The psycho-social subject in 'evidence-based practice'

In this paper I provide a theoretical outline, followed by two case examples, of a qualitative method, called the free association narrative interview, which produces evidence that is congruent with the kinds and contexts of knowledge that human service professionals use in their work. Following a critique of assumptions about what constitutes evidence in evidence-based practice and an argument for the use of experiential and theoretical, as well as empirical, ways of knowing, I focus on qualitative methods and the shortcomings of semi-structured interviewing as an alternative method for evidence-based practice. In particular I argue that the theory of the research subject and the research relationship that is assumed in most qualitative methods is misguided and affects the character of the evidence that can be produced. I outline an alternative theory of the (research) subject, a psycho-social subject, drawing on psychoanalytic concepts that emphasise unconscious conflict, defences against anxiety and the centrality of unconscious intersubjective dynamics in the research, as in other, relationships. Two examples follow. The first illustrates the transference and counter-transference dynamics in one of my research interviews, showing their importance for what information was produced. The second example demonstrates the use of experiential, empirical and theoretical knowledge in the analysis of data from an interviewee with agoraphobia. It illustrates how the paradigm of a psycho-social subject can produce a more complex account of people's behaviour. I conclude by arguing that the kind of evidence illustrated here, being congruent with the vicissitudes of most human service professionals' work with clients, could provide a model for evidence-based practice that is not only more appropriate but also helpful for professional development.     

Hidden boundaries and shared meanings: the roles of researcher characteristics and cultural norms in shaping understandings of sexuality in the unstructured interview setting

This paper examines the role of the research process in shaping the construction of knowledge about sensitive topics in in-depth interviews particularly with regard to researcher identity and cultural influences or norms. We argue that these influences shape all aspects of the research process and that researchers will benefit from reflecting upon them when planning, undertaking and interpreting qualitative studies. Drawing on an empirical study interviewing Australian women aged 55 years and older about sexuality we address differences and similarities between researchers and participants; cultural constructions of sexuality and ageing, and generational influences. Using examples from our interview data we interrogate the contribution of each of these aspects to the interview dynamic and the co-production of meaning. Our analysis draws attention to the fluidity of insider and outsider status and to the existence of hidden boundaries that impact on how certain topics can be discussed in interviews. The paper argues that knowledge about sensitive topics such as older people’s sexuality must be viewed as a situated occurrence shaped by the particularities of the interview and the cultural context. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for qualitative inquiries into sensitive topics.     

Beyond performative talk: critical observations on the radical critique of reading interview data

ABSTRACT

We centrally consider the question of what interview data can be used to ‘say’ through a dialogue with advocates of the ‘radical critique’ of interview studies. We propose that while the critique has considerable utility in drawing to ‘the social life of interviews’ and the pervasiveness of notions of the ‘romantic subject’, it simultaneously goes too far in its reduction of interviews to narrative performance, and not far enough in its own critical departure from core characteristics of the romantic subject. We show how the critique leaves intact imagery of a seemingly unbridgeable divide between the experienced and the expressed, and involves a related conflation of what can be said at interview with what interviews can be used to say. We explore how the radical critique might productively be built upon via more ‘synthetic’ forms of research engagement, outlining alternative modes of apprehending interview data through a further critical departure from the romantic subject. Accordingly, we advance a move beyond a sole engagement with questions of how data are constructed and produced and towards how such data might otherwise be used to speak about the social world beyond the social nexus that constitutes an interview encounter.     

Guidelines for teachers to elicit detailed and accurate narrative accounts from children

This paper provides interview strategies for teachers who talk to children about serious events, including bullying, truancy, and suspected maltreatment. With regard to the latter, teachers are among the largest group of professionals reporting child abuse, but also tend to evince low substantiation rates. We review research on best practice interviewing, with a focus on its application in school settings. Interview phases are described chronologically, with interview excerpts included for illustrative purposes. Gaps in knowledge about the appropriateness of techniques are highlighted, and recommendations for future research specifically within the school setting are made. It is proposed that teachers receive basic training in best practice interviewing so that, when required, they can confidently ask about difficulties in children's lives while minimizing the potential for contamination of children's responses.     

Incorporating eye tracking into cognitive interviewing to pretest survey questions

In this study, we investigated whether incorporating eye tracking into cognitive interviewing is effective when pretesting survey questions. In the control condition, a cognitive interview was conducted using a standardized interview protocol that included pre-defined probing questions for about one-quarter of the questions in a 52-item questionnaire. In the experimental condition, participants’ eye movements were tracked while they completed an online version of the questionnaire. Simultaneously, their reading patterns were monitored for evidence of response problems. Afterward, a cognitive interview was conducted using an interview protocol identical to that in the control condition. We compared both approaches with regard to the number and types of problems they detected. We found support for our hypothesis that cognitive interviewing and eye tracking complement each other effectively. As expected, the hybrid method was more productive in identifying both questionnaire problems and problematic questions than applying cognitive interviewing alone.     

Re-approaching interview data through qualitative secondary analysis: interviews with internet gamblers

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses two interrelated questions concerning what interview data are and how researchers might use them. The first considers the value of a shift from a predominant or exclusive focus upon how data are constructed and produced at interview, and towards how such data might be apprehended through different forms of engagement. The second question relates to how and what qualitative secondary analysis (QSA) might be used to tell about the social world. In exploring this, we advance a critique of the divide between primary and secondary analysis, recasting the debate in terms of different degrees and qualities of ‘proximity’ and ‘distance’ from the formative contexts of data generation, and the distinctive analytical affordances that relate to these. Using QSA of interview data from a study of problem internet gambling as an empirical crucible, we consider the kinds of participation that interviewees develop through reciprocal engagement with interviewers. We illustrate how participants reflexively negotiate the affordances and limits to the narratives through which they frame and recount their experiences. Finally, we show how interview data can be used both to speak of the temporal, relational, spatial, epistemic contexts of their production, and also to contexts and questions beyond these.     

Intimacy,rapport, and exceptional disclosure: a comparison of in-person and mediated interview contexts

While qualitative researchers increasingly accept online video interviews as a reliable method, many maintain concerns about rapport and data quality. Drawing on two separate interview projects conducted in private in-person settings, public in-person settings, and privately via Skype, we compare interview contexts with regard to rapport, suitability to sensitive topics, interview duration, and scheduling concerns raised by prior research. Analytical comparison of these two corpuses of data suggest, largely in contrast to previous literature, that (1) interviews conducted in private settings (either in-person or via Skype) result in more sharing of deeply personal experiences, and there is little difference in this exceptional disclosure between Skype and in-person private interviews; (2) interviewing via Skype produces neither reduction nor inappropriate excesses of rapport; and (3) Skype interviews are a popular choice among participants, did not result in shorter interview duration, and were not subject to greater rescheduling or cancellation.     

Evidence-Based Social Work Practice with Mentally Ill Persons who Abuse Alcohol and Other Drugs

Abstract

The current article outlines a comprehensive approach to evidence-based social work practice, and applies it to persons with severe and persistent mental illness who also abuse alcohol and other drugs. Representative empirical literature is summarized within a framework that delineates the three major functions of evidence-based social work practice: assessment, intervention and evaluation. Assessment protocol, which incorporates the use of valid scales to complement the qualitative interview, is based on domain-specific research that outlines relevant psychosocial risk factors, and highlights those that are amenable to change. Intervention strategies are derived from the growing body of controlled research findings, but flexibility in implementation is recommended to accommodate clients' individual needs and the vagaries of daily practice. Naturalistic evaluation methods are used to capitalize on the use of brief, valid process and outcome measures to augment individual qualitative evaluation and to aggregate data for program evaluation. The implications of this integrated evidence-based strategy for social work practice are discussed.     

Liberating voices through narrative methods: the case for an interpretive research approach

This article argues the case for employing narrative methods when undertaking research with people with profound learning difficulties and people who lack verbal articulacy. It considers the foundations of life history research and the transformative position of the researcher since the 1930s. The article then examines the requisite skills for eliciting life stories and interviewing, followed by the form of the interview. It questions the logic in rigidly following qualitative interviewing as the main tool for eliciting information. The author argues that the skills and experiences of the researcher become important during challenging interview situations and that moving away from traditional qualitative interviewing means attempting to include people with profound learning difficulties in the process of researching their lives and experiences.     

Irrational rationalities and governmentality-effected neglect in immigration practice: Legal migrants’ entitlements to services and benefits in the United Kingdom

Governments’ attempts to manage immigration increasingly restrict immigrants’ eligibility to healthcare, education, and welfare benefits. This article examines the operation of these restrictions in the United Kingdom. It draws on qualitative research with civil servants and NGO expert advisors, and applies sociological theories on bureaucracy as a lens to interpret these data. Conceptually, the paper employs a generative synthesis of Ritzer’s notion of “irrational rationality” and Foucault’s perspective on “governmentality” to explain observed outcomes. Findings show that public service workers struggle with complex and opaque regulations, which grant different entitlements to different categories of migrants. The confusion results in mistakes, arbitrary decisions, and hypercorrection, but also a system-wide indifference to irrational outcomes, supported by human factors in contexts of austerity. I consider this a form of governmentality-effected neglect, where power operates as much through inaction as well as through intention, but which results in exclusions of legal migrants that are harsher in practice than in law.     

Austerity common sense and contested understandings of the austerity measures within a leadership of a professional association of social workers

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces a preliminary conceptualisation of ‘austerity common sense’ in order to understand why austerity policies, despite the social harm they cause, have support not only from the economic and political establishment but also from the wider population including members of the social work profession. Building on the Gramscian concept of common sense, ‘austerity common sense’ refers to the set of beliefs circulated by the ruling elite and adopted by members of the leadership of the Professional Association of Social Workers (SKLE), as well as others within Greece and the European Union, to understand austerity policies. Through this framing, austerity measures are largely accepted as inevitable rather than challengeable. The paper maintains that the concept of austerity common sense provides an analytical framework for understanding the acceptance of austerity measures in Greece and elsewhere, since similar ‘austerity common sense’ framing is encountered in many countries. Furthermore, it is maintained that the concept of ‘austerity common sense’ can facilitate the interrogation of the socio-economic construction of ideas and phrases. This is an important process with which the social work profession needs to engage.     

A Normative Approach to Parent-Young Adult Child Communication in the Context of Substance Use Disorders: Explicating Parents’ Communication Challenges and Strategies

ABSTRACT

Despite a decrease in substance use among teens, alcohol and substance use has remained high among young adults. Young adult use of illicit substances is particularly concerning. Parents can play an important role in substance use intervention and prevention, but their efforts are sometimes unsuccessful. Therefore, it is important to consider how parents respond to and communicate about their young adult children’s substance use disorder. Most research has privileged confrontation and direct communication as effective coping responses, but evidence suggests that effectiveness hinges on the meanings interactants ascribe to behavior. Through qualitative interviews, the current study develops normative theory regarding parents’ communication challenges and strategies in response to their young adult child’s substance use disorder. Parents’ challenges center on the intersection of support with their own substance use history; others’ divergent views on substance use; uncertainty in illness; relational closeness and harmony; and illness features. Results are discussed in terms of implications for helping parents respond to their young adult child’s substance use disorder.     

Decentering Power in Research with Criminalized Women: A Case for Photo-Elicitation Interviewing

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to the project of developing a visual criminology that reclaims social relationships and the humanity and visibility of criminalized people and strives to disrupt the ideological and political underpinnings of mass incarceration and the state’s reliance on punitive responses to social inequality. Using photo-elicitation interviewing (PEI), I draw on qualitative research with 36 formerly incarcerated women living in Chicago. I review PEI’s potential to disrupt the power differential between researchers and participants and to include research participants as collaborators in knowledge production. I examine how limitations imposed by an Institutional Review Board created ethical concerns about representing women’s images and constrained women’s role in the coproduction of knowledge. I argue that PEI based on participant-generated images can help to overcome some of the ethical and methodological tensions encountered in visual criminology.     

Just a paper exercise?

This paper will consider the impact and implications of changing the method of selection for social work students on one BA/Diploma in social work course for mature students with family commitments. The change was instituted following research which suggested that interviewers' preferences were a poor predictor of successful outcome of course completion for students, and further, that other predictors such as quality of written application material and student motivation were factors which had a strong correlation with successful outcome. Consequently, in 1999, selecting students by interview was replaced by paper selection. While it is the long-term aim of academic staff to evaluate the merits of paper selection in terms of students' outcomes, this initial paper considers the organisational and administrative implications of changing to paper selection and the students' and selectors' perceptions of paper selection. In particular, this paper will consider whether it is possible to be objective in selecting applicants, or whether subjectivity will always be part of the process. Finally, the article considers the relative cost of paper selection as opposed to interview. The findings of this study suggest that interviewing is twice as costly on academic and agency staff time - a factor which in the present financial climate has considerable implications for the future of interviewing on social work courses.     

Clarifying question meaning in a household telephone survey

This study contrasts two interviewing techniques that reflectdifferent tacit assumptions about communication. In one, strictlystandardized interviewing, interviewers leave the interpretationof questions up to respondents. In the other, conversationalinterviewing, interviewers say whatever it takes to make surethat questions are interpreted uniformly and as intended. Respondentsfrom a national sample were interviewed twice. Each time theywere asked the same factual questions from ongoing governmentsurveys, five about housing and five about recent purchases.The first interview was strictly standardized; the second wasstandardized for half the respondents and conversational forthe others. Respondents in a second conversational interviewanswered differently than in the first interview more often,and for reasons that conformed more closely to official definitions,than respondents in a second standardized interview. This suggeststhat conversational interviewing improved comprehension, althoughit also lengthened interviews. We conclude that respondentsin a national sample may misinterpret certain questions frequentlyenough to compromise data quality and that such misunderstandingscannot easily be eliminated by pretesting and rewording questionsalone. More standardized comprehension may require less standardizedinterviewer behavior.     

The Great Interview: 25 Strategies for Studying People in Bed

Interviewing is among the most central methods in social science research. While common as a method, there are identifiable characteristics that distinguish good interviews from outstanding ones. Great interviewing is deceptively difficult, partly because it is an acquired ability that takes time to develop, partly because people often remain bound to conventional norms of behavior while interviewing that precludes open access to the people interviewed. While several texts are available on interviewing, few of them venture to draw the explicit distinction among characteristics that separate ordinary from outstanding interviews. Consequently, a concise and accessible guidepost that directs people to the essentials of outstanding interviewing is difficult to find. Based on interviews with a range of people about varied subjects, the author offers 25 directions that will, when followed in combination, point the interviewer along the road from the good (or not-so-good) interview to the great interview.     

Using the community of inquiry for interviewing children: theory and practice

Involvement of children in research processes requires various ethical considerations. In particular, while interviewing children, a researcher needs to take into consideration the power imbalance between a researcher and children as well as among children. This article suggests a possible way of mitigating potential risks, drawing on the idea and practice of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) as an interview method. CoI is the practice of group dialog for knowledge-making, where participants talk about a common topic by sharing their lived experiences in a cooperative manner. This article shows that CoI allows children to act as both interviewers and interviewees, which helps children in reflective knowledge-making while at the same time mitigating the ethical concerns of interviewing. To illustrate how CoI can help achieve these goals, this article draws on the empirical research conducted with a group of junior high school students in Japan.     

Storytelling in Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter: belonging and the transnationality of home in older age

ABSTRACT

Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter is a fictional account of a Chinese American woman and her mother, a first-generation migrant, who is negotiating dementia in later life. Analysis of diasporic novels can provide insight into migrant belonging, especially the emotional geographies of home and emotional subjectivities of ageing that are not commonly or easily elucidated even by qualitative interviewing methods. This article examines Tan’s construction of ageing as an intergenerational, cultural and emotional process, and highlights the role of storytelling as an everyday home-making practice through which the transnationality of home in older age becomes evident.     

Using video and dialogue to generate pedagogic knowledge: teachers,learners and researchers reflecting together on the pedagogy of social research methods

Developments in pedagogical knowledge in the teaching of social research methods have largely been generated through teachers reflecting on their practice. This paper presents an alternative approach to generating data through reflective dialogue between researchers, teachers and learners. The approach incorporates elements of video stimulated recall and reflective dialogue within focus group interviewing. The rationale and affordances are discussed in relation to the goals of discussing teachers’ pedagogical decision-making and learners’ experience of, and response to, various pedagogical practices. The context is a study of capacity-building short courses in advanced social science research methods, specifically courses on: multi-modal analysis, computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software, multi-level modelling, and systematic review. The paper examines the methodological challenges of capturing the everyday realities of methods classrooms for teachers and learners and the affordances of using dialogue on observed teaching sessions to gain further insight into each other’s thinking and action. It concludes with lessons learned about methodological and pedagogical processes and an argument about the value of bringing methods and standpoints together in creative dialogue.     

Integrating qualitative and quantitative methods in survey research on aging: An assessment

The benefits of triangulation have gained widespread acceptance and several notable studies have taken a combined-methods approach. However, to date there have been few analyses of attempts to extend survey research to include a qualitative component. This paper reports on what is essentially a survey research design in which three types of interviewing are triangulated: close-ended questions in a structured interview; open-ended questions embedded in the interview; and follow-up conversational interviews employing open-ended questions. This combined-methods approach is assessed in relation to elaboration of answers, interpretation and context, discovery in the field, and divergence. The author concludes that each source of data, as well as the divergence in findings among them, makes a valuable contribution to the research process.