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Innovations in Qualitative Methods

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The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Social Psychology

Abstract

In this chapter, we explore four particular ways in which innovation has pushed qualitative data collection beyond the familiar focus on face-to-face interviews. We have chosen these methods both for their practicality and because they are tools and techniques we have used ourselves; as committed qualitative researchers, we can attest to their value. First, we identify the way innovation has occurred in response to rapidly changing socio-technological contexts: adaptations and expansions of traditional modes of researching, such as interviewing and focus groups, to utilise the potential of the connected, online worlds we increasingly live in. Second, concurrent with, but not synonymous with, theoretical shifts that have argued against a focus just on ‘the text’, we discuss the blossoming of pluralistic or multi-modal forms of interviewing and focus group research. These two offer examples of how traditionally qualitative methods have expanded beyond their origins; the next two offer examples of techniques which have been released from their quantitative moorings: qualitative surveys offer researchers access to familiar forms of data—personal accounts, perspectives and so on—often conceptualised as ‘representing the self’, somehow; story completion tasks, in contrast, provide something radically different: a window into the social meaning worlds of our participants. Read on—we hope you are inspired!

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Key References

For an accessible and practical introduction to using many of the methods discussed in this chapter, including surveys and story completion, see: Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2013). Successful qualitative research: A practical guide for beginners. London: Sage. The book also has a resource-rich companion website: www.sagepub.co.uk/braunclarke.

For a good introduction to online researching from a critical psychology perspective, see the special issue of Qualitative Research in Psychology (2015, Vol 13(2)), and the associated editorial which ‘sets the scene’: Morison, T., Gibson, A. F., Wigginton, B., & Crabb, S. (2015). Online research methods in psychology: Methodological opportunities for critical qualitative research. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 12(3), 223–232.

More details of the three example study methods—and the studies themselves—can be found here: Clarke, V., Braun, V. & Wooles, K. (2015) Thou shalt not covet another man? Exploring constructions of same-sex and different-sex infidelity using story completion. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 25(2), 153–166.

Gray, D., & Manning, R. (2014). ‘Oh my god, we’re not doing nothing’: Young people’s experiences of spatial regulation. British Journal of Social Psychology, 53(4), 640–655.

Opperman, E., Braun, V., Clarke, V., & Rogers, C. (2014). “It feels so good it almost hurts”: Young adults’ experiences of orgasm and sexual pleasure. Journal of Sex Research, 51(5), 503–515.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Virginia Braun

  2. University of the West of England, Bristol, UK

    Victoria Clarke

  3. University of Winchester, Winchester, UK

    Debra Gray

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  1. Virginia Braun
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  2. Victoria Clarke
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  3. Debra Gray
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Sciences, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK

    Brendan Gough

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Braun, V., Clarke, V., Gray, D. (2017). Innovations in Qualitative Methods. In: Gough, B. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Social Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51018-1_13

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