Ways of Asking, Ways of Telling: A Methodological Comparison of Ethnographic and Research Diagnostic Interviews

The interpretive understanding that can be derived from interviews is highly influenced by methods of data collection, be they structured or semistructured, ethnographic, clinical, life-history or survey interviews. This article responds to calls for research into the interview process by analyzing data produced by two distinctly different types of interview, a semistructured ethnographic interview and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM, conducted with participants in the Navajo Healing Project. We examine how the two interview genres shape the context of researcher-respondent interaction and, in turn, influence how patients articulate their lives and their experience in terms of illness, causality, social environment, temporality and self/identity. We discuss the manner in which the two interviews impose narrative constraints on interviewers and respondents, with significant implications for understanding the jointly constructed nature of the interview process. The argument demonstrates both divergence and complementarity in the construction of knowledge by means of these interviewing methods

Exploring Difference or Just Watching the Experts at Work? Interrogating Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) in a Cancer Research Setting Using the Work of Jurgen Habermas

Patient and public involvement (PPI) has emerged as a key consideration for organisations delivering health research and has spawned a burgeoning literature in the health and social sciences. The literature makes clear that PPI in health research encompasses a heterogeneous set of practices with levels of participation and involvement ranging from relatively minimal contributions to research processes to actively driving the research agenda. In this paper, we draw on the work of Jurgen Habermas to explore the ways in which PPI was accomplished in a cancer research setting in England. Drawing on ethnographic data with PPI participants and professional researchers, we describe the ways in which the life-world experiences of PPI participants were shaped by the health research system. We argue that PPI in this setting is less about exploring differences with regard to a plurality of expertise and more about simply watching or supporting the professional researchers at work

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Negotiating the contested terrain of narrative methods in illness contexts.

This paper offers an interpretive account of an ongoing transatlantic debate about illness narratives instigated by the publication in 1997 of Paul Atkinson's paper Narrative Turn Or Blind Alley? The claims and counter-claims to be found in this debate about narrative data and narrative analysis are set out sequentially, in an attempt to grasp the debate's essentials. Matters of theoretical perspective, methodology, ethics, and personal politics are found to be at stake in the writings of the four featured academics: Paul Atkinson, Arthur Bochner, Arthur Frank and Elliot Mishler. The paper moves on to consider the types of sociologies at work in their arguments, and explores the debate's implications for the author's own illness narratives research project. The paper's overall aim is to assist researchers who seek to clarify their own thinking on the use of narrative research methods in illness context

Panic and perjury: a psychosocial exploration of agency

The aim of this article is to explore the predicament of one man in difficult circumstances, in order to produce a psychosocial analysis that could contribute to a social psychological understanding of agency. After a brief review of the problem of dualism in theorizing agency and relevant developments in theories of self, and a critique of assumptions about unitary rational subjects, we emphasize the effects of unconscious conflict on choice and agency. We also identify the importance of including people's biographically motivated investments in specific discursive positions. Vince, a middle-aged, working-class man from the north of England, the subject of our case study, had already been faced with difficult choices in order to hold on to a job that was bad for him. Now the choice appeared to be taken out of his hands by an illness without a discernible organic base and with no prospect of improvement that, for 5 months, had forced him to be on sick leave. Our approach in this paper, based on interpretation of material from two interviews, is to detail the multiple and contradictory meanings of Vince's job to him. In each of three areas — the daily experience of the job, the meaning of having a respectable job, and Vince's relationship with his boss — we illustrate the power of a psychosocial analysis to escape the limitations of both voluntaristic and deterministic accounts of individual action. In conclusion we define the agent of choice in Vince's case as the divided psychosocial subject of unconscious conflict; a subject located in social realities mediated not only by social discourses but by psychic defences

One participant said...': the implications of quotations from biographical talk

Quotations from biographical talk are widely used in the presentation and writing up of qualitative research. This article discusses the unintended implications which such quotations can carry, partly as a result of the conventions for introducing them and because the basis for their selection is often unclear. These implications are discussed in terms of consistency. An assumption of consistency as an aspect of the talk or the person speaking is problematic because it disregards the situated and variable nature of talk, including talk about memory, and can invoke an over-simple model of the speaker. The article proposes that consistency should not be assumed but become a focus for analysis. An example is presented of an analysis of biographical talk about creative work, following an approach derived from social and discursive psychology. Consistencies in a speaker’s repeated accounts of the same job are interpreted in terms of both discursive resources around contemporary creative working, and ‘local resources’ which are derived from the speaker’s ‘discursive apprenticeship’ with his own family