Qualitative Health Research

This study contributes to the emerging sociological literature on sleep, family, and gender by examining the experience and management of snoring within families. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Jewish–Israeli men and women who snore as well as their family members, this article suggests that sleep is a gendered family affair. Family members attempt to face the challenges of snoring by using several management strategies to mend and sustain family ties, which are part of how they “do family.” Nevertheless, men and women experience and manage snoring in different ways, thereby “doing gender” in their sleep management, only to find that “doing gender” and “doing family” often conflict. As a result, both the occurrence and management of snoring make relationships stressful, thereby affecting their quality. This research sheds light on the underexplored micro-processes involved in sleep management while providing unique insight into couple dyads and gender differences.

People living with disability or chronic illness often use practices of care to construct a version of life they are satisfied with. Drawing from a narrative-based study with people living with motor neuron disease (MND), I show how one couple tried to be recognized as active agents in their life, although oscillating between positions of less and more power. Through an examination of the practices of care that the couple enacted, I illustrate how their positioning in relation to practices of care helped them create meaning in their life. In their efforts to create a way of living they were satisfied with, they engaged in negotiations between varieties of subjectivity. Their subjectivity was not static but was constructed as they shared power to carry out everyday self-care activities. The findings also underline the importance for health care practices of exploring the experiential knowledge of people living with MND.

A large body of literature explores historical trauma or intergenerational trauma among Aboriginal communities around the globe. This literature connects contemporary forms of social suffering and health inequity to broader historical processes of colonization and the residential school systems in Canada. There are tendencies within this literature, however, to focus on individual pathology and victimization while minimizing notions of resilience or well-being. Through a social constructionist lens, this research examined how interpersonal responses to historical traumas can be intertwined with moments of and strategies for resilience. Detailed narrative interviews occurred with four Aboriginal Cree elders living in central Saskatchewan, Canada, who all experienced historical trauma to some extent. From this analysis, we argue that health research among Aboriginal populations must be sensitive to the complex individual and social realities that necessarily involve both processes of historical and contemporary traumas as well as resilience, strength, and well-being.

This research describes a community dance project for people affected by cancer, which was led by a trained community dancer over 10 movement workshops and three performances. Using a qualitative descriptive approach, the research explored the experiences of a convenience sample of 8 participants out of the original group of 17 individuals who took part in the community dance. The research was participatory and the researchers were involved in workshops and performances as members of the group who also had family members with cancer. The findings indicate the motivation of the dancers to continue in spite of hardship, their sense of pride in being part of something that was larger than themselves, the way the dance permitted them to embody a sense of courage, and finally, in performing, how they managed to share something that genuinely moved an audience.

Child undernutrition affects millions of children globally, but little is known about the ability of adults to detect different types of child undernutrition in low-income countries. We used focused ethnographic methods to understand how Malawian parents and grandparents describe the characteristics they use to identify good and poor child growth, their actual or preferred patterns of health seeking for undernourished children, and the perceived importance of child undernutrition symptoms in relation to other childhood illnesses. Malawians value adiposity rather than stature in assessing child growth. Symptoms of malnutrition, including wasting and edema, were considered the least severe childhood illness symptoms. Parents delayed health care seeking when a child was ill. When they sought care, it was for symptoms such as diarrhea or fever, and they did not recognize malnutrition as the underlying cause. These findings can be used to tailor strategies for preventing and treating growth faltering in Malawian children.

The purpose of this study was to investigate perceptions of health and health behaviors among Indigenous Australian men. Using a participatory action research (PAR) framework, we conducted two focus groups and 40 individual semi-structured interviews with men between the ages of 18 and 35 years in each of three locations across Australia. We used the health beliefs model to provide a framework for the analyses. Participants recognized that their Indigenous status placed them in a vulnerable position with regard to health, and that there might be serious consequences of failing to follow a good diet and engage in appropriate exercise. However, they delineated a number of barriers to engaging in such health behaviors. These perceived barriers require addressing at a range of policy levels within government, with a focus on social structures and institutionalized discrimination, as well as unemployment, poverty, dispossession, and cultural oppression.

In this manuscript, we expand upon sociological research in lay knowledge about health and healthicization by examining socially mediated ways in which 40 African American adults in two communities acquired information about eating practices. Participants employed a variety of socially informed information-seeking strategies. Many, but not all, used socially prescribed sources exhorting them to maximize their own health and reported an amalgam of experiences concerning their interpretation of healthist messages. Participants variously accepted messages about healthy eating or engaged in strategies of micro-resistance that decentered and/or reinterpreted health promotion discourse. Furthermore, participants used emic community-based resources including those that prioritized familial engagement over individual responsibility in eating practices or that drew upon alternative health practices. We discuss the implications our work has for further research on healthicization and lay knowledge about eating practices, in which community members are actively engaged in meaning-making within local socio-structural contexts.

In 2% to 3% of cases, prenatal microarray testing detects deletions and duplications in a fetus’ genome that are undetected by conventional cytogenetics. Many of these changes are associated with variable or uncertain symptomatology. Little is known about how couples experience uncertain results. This study analyzed 24 interviews with members of 12 heterosexual U.S. couples who received pathogenic or uncertain microarray prenatal testing results. Researchers used narrative analysis to examine couples’ understanding and incorporation of findings into decision making regarding pregnancy termination. Couples felt unprepared for these findings and frustrated because scant information was available to aid interpretation. Women sought information and made decisions, and men marginalized their distress to support their wives. A shift in voice from first to second person indicated attempts to normalize emotional responses by making the process “common” to all couples. Families pursuing highly sensitive prenatal testing may need expert guidance to support decision making.

This study employed qualitative methods to explore eating disorder (ED) patients’ perspectives on their treatment experiences to gain insight into those factors that influenced their motivational trajectory. Semistructured interviews were conducted with a purposive female sample of current (N = 11) and discharged (N = 3) ED service users, aged 18 to 31 years (M = 23.21, SD = 4.19). An interpretive thematic analytic approach, comprising both inductive and deductive methods of analysis, was employed to identify key themes in the data. Self-determination theory (SDT) provided a conceptual lens for analyzing data. Participants highlighted that factors such as physical design and nature of the treatment environment, relational aspects of care, and therapeutic methods all played a role in treatment engagement. The findings highlight ways in which current ED services might more effectively meet the needs of service users and support the utility of applying SDT to the study of motivational dynamics in the treatment of EDs.

In literature, disclosure of donor conception in lesbian families has been considered an obvious and straightforward event. However, little is known about the ways in which donor conception is discussed in planned lesbian co-mother families. This study focuses on the process of parent–child communication about the donor conception on a within-family level. Six families, including 7 children and 12 parents, were interviewed about their family communication with regard to donor conception. A dyadic interview analysis revealed that family members managed the space taken up by the topic of donor conception in their daily conversations. Within these conversations, they also took care of each other and of their family relationships. In addition, children had an active position in the co-construction of the donor conception narrative. Linking these findings to the concepts of relational management and functionality of donor conception narratives, this study informs practitioners in the field of medically assisted reproduction.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental health problem characterized by persistent obsessions and compulsions. This article provides insights into experiences of OCD through a qualitative, thematic analysis performed on a set of interviews with people with OCD. Four themes were found as central in the participants’ descriptions of OCD episodes: (a) space, (b) the body, (c) objects, and (d) interactions. The findings also show that episodes of OCD can be grouped into three broad categories: (a) activity episodes, which revolve around everyday tasks; (b) state episodes, which are concerned with the self and identity; and (c) object episodes, which are concerned with the effects of objects on the self. The relationship of this three-way classification of OCD episodes to existing cognitive models of OCD is discussed. The study also demonstrates the value of categorizing episodes, rather than people, into subtypes of OCD so that intra-participant variation can be highlighted.

The objective of this study was to develop a substantive grounded theory of staff psychosocial intervention use with residents with dementia in long-stay care. “Becoming a person again” emerged as the core category accounting for staffs’ psychosocial intervention use within long-stay care. Interview data were collected from participants in nine Irish long-stay settings: 14 residents with dementia, 19 staff nurses, one clinical facilitator, seven nurse managers, 21 nursing assistants, and five relatives. Constant comparative method guided the data collection and analysis. The researcher’s theoretical memos, based on unstructured observation, and applicable extant literature were also included as data. By identifying the mutuality of the participants’ experiences, this classic grounded theory explains staff motivation toward psychosocial intervention use within long-stay care. It also explains how institutional factors interact with those personal factors that incline individuals toward psychosocial intervention use.