Qualitative Research

This article offers a psychosocial analysis of interview material from a larger study on ‘brothering’, making an empirically grounded contribution to what are frequently abstract debates on the use of psychoanalysis to ‘read’ narratives. Recent psychosocial approaches which employ psychoanalysis alongside discursive psychology are reviewed, including a Lacanian approach which has been described as a less certain and potentially less individualizing and pathologizing gaze to take up in psychosocial studies. The authors put forward the notion of concentric reflexivity to apply Lacanian theoretical concepts to narrative material, ‘troubling’ sense-making, alongside recent calls for psychoanalysis to be employed in psychosocial work as a tool for ‘disintegrating’ and ‘disrupting’ text. The discussion argues for the interruptedness of narrative as an ethical necessity and for acknowledging fragmentation as central to the construction of an ethical subject.

Research interviews are a form of interaction jointly constructed by the interviewer and interviewee, what Silverman (2001: 104) calls ‘interview-as-local-accomplishment’. From this perspective, interviews are an interpretative practice in which what is said is inextricably tied to where it is said, how it is said and, importantly, to whom it is said (Holstein and Gubrium, 2004). The relationship between interviewer and interviewee, then, is fundamental in research interviews. But what happens when the relationship between interviewer and interviewee is not only that of researcher-informant but also involves other roles such as colleague and friend? In this article we will show how prior relationships are invoked and made relevant by both parties during educational research interviews and how these prior relationships therefore contribute to the ‘generation’ (Baker, 2004: 163) of interview data.

Audio- and video-recordings are the major sources of data in qualitative research today. There is now a substantial literature about the task of transcribing these recordings, though this mainly relates to socio-linguistic and discourse analysis. In general, this takes the view that transcripts construct the talk or action that they portray rather than reproducing what is given. In this article I argue that while this is true in important respects, in that many decisions are involved in producing transcripts, there is also an important sense in which both the strict transcription of words used and the descriptions of speakers’ behaviour are aimed at capturing something that exists independently of the transcription process. ‘Construction’ and ‘givenness’ are both metaphors and we must take care not to be misled by either of them.

Qualitative research accounts are characterized by absences; absences resulting from what can not be told because it is not known and from what can not be repeated because it should not be stated. This article examines the problems associated with undertaking research in conditions of secrecy in order to ask how the missing could figure as a creative resource in our accounts of the social world. It advances an overall strategy of exemplifying the negotiation of revelation and concealment experienced by researchers within the relation between the reader and author in order to convey lived experiences. Particular attention is given to secrets and absences in relation to the sub-field of autoethnography, where much of the discussion to date has been bounded by a delimiting ‘ethics of exposure’.

This article focuses on the difference that place makes to methodological practice. It argues, following Sin, that the spatial contexts in which methods are carried out remain ‘largely excluded from any theorization of the social construction of knowledge’ (2003: 306). Through viewing ‘place’ as both a social and a geographical entity (following Cresswell, 1996), this article argues that although the importance of social relationships in methodology is widely accepted (through, for example, processes of researcher reflexivity), the influence of the ‘where of method’ has received less attention. The article addresses this issue by arguing for the explicit consideration of the geographical dimension of place in methodology. It does so by introducing the notion of a polylogic approach to method. The polylogic approach moves away from the conventional configuration of method as a dialogue (e.g. between researcher and researched) and towards method explicitly including researcher, researched, and the geographic place of methodology.

Focus groups are routinely used as a research tool in a wide variety of settings. Based on recent experience with poverty research, we argue this method needs to be problematized and further rethought. The article draws on focus group studies conducted over seven years to argue that the method routinely excludes a key area of group interaction: group dynamics. Our work underlines how these are central to shaping group participation as well as the themes, absences and forms of reporting in studies. We employ Whitaker and Lieberman’s (1964) focal conflict theory as a methodology to follow the configuration of these dynamics within a group setting. Drawing on this analytic framework, and examples from the study, we argue that an orientation to group relations is essential to expanding the method’s sensitivity as an effective research procedure.