Writing a coherent integrative chapter is crucial for a successful PhD by publication

In a recent Impact Blog post, Jørgen Carling outlined the reasons why he feels the PhD by publication is a good model for doctoral candidates to choose. Here, prompted by the relative scarcity of supporting resources available, Pirjo Nikander and Nelli Piattoeva offer advice for any prospective PhD-by-publication candidates looking to plan the writing of their integrative chapter. Crucial to convincing the readership (and examiners) of the scientific value of the PhD, the integrative chapter is more than a simple “mopping-up” activity at the end of a research project, and deserves careful attention and planning

Age in action: membership work and stage of life categories in talk

This thesis is an analysis on the discursive practices through which people make sense of and manage their membership in a particular age category. The data comprise of a corpus of over 800 pages of transcribed talk from interviews with Finnish men and women, all close to their 50th birthday. Throughout the analysis of these accounts I will be addressing wider methodological and thematic issues and debates in discursive social psychology. These include arguments about how identities, the membership or non-membership in particular categories, are managed m talk; the analytic possibilities and relevance of discursively mapping people's membership and categorisation work in interactlon; and more specifically, the interactive processes through which participants in an interview situation display, apply, and mobilise notions and descriptions of age and ageing. The analytic focus is firmly on participants' communicative and interpretative sense making: on the tacit reasoning practices, and on the lands of interactional business achieved by age categorisation in action. The wider empirical focus throughout is on how people use categorisations and self-descriptions to accomplish certain kinds of interactional work. In the analysis of the interview data, empirically grounded observations are made (i) On how people orient to and display the factual nature of the human life course as a progression, and how overlap in between age categories is managed (11) On the discursive practices through which membership m an age category is either warranted or resisted (Ill) On the discursive formulations of personal change and continuity, and (iv) On the moral nature of age description The analytic and theoretical contributions from this work are of immediate interest to both discursive and ageing research. The work shows the benefits of discursive theorising and analysis for understanding arguments and descriptions about age. Simultaneously it makes a contribution to the existing literature on identity and categorisation in talk and interaction

A Macrostructural Perspective

This chapter looks at the phenomenon of ageism and age discrimination in the labour market from a socio-political perspective and draws attention to key factors in its emergence. The approach adopted here goes beyond the individualistic and micro accounts adopted mostly by psychologists, as well as beyond the meso perspective as used in organisation and work environment studies. Our aim is rather to examine the role of macrostructural processes and transformations and to identify their link to the persistence of ageism and age discrimination in contemporary labour markets. First, an overview of the most predominant conceptual understandings of ageism and age discrimination in employment are provided, which clarify the theoretical and empirical distinctions between the two related, but not synonymous, concepts. This section also provides a life-course perspective on age discrimination in the labour market by looking at experiences of different age groups, as well as an elaboration of the intersectional approach to ageism. Second, the chapter investigates the dynamics between the phenomena of ageism and age discrimination and a range of socio-political contexts, cultural settings, and legal and economic conditions. We then discuss the costs and consequences of age discrimination in employment, as well as particular policy responses

Being an 'older parent': Chrononormativity and practices of stage of life categorisation

This article investigates the discursive practices of older first-time parents in interview interaction. Our focus is on the ways in which cultural notions surrounding the timing of parenthood are mobilised, and how speakers orient to potential discrepancies between the category ‘parent’ and their own stage of life (SOL) or age category. The data corpus comprises qualitative interviews with 15 heterosexual couples and individuals in the UK who became parents between the ages of 35–57 years. Examining reproductive biographical talk at midlife at a time when the average age of first time parents is rising and delayed parenting is increasing across Western countries provides a testing ground for the analysis of norms concerning the ‘right time’ of lifetime transitions, and age-appropriateness more generally. Inspired by Elizabeth Freeman’s notion of ‘chrononormativity’, our analysis demonstrates that ‘older parents’ engage in considerable discursive work to bridge temporal aspects of their parenthood. Moreover, we show how the notion of chrononormativity can be theoretically and empirically elaborated through the adoption of membership categorisation and discourse analysis. In explicating how taken-for-granted, temporal notions of lifespan events are mobilised, our findings contribute to research on age-in-interaction, social identity and categorisation, and on the methodology for analysing the discursive age-order and chrononormativity more broadly

Laadullinen pitkittäistutkimus ja terveys

”Any serious study of lives must consider time, process and context” (Elder 1991, 58) Laadullisella pitkittäistutkimuksella viitataan tutkimusotteeseen, jossa samoja ihmisiä, yhteisöjä tai instituutioita seurataan tietyin aikavälein, tyypillisesti haastatteluja, havainnointia, visuaalisia menetelmiä ja muita aineistonkeruun ja analyysin välineitä hyödyntäen. Tämä ihmisten ”rinnalla kulkemisen” metodi soveltuu erityisesti erilaisten elämänkulullisten siirtymien, esimerkiksi terveysurien, riskikäyttäytymisen, elämäntyylien sekä terveyttä koskevien ratkaisujen, toiminnan ja taitekohtien tarkasteluun. Tässä artikkelissa käyn läpi laadullisesta pitkittäistutkimuksesta laajemmin, erityisesti Britanniassa käytyä keskustelua sekä kuvaan laadullisen seuranta-asetelman hyötyjä ja haasteita osana terveystutkimuksen kenttää. Artikkeli osoittaa, että laadulliselle aineistolle ja pitkittäisasetelmalle rakentuva tutkimusevidenssi täydentää terveyteen liittyvien, monimutkaisten kysymysten, kokemusten ja prosessien ymmärrystä ja samalla tukee tutkimukseen perustuvaa, terveydenhuolto-organisaatiota ja sen käytäntöjä koskevaa päätöksentekoa