Collecting Data from Children Ages 9-13

Provides a summary of literature on common methods used to collect data, such as diaries, interviews, observational methods, and surveys. Analyzes age group-specific considerations, advantages, and drawbacks, with tips for improving data quality

Through the Eye and Into My Heart: Scenes of Embrace in Morgan MS M.245 and the Tactile Responses They Provoked

This thesis examines representations of embrace in a Roman de la rose (Morgan Library, M.245). Emphasis is on the reader’s tactile interaction with the manuscript as an object, and the notion of romances as sites for a distinctly physical reading practice, in which miniatures would be kissed, rubbed, or pierced

Reconciling social psychology and socio-linguistics can have some benefits: language and identity among second generation British Asians

Given the pervasiveness of language in social life and the implications that language use can have for one’s individual and collective identities, attempts were made to explore the theoretical and empirical advantages in connecting social psychological theories of identity and sociolinguistics in order to explore language and identity among second generation British Asians. This paper features a brief overview of the sociological background of British Asians and a detailed consideration of two social psychological theories of identity, namely, self-aspects model of identity (Simon, 2004) and identity process theory (Breakwell, 1986, 1992). It is considered that these under-utilised social psychological theories lend themselves readily to the study of language and identity among this population. Moreover, this paper considers the substantive literature on language and identity. It is argued that an interdisciplinary (social psychological and sociolinguistic) approach is particularly well-suited to the exploration of language and identity. Furthermore, ‘theoretically active’ phenomenological approaches may be particularly useful for research in this domain

Qualitative approaches to research using identity process theory

Qualitative research in psychology has had an interesting history over the last couple of decades in terms of its development, standing and popularity (see Howitt, 2010) but its story varies across domains of the discipline and across geographical locations. Social, health and counselling psychology in Europe (particularly in the UK) have been notably open to qualitative work, whereas, with some exceptions, qualitative approaches to psychological research have struggled to make a major impression in North American psychology generally. In places where it has become relatively established, the story of qualitative approaches to psychological research has not been marked by a cumulative upward trajectory of popularity. Even in the UK, for example, where qualitative methods became an increasingly standard presence in psychology degree programs in the 1990s, there may have been a flattening in popularity in recent years associated with a changing research culture and the ascendancy of cognitive neuroscience as a powerful domain within psychology. In the time since its original, most complete presentation within British social psychology (Breakwell, 1986), Identity Process Theory (IPT) has been employed in both quantitative and qualitative research. In this chapter, we examine the contributions that qualitative research located within an IPT framework can make to the understanding of identity and of the theory itself, while also noting some of the challenges associated with using qualitative approaches within IPT research. In parallel with Vivian L. Vignoles in his chapter on quantitative approaches to IPT research in this volume, we want to make it clear that our chapter should not be seen as suggesting that qualitative research methods are inherently superior to quantitative approaches for studying identity from an IPT perspective. Mindful of critical questions that have been raised about the role and value of qualitative research in the social sciences (e.g. Hammersley, 2008), we advocate a pragmatic approach to methodology. The question is always which research approach – singly or in combination with others – is most useful for achieving the aims and answering the research question of any given study and for maximizing the value of the research, however “research value” might be defined. We agree that some research aims are best suited to quantitative approaches, such as testing theoretical predictions, and other research aims are best achieved through qualitative approaches, such as developing rich, contextualized understandings of phenomena