point that I realised that what I thought were comparable texts were actually very different, both in terms of the content and approach.
Frost focuses on four key approaches, which are grounded theory, discourse analysis, interpretative phenomenological analysis and narrative analysis, while Banister et al., in what we could consider a more traditional format, offer the categories of observation, ethnography, interviewing, the repertory grid, psychosocial analysis, narrative inquiry and historical analyses. There is some overlap in their menus, but I was surprised that discourse analysis, being a dominant technique, was absent from Banister et al. (foiling my student review plan).
This absence was more acute when reading Ian Parker’s valuable engagement with ‘the repressed other of psychology’ in his chapter, Psychosocial Analysis, which quite rightly begins by situating psychosocial studies as having the potential to answer some of the critiques levelled at discourse analysis. Parker puts forward the point that it is possible to place discourse analysis under the broader umbrella of ‘psychosocial approaches’, but this is arguable and does not negate the absence of a dedicated chapter. Equally, I felt that it was a great shame that Frost, given the contemporary feel of the publication and its enthusiasm for pluralism, did not have a section dedicated to psychosocial inquiry, a method that arguably addresses subjectivity in a more nuanced way than mainstream psychology (Clarke and Hoggett, 2009) – perhaps this omission adds some credence to Parker’s use of the term ‘repressed other’.
Initially, I was drawn to Banister et al. as my own teaching of the subject is closely aligned with the stylistic and conceptual approaches presented in their research guide. The set pathway of orientations followed by methodologies and then representations resonated with the sequential steps to the understanding that I communicate to my own students, and perhaps this reflects the point that the original edition of Banister et al., published in 1994, evolved from a qualitative research module taught in an MSc degree course. The sections in Frost, ‘Some Core Approaches’ followed by ‘Combining Core Approaches’, however, initially seemed less conducive to teaching and learning.
Despite my reservations, when I began to read Frost, I found the layouts clear and I began to like this new approach. The tone was friendly and the analogies useful, such as Sevasti-Melissa Nolas’ description of applying different lenses of analysis in Pragmatics of Pluralistic Qualitative Research, Chapter 6 – ‘like swapping your reading glasses for your sun glasses and then for a pair of goggles’ (p. 132). The emphasis on pluralistic research is timely and comprehensive, reflecting Frost’s expertise in combining approaches and her leadership in the Pluralism in Qualitative Research Project, and there are a number of useful explanations of and references to key texts, such as Dicks et al. (2006), as well as a range of classic and contemporary suggestions for further reading, although the chapters in Banister et al. generally offer a more comprehensive list.
As expected, both Banister et al. and Frost offer the reader a series of examples, tasks and a useful glossary of key terms, and they will be a helpful resource for students of psychology and the social sciences more broadly. However, they are not easily comparable and should not be seen in terms of an ‘either or’ selection, as both offer insights into areas absent in the other. After reading these two contemporary contributions, I feel that they each have a value, both Banister et al.’s Qualitative Methods in Psychology: A Research Guide and Frost’s Qualitative Research Methods in Psychology, but that the former represents a pedagogy ‘learning about’, while the latter appears more embedded in communicating ‘learning to carry out’, in this way, engendering a complimentary relationship within the bookshelf section titled qualitative research methods in psychology.