Qualitative Research

In this article, we present an overview of the growing field of the integration of qualitative evidence. Based on an analysis of 177 syntheses published in a variety of professional and social science fields, they introduce a way of categorizing the various approaches that synthesists use to combine evidence derived from primary qualitative studies. Finally, they argue for the place of a constructionist approach when synthesizing findings from primary qualitative research.

This article explores the use of private diaries in qualitative research about intimate everyday experiences. The article first reflects on existing diary-based research, then examines data from a small-scale UK study about the negotiation of condom use in heterosex to pose questions about the kinds of data made available when participants use private diaries as a prompt in qualitative interviews. The article discusses the use of private diaries as a way to explore ambivalent, everyday experiences and interrogates the role of diaries as a form of confessional or measurement of private life. It explores how combined researcher intimate diaries and field note journals can be used in reflexive qualitative sexualities research. The article finally examines the potential for diaries as a form of research intervention in participants’ intimate lives.

The article is based on methodological reflections and recollections from two qualitative cross-national research projects, one of them comparing Finland and Scotland, and the other one Scotland and Spain. One of them was a case-oriented study of local regeneration strategies in two cities, while the other one used an ethnographic approach for the study of local practices on maternity and child healthcare services. The article is based on the authors’ dialogue and it contributes to the discussion about the value of a qualitative approach in cross-national comparisons and its place in the field of comparative research. It points at its advantages in enabling the analysis of societies and their specific features from inside to recognize cultural and social contexts, but it also draws attention to some specific problems and challenges concerning qualitative cross-national research by providing concrete examples from the two pieces of research.

In this article we aim to utilise and apply ethnomethodological and interactionist principles to the analysis of members’ situated accounts of regenerated urban space. With reference to previous empirical studies we apply membership categorization analysis and the concept of mundane reason to data gathered from situated street level interviews carried out as part of a programme of ethnographic research into the regenerated setting of Cardiff Bay. The article demonstrates that these data yield sociological insight into social actors’ interpretive and interactional reasoning in relation to the negotiation, navigation and comprehension of space and place. Through this work the patterned signatures of the urban interactional order can be identified. Furthermore, we illustrate the forms of emic rationality associated with the everyday and ubiquitous constitution of urban space as a meaningful, and thence cultural, milieu. It is our claim that an appreciation of these urban forms of reasoning is important in the ethnographic, sociological and geographical analysis of space and place.

Ethnographic research is increasingly concerned with how the internet operates within our everyday life. This article attempts to offer a methodological contribution of online communication and an exploration of initial empirical data generated with this methodology. The article calls for a specification of how ethnography can be applied appropriately to the study of relationships online. It departs from the real versus virtual dichotomy, offering a user-centred methodology to study interpersonal communications on the internet. It suggests the use of three main strategies to pay tribute to the characteristics of uses online: multi-situated, online and offline, and flexible and multimedia data collection methods. This approach facilitates a holistic analysis of the way in which social information and communication technologies operate within society in everyday life. It deals with the problem of defining the setting of research online and proposes an expanded ethnography. The article specifies details of this methodology for research into interpersonal communications and emotions online. It does so by drawing on empirical data generated in a study on everyday life and emotions on the internet. Epistemic questions related to this methodological approach will also be discussed. Overall, the exemplification suggests that the methodological approach proposed here is able to capture the uses and understandings of the internet.

The article revisits my personal relationships with fieldwork members in an ethnography on transnational migration between Ecuador and Italy. As this focused on the social relationships and practices that may connect emigrants with their motherland, the import of my interpersonal relationships was a crucial one. In reflecting on their development and impingements, I draw on three interpretive categories: respect, in terms of reciprocal recognition and legitimation with the members of the social group I had selected for my fieldwork; opportunities, i.e. the influence of structural factors, along with contingencies, on my ethnographic involvement; and interests, that is the motivations and objectives underlying my participant observation, along with the expectations emerging in those I met and stayed with. The implications and dilemmas of my field relationships are also sketched out, with respect both to the knowledge generated through my fieldwork, and to my own positioning within it. I finally reflect on the scope for collaboration, and for fair and ‘balanced’ relationships with the interlocutors of my research.