Conference review: British Psychological Society Qualitative Methods in Psychology Inaugural Conference, 2-4 September 2008

Citation

Keegan, S. (2009), "Conference review: British Psychological Society Qualitative Methods in Psychology Inaugural Conference, 2-4 September 2008", Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 12 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/qmr.2009.21612aac.002

Conference review: British Psychological Society Qualitative Methods in Psychology Inaugural Conference, 2-4 September 2008

Article Type: Practitioner perspectives From: Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Volume 12, Issue 1

The first ever Qualitative Methods in Psychology conference was held at the beginning of September at Leeds University, under the auspices of the British Psychology Society. It was quite a milestone. Psychology, even in my undergraduate days of the 1970s, was struggling to decide whether it was an art or a science. It is still struggling. Lacking the inherent scientific authority that comes naturally to chemists and physicists, many branches of psychology tried hard to position themselves as “proper” science. They ignored the messy, contradictory aspects of human behaviour in their attempt to persuade us that the rules of physics were as applicable to humans as to inanimate matter.

One consequence of this insistence on the scientific method as the only way to study human behaviour is that, until fairly recently, qualitative research – which concerns itself with the unruly, even quixotic, ways of mere mortals and their deviations from objective truth and reason – was largely off limits for academic psychologists.

Slowly, over the last decade or two, the psychological climate has started to shift and scientific purism has softened. The QMiP section was finally set up within the British Psychological Society (BPS) in 2005. The Section has blossomed in the last three years, making its mark this year at the BPS Annual Conference in Dublin and through a variety of events, competitions and the introduction of a bi-annual QMiP newsletter. The section now has over 1,700 members, the largest membership of any specialist section within the BPS which, I guess, must say something for the latent demand that existed before it was set up.

One highlight has been a series of Showcasing Qualitative Psychology seminars led by eminent qualitative psychologists including Professor Jonathan Potter, on the joys and woes of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA; what commercial researchers would view, largely, as the standard approach to qualitative interviewing), Dr John Rowan, who re-visited the “New Paradigm manifesto” (a participant centred approach, which views research as ongoing learning through reflection) which he developed with Reason and Heron in1980, and Professor Lucy Yardley who talked about “mixed methods” (having qualitative and quantitative elements in the same research project). The enthusiasm for these events gave confidence to the fledgling Section.

The recent QMiP conference therefore marked another level of acceptance of qualitative research within psychology. It was the celebration of a new age; the coming out of qualitative psychology. Professor Ken Gergen, that wonderful statesman of academic qual came over from the States to kick off the conference. Gergen talked about the ways in which forms of inquiry in psychology are in themselves a contribution to cultural life and, over and above the content of the research, they carry with them presumptions about the nature of knowledge and the constitution of the person. He expressed his hope to both stimulate and sustain a form of reflexive dialogue which, he claimed, has been lacking in traditional psychological research. I found his perspectives and interests to be surprisingly in tune with commercial qualitative thinking, in part because he is confident enough and seasoned enough not to feel bowed by the need to contain his ideas within a scientific framework.

Dr Carla Willig, a keynote speaker from City University, discussed the role of interpretation in qualitative research. Whilst interpretation is a given in commercial qualitative practice – and, indeed, is arguably what clients are paying for – it is often viewed with suspicion amongst academic psychologists. Willig described how, until recently, many qualitative psychologists have avoided overt interpretation and have instead preferred to use qualitative analysis as a way of “capturing and systematically re-presenting participant-generated meanings in the form of (descriptive) themes”. Willig discussed the challenge of going beyond the data without imposing meaning on the phenomenon.

Commercial researchers might argue that interpretation is intrinsic and unavoidable in qualitative inquiry. They may wonder why it has taken psychologists so long to reach this conclusion. This is missing the point. Commercial researchers may analyse and interpret in an instinctive way, but how much attention do we give to the processes themselves. And if we do not understand and are not able to articulate these processes, how do we teach new researchers to analyse and interpret effectively. It remains a personal skill, learnt (hopefully) by observation, mentoring and experience. It was impressive to follow the painstaking and disciplined way in which Willig worked through the issues. Commercial practitioners would benefit from more of this reflexivity both in our assumptions and in the way in which we currently practice.

Many of the papers focused on specific qualitative approaches; discourse analysis, narrative analysis, IPA, grounded theory, conversation analysis, etc. There was much debate about which approach was superior to others and researchers often had their favourite – or the most acceptable within their particular university department.

Nollaig Frost ran a workshop on “Pluralism in Qualitative Research”, based on a research project she had carried out, which involved using different data analysts to examine the same piece of interview text, each using a different method of qualitative analysis. She was particularly interested in identifying subjectivities that impacted on the analysis of the data and identifying the problems, the process and the creative tensions of working with different methods. Psychology academics, on the whole, are much more interested in methodology than end benefit. Theory informs practice in their world and there was much talk about the importance of developing theory and then applying it; a linear model of research and very different to a commercial view of practice and theory as co-dependent in an iterative sort of way. As a result, qualitative research within psychology is judged as much, if not more, in terms of its academic rigour as on its usefulness.

Frost’s workshop was engaging and interesting but, for me, it threw into sharp relief the differences between academic and commercial researchers. Commercial researchers are trained to view the research process holistically. For instance, a research interview is, in most cases, carried out by the researcher who is involved throughout the research process, until its conclusion with the presentation to the client and/or the written report. During the interview he or she will be watching, listening, feeling, interpreting, making sense of the interactions, questioning, maybe challenging and validating his or her understanding with participants. Qualitative interviewing, for a commercial researcher, is very much a whole body experience. It feels alien to us to analyse transcripts from a project that we have not been involved in. It feels partial, missing a great wealth of data – over-cerebral.

At some points in the conference, I felt that the emphasis on the minutia of analysing conversation was akin to making psychology a science through the back door. It had lost the bigger picture. And, indeed, the obsession with the written word was often disconcerting. It is normal procedure, in academic psychology, for transcripts of interviews carried out by researchers working on one project, to be retrieved and forensically analysed by a group of researchers working on a completely different project. But I wondered where the body language, the emotion, the tone of voice had gone and how you could analyse with such detail when most of this contextual data was missing.

It is easy to dismiss this nervousness amongst qualitative psychologists to go beyond the data, until you learn that the sister organisation to the BPS in the USA, the American Psychological Association (APA), only this year rejected the formation of a qualitative section in the USA. UK psychologists do still have something to prove to their non-qual colleagues. They have, also, to show an audit trail from scientific principles to their practice, if they are to be accepted by their peers, which is of prime concern to many academics.

Often, there was a note of apology and hesitation amongst the delegates and speakers. The conference was flavoured by the need to justify qualitative research; an air of trying too hard. Many speakers were at pains to emphasise their rigour and disciplined approach to their subject; how they had considered all the biases and influences and questioned their own interest in the subject. One speaker, in talking about the analysis of transcripts by different researchers expressed this as. “(The trouble is) it’s so co-constructed that we can get nothing from it.” Underlying this statement, it seemed to me, was the persistent search for “absolute truth”, in spite of the supposed moving on from classical science.

Amongst we commercial researchers, who accept co-construction as a welcome and necessary ingredient because all qualitative research, by its nature, involves an exploration of cultural co-creation, such caution is surprising. However, it reflects the steady, admirable progress of psychology which is determined to maintain and develop theory whilst it moves into uncharted waters. Commercial researchers, by contrast, are often happy to abandon theory in the search for “usefulness”. This can be a short term benefit. Unless we can articulate theory to support practice, eventually we may end up at sea without a rudder.

My, perhaps over broad, interpretation of the difference between how commercial and psychologist researchers seem to analyse data is as follows. Commercial researchers start with “the big picture”; themes, ideas, concepts – an attempt at “the gestalt”. Then, as an iterative process, they revisit the detail in order to re-live, develop and refine their ideas. Most psychological researchers – at least those who were speaking at this conference – seem to favour a building block approach. They create “the whole” through very thorough, detailed and painstaking work, but may never take the leap into the implications of the research. This difference in methods of analysis may, to some extent, explain the creative nature of commercial qual; the leaps of imagination, the hypotheses, the connections and the emphasis on outcomes. It is inductive. This is how we work. By contrast, the academic approach is more deductive, each step checked and validated. Both approaches are equally valid. It depends what you are trying to achieve.

As a commercial researcher, accustomed to addressing research objectives and judged in terms of my contribution to the client’s problem solving, I find the building block approach quite frustrating. Providing useful understanding, direction and problem solving is my bread and butter; what I am paid to do. I found myself repeatedly throughout the conference wanting to say, “and so … , what then … and how did this help you?”

I was the only “commercial” speaker at the conference, so I was rather nervous when I mounted the stage and asked my audience of more than a hundred:

“How many of you are familiar with commercial research?”

Two people put their hands up.

I tried, in my brief 20 min slot, to explain what commercial research was, what we do and how this differs from much academic qualitative research.

I voiced my wish for more communication between academic and commercial researchers.

The majority of the audience were either lecturers who taught qualitative methods or students who were using them. Yet for most, commercial research was completely new territory. It is quite shocking that students are being taught qualitative methods and supervised by lecturers who have no awareness of a parallel world which their students may need to understand for their future work. But then it is equally shocking that commercial qualitative researchers are so unaware of the parallel world as well.

This brings us back to the mutual – and as yet largely unrecognised – need for academics and commercial practitioners to stop ignoring each other and share more of their thinking and practice. We would both benefit from the exchange. Commercial quallies would greatly benefit from greater rigour, more awareness of what we do through greater reflectivity and reflexivity. Academic researchers could learn a great deal from the creative, innovative approaches of commercial researchers which involved the whole body, not just cerebral input. And which leads to some useful direction of change.

This was a positive and successful first conference. People were excited, involved and optimistic about the future. May the QMiP section grow and thrive.

Sheila KeeganCampbell Keegan Ltd

About the author

Sheila Keegan holds a PhD and is a Chartered Psychologist and Founding Partner of Campbell Keegan Ltd, a business and social research consultancy, working with multi-national, blue chip companies and government departments providing a psychological grounding for understanding people’s motivations, drives, fears and motivations. Sheila is a fellow of the MRS, a regular speaker at MRS, ESOMAR, AQR, BPS conferences and teaches on MRS and AQR research training courses. She has written and presented programmes for BBC Radio 4. She has written for various publications including The Sunday Telegraph, The Times, The Psychologist, Psychologies Magazine and Mensa Magazine. She is a committee member and a newsletter editor for the British Psychological Society in the “Qualitative Methods in Psychology” Section.