Conducting Qualitative Longitudinal Research: Fieldwork Experiences

This collection draws on the fieldwork experiences of some of the researchers involved in the ESRC 'Timescapes: Changing Relationships and Identities throughthe Life Course‘ programme. Timescapes, the first major Qualitative Longitudinal (QLL) study to be funded in the UK, aims to build a picture of life in 21st century Britain by gathering, archiving and analysing interviews from over 400 people living in a variety of circumstances across the UK. Temporal understanding is central to the programme. In essence, Timescapes is concerned with the intersection between different dimensions of time and the ways in which temporality shapes and is shaped by the changing relationships and identities of different individuals and collectives. We are exploring how individuals perceive past, present and future, and the relationship between their biographies and wider historical processes. Our work is framed by Barbara Adam‘s (1998) notion of 'timescapes‘. Like a landscape, cityscape or seascape a timescape is a panorama or view of the world in which time is placed as central

Disciplinary perspectives on archiving qualitative data

This webinar was organised by QUEST (Qualitative Expertise at Southampton) in collaboration with the National Centre for Research Methods and the South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership. It was held on 23 June 2022. The speakers were: Dr Rachel Ayrton (chair), Carolynn Low, Dr Susie Weller and Professor David Zeitlyn

Intergenerational relationships and the ageing population

As the population ages, public care and support for older people has been seen as a significant challenge. This thesis highlights the importance of considering private family intergenerational exchanges, their continuities and changes over time. It seeks to understand from the perspective of families, how care, need and support works out across generations, and why it is practised in this way. The key research question is: In the context of an ageing population, what can be understood by examining the connection between family multigenerational care, need and support networks and intergenerational relationships? Drawing on recent innovative methodologies, this study explores temporalities and uses this framework to gain insights into understanding family practices. I look through time to see how past, present and future contexts play a part in the way that intergenerational support is worked out. I consider the ways family members support one another, and how and why it alters between family generations, across the life course and through historical time. In order to gain in-depth knowledge about intergenerational support across time, the research employed qualitative life history interviews with four-generation families, i.e. a child, parent, grandparent and great-grandparent generation. The thesis finds new patterns of care emerging under different social, cultural and policy contexts across time. However, some practices flow down generations as part of the meanings and relationships between generations. Moreover, a life-course analysis reveals cyclical patterns of support. Complex pictures of continuity and changes in family life emerge and reveal the diverse ways that support plays out

What is Qualitative Interviewing?

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on bloomsburycollections.com. What is Qualitative Interviewing? is an accessible and comprehensive ‘what is’ and ‘how to’ methods book. It is distinctive in emphasising the importance of good practice in understanding and undertaking qualitative interviews within the framework of a clear philosophical position. Rosalind Edwards and Janet Holland provide clear and succinct explanations of a range of philosophies and theories of how to know about the social world, and a thorough discussion of how to go about researching it using interviews. A series of short chapters explain and illustrate a range of interview types and practices. Drawing on their own and colleagues’ experiences Holland and Edwards provide real research examples as informative illustrations of qualitative interviewing in practice, and the use of a range of creative interview tools. They discuss the use of new technologies as well as tackling enduring issues around asking and listening and power dynamics in research. Written in a clear and accessible style the book concludes with a useful annotated bibliography of key texts and journals in the field. What is Qualitative Interviewing? provides a vital resource for both new and experienced social science researchers across a range of disciplines

The archive in question

The archive has become central across a range of disciplines and domains. Perhaps paradoxically for some, this very foregrounding of the archive has been facilitated by its very destabilization, which has opened it up to new possibilities and the production of new knowledge. The authority and foundations of the archive have been called into question. In fact arguably it is the friction between and within disciplines, subdisciplines and interdisciplines which has been so productive, and hence most revealing of the archive’s potential. However different disciplines and professional and popular domains (and their overlaps) have produced different anxieties, and possibilities. This paper then attends to the different disciplines which have reflected on (and created) the archive, and to the tensions and frictions between. Specifically the paper turns to one of the more recent entrants into the field of the archive - sociology - which has received little attention in the literature on the archive. However in the context of the unravelling archive the entry of sociology into the debate is curious. Some of the sociological anxieties around the archive – the importance of context, anxieties around ethical issues including informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality, and concerns about representativeness, validity and generalisability, would appear to threaten to restabilize the archive. Through reflecting on these issues, the paper aims to explore the pitfalls and potentials of ‘the sociologisation of the archive’

What is Qualitative Interviewing?

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on bloomsburycollections.com. What is Qualitative Interviewing? is an accessible and comprehensive ‘what is’ and ‘how to’ methods book. It is distinctive in emphasising the importance of good practice in understanding and undertaking qualitative interviews within the framework of a clear philosophical position. Rosalind Edwards and Janet Holland provide clear and succinct explanations of a range of philosophies and theories of how to know about the social world, and a thorough discussion of how to go about researching it using interviews. A series of short chapters explain and illustrate a range of interview types and practices. Drawing on their own and colleagues’ experiences Holland and Edwards provide real research examples as informative illustrations of qualitative interviewing in practice, and the use of a range of creative interview tools. They discuss the use of new technologies as well as tackling enduring issues around asking and listening and power dynamics in research. Written in a clear and accessible style the book concludes with a useful annotated bibliography of key texts and journals in the field. What is Qualitative Interviewing? provides a vital resource for both new and experienced social science researchers across a range of disciplines

The right time for fatherhood? a temporal study of men's transition to parenthood

The participants' detailed accounts demonstrate how age and timing decisions can have a significant impact on the lived experience of fatherhood. The apparent continuation of a standardised trajectory for parenthood and the challenges of deviating from this have particular implications for individualisation and life course theories. The thesis provides a detailed exploration of the way in which men negotiate the timing of fatherhood, thus making a significant contribution to the literature on men's fertility decision-making

Hearing the Voices of HIV Positive Women in Kenya: Secondary Analysis of Interview Data Using Dialogic/Performance Analysis

The purpose of the study is to demonstrate the use of the dialogic/performance methodology in health research by conducting a secondary analysis of interview data collected from women in Kenya who are HIV positive. Dialogic/performance analysis is a dynamic, interpretive narrative analytical technique. Qualitative research literature inadequately provides specific methodological guidance especially when reusing a data set. Further, the use of the dialogic/ performance method is very limited in health research. These factors point to the significance of this work in explaining dialogic/ performance analysis thereby potentially expanding its use by both novice and experienced qualitative researchers. Guidance for conducting a qualitative health research study using dialogic/performance analysis is provided through a critical review of selected studies and an explanation of how this method was applied to the interviews of these women. Skeptics of qualitative secondary analysis question whether methodological challenges can be overcome sufficiently to produce research studies that are trustworthy, sound and meaningful. A secondary intent of this research is to illustrate how methodological issues/concerns related to conducting a qualitative secondary analysis are addressed in the context of using dialogic/performance analysis of narrative data. A discussion of challenges such as context, researcher presence, suitability of data set and other concerns are addressed through a discussion of how these concerns were resolved in this analysis of the interviews. Finally, the actual findings from conducting this analysis are presented. The analysis shifts the perspective from an exploration of what the researcher wants to know to giving opportunity to hear the voices of these HIV positive women as they tell their stories of the impact of an HIV-positive diagnosis on their identity and lives

Becoming a disabled mother: A qualitative longitudinal study

This thesis seeks to make sense of the complexity of the experience of becoming a disabled mother as made and lived in a dynamic process that is social, embodied, emotional, and temporal. There is limited empirical research that has investigated the experience of disabled motherhood and a relative absence of research that has followed disabled women's processes of identity over the course of the first year of motherhood. This thesis seeks to fill that gap. The empirical base for this thesis includes material collected from six longitudinal case studies, with disabled women interviewed three times in the first-year transition to becoming a mother. By focusing on what women do with their bodies, or their pursuit of distinct body projects, I reveal insights into my participants' experience and understanding of disability at this stage in the life-course, during which the embodied experience is subject to change and transformation. Drawing on post-structural concepts of power and agency, I explore the possibilities and limitations within my participants' strategies of sense-making for engineering a liveable life in relation to dominant social norms. These in sights speak to a debate within the disability movement about the nature of disability (as experience) as the basis of individual and collective identity and the kind of support disabled mothers need, which can inform social and healthcare practice. Methodologically, I utilise an innovative psycho-social longitudinal research design and method to enrich and develop my understanding of this process. Researcher subjectivity, difference and temporality are all regarded as important tools for revealing emotional dynamics and processes of intelligibility