Qualitative

Question 1

Epistemology

Answer 1

Is concerned with the nature of reality/knowledge and how knowledge can be produced

Question 2

Similarities between interpretive and critical constructionist

Answer 2

• Concerned with meaning
• Interested in how people make sense of the world
• Interested in individual experience
• Meanings attributed to events or experiences
• AIMS TO: Describe, possibly explain but never predict.
• Thick descriptions
• Often study people within natural occurring settings
  “What it’s like to”
• Not interested in cause-effect, making generalizations to broader populations
• Rather we try to make analytic generalizable claims

Question 3

Interpretive

Answer 3

-Focus in on people’s subjective experiences
-Focuses on the individual
“taking people’s subjective experiences seriously”
-Accepts what people say at face value
-People’s words = their truth
-People’s words= direct reflection of their thoughts and experiences
-Relatively uncritical
-Does not focus on social forces or hidden meanings
-Language = Truth

Question 4

rigour

Answer 4

validity

Question 5

Social Constructionist

Answer 5

• Multiple realities
• Reality and knowledge is ever-changing
• Reality is subjective
• Knowledge is socially constructed
• Knowledge seen as social, cultural, moral, ideological and political
• People’s words are not treated as direct reflection of fact, but as one socially constructed version of the truth
• Language is not neutral -it “does” something, it is always political

Not very interested in individual agency

Rather the focus is on systemic and structural processes and its impact on the individual

Question 6

Quantitative -positivism

Answer 6

• there is only one truth, one reality
• only one correct view or answer
• cause and effect relationship
• direct correspondence between thing and our perception of them

Question 7

Homosexuality according to DSM 1952-1973

Answer 7

• pathologised, sexual deviation, neurosis, diseased
• 1974 removed from DSM

Has the physical act of homosexual sex changed since 1973?
No, only how it has been constructed has changed.

Question 8

Interpretive:

Interested in the subjective understandings and experiences of individuals/groups

Answer 8

Social Constructionist:

Interested in how these understandings and experiences are derived from (and reproduce) larger social discourses

Question 9

Interpretive: People = origin of their experiences, feelings and perceptions

Answer 9

Social Constructionist:

People’s experiences, feelings thoughts are a product of a broader system of meaning

Question 10

Interpretive: Individual

Answer 10

Social Constructionist:

Social forces

Question 11

Language according to positivist

Answer 11

treat language neutrally, as a mere vehicle for getting facts

Question 12

Interpretivism: Language

Answer 12

Language as window to access facts/experiences/reality

Question 13

Social Constructionism: Language

Answer 13

• language constructs reality
• language must therefore be the object of the study
• concerned with broader patterns of social meaning encoded in language

SC is Also interested in symbols or objects (One word or object may have multiple systems of meaning)

Question 14

Guess the approach: How do homeless people in London experience their daily lives?

Answer 14

Interpretive

Question 15

Guess the approach: What barriers to healthy eating are constructed in the ways men talk about food?

Answer 15

Critical/Constructionist

Question 16

Guess the approach: How do co-habiting same-sex couples think about and manage their finances?

Answer 16

Interpretive

Question 17

Guess the approach: How can participatory methods be used to empower young people to develop a critical consciousness about the effects of patriarchy and hetero-normativity on their lives?

Answer 17

Critical/Constructionist

Question 18

Guess the approach: How is prejudice like racism or heterosexism ‘done’ in and through language?

Answer 18

Critical/Constructionist

Question 19

7 approaches to qualitative design

Answer 19

1. Feminist research- focuses on gender and power
2. Participatory Action Research- produces knowledge with the purpose of improving people’s conditions
3. Narrative approaches- study of narratives of stories, narratives placed in their larger context
4. Discourse analysis- study of ways in which language constructs particular versions of reality
5. Ethnography- study of cultures and groups, considers role of power and how particular groups are represented
6. Postcolonial methodologies- concerned with relations of domination and subjection
7. Photovoice methods- PAR approach that involved photographic evidence and critical conscious raising