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Introduction to qualitative approaches
Abstract
As this introductory chapter and those that follow illustrate, qualitative methods provide a rich and robust approach to enhancing community-based research and action. It is incumbent upon researchers to not only choose the methods that fit their research question and theoretical paradigm but also to be well trained in the pros, cons, and appropriate application of the methods they choose. Appropriate ethical and cultural considerations are also key to producing research and action that provides the necessary protection and respect to participating and nonparticipating members of a community. With these caveats in mind, we believe that qualitative methods can contribute immensely to the creation of contextually based, culturally relevant understandings and knowledge, enhanced well-being, and positive community change that are the ultimate hallmarks and goals of community-based research and action.
... To bridge the gap between the vast scholarship on resilience and the practical challenge of sustaining and thriving in communities targeted by SSV, this paper embraces a qualitative and community-based perspective on research, as outlined by Brodsky et al. (2016Brodsky et al. ( , 2017 and exemplified by Merrick (1999), Fine et al. (2000), and Brodsky et al. (2004). Both community-based work and qualitative methods are oriented toward questioning dominant narratives and paradigms, prioritizing the expertise arising from lived experience, and identifying the relevance of research for social action (Brodsky et al., 2016). ...
... To bridge the gap between the vast scholarship on resilience and the practical challenge of sustaining and thriving in communities targeted by SSV, this paper embraces a qualitative and community-based perspective on research, as outlined by Brodsky et al. (2016Brodsky et al. ( , 2017 and exemplified by Merrick (1999), Fine et al. (2000), and Brodsky et al. (2004). Both community-based work and qualitative methods are oriented toward questioning dominant narratives and paradigms, prioritizing the expertise arising from lived experience, and identifying the relevance of research for social action (Brodsky et al., 2016). We applied these methods by bringing three sources of information into dialog with each other: the resilience scholarship, a theory of the intertwined processes of empowerment and resilience that was developed from community-based research (Transconceptual Model of Resilience and Empowerment, TMER; Brodsky & Cattaneo, 2013), and the community-based perspectives of our first two authors. ...
State‐sanctioned violence (SSV) has resounding effects on entire populations, and marginalized communities have long persisted in the work toward liberation despite continued SSV. This paper aims to bridge the gap between the vast scholarship on resilience and the practical challenge of sustaining and thriving in communities targeted by SSV. We use the theoretical frame of the Transconceptual Model of Empowerment and Resilience (TMER) to articulate the process of resilience and the resources that support it: maintenance, efficacy, skills, knowledge, and community resources. As a practical frame, we ground our application of the model in the experiences of the first two authors in their own communities. Centering examples from the Black Lives Matter movement and the CeCe McDonald Support Committee, we use our theoretical and practical frames to explore the scholarship on resilience relevant to resisting SSV, and we identify mechanisms for supporting community stakeholders' efforts to move toward liberation from SSV. We discuss implications for future research and activism, and we include a toolkit with suggested strategies as an appendix for psychologists, activists, and community stakeholders to consider as they work to facilitate community resilience and build a society free from SSV. Adapts findings from resilience literature to inform strategies for community resilience. Presents model for community resilience in communities targeted by state‐sanctioned. Presents model for resilience in communities targeted by state‐sanctioned violence. Black lives matter, Black trans lives matter. Adapts findings from resilience literature to inform strategies for community resilience. Presents model for community resilience in communities targeted by state‐sanctioned. Presents model for resilience in communities targeted by state‐sanctioned violence. Black lives matter, Black trans lives matter.
... Our intention to report in detail both procedures and results of this specific step was driven by the choice to fill the existing literature gap; it concerns the lack of detailed information conveyed by validation studies on health information tools e.g., [21,25,36]. In-depth and transparent reporting of procedures responds to rigorous criteria of dense description of the research method, allowing stepwise replication [42]. ...
Background:
Health information concerns both individuals' engagement and the way services and professionals provide information to facilitate consumers' health decision making. Citizens' and patients' participation in the management of their own health is related to the availability of tools making health information accessible, thus promoting empowerment and making care more inclusive and fairer. A novel instrument was developed (Evaluation Tool of Health Information for Consumers-ETHIC) for assessing the formal quality of health information materials written in Italian language. This study reports ETHIC's content and face validity.
Methods:
A convenience sample of 11 experts and 5 potential users was involved. The former were requested to evaluate relevance and exhaustiveness, the latter both readability and understandability of ETHIC. The Content Validity Index (CVI) was calculated for ETHIC's sections and items; experts and potential users' feedback were analyzed by the authors.
Results:
All sections and most items were evaluated as relevant. A new item was introduced. Potential users provided the researchers with comments that partly confirmed ETHIC's clarity and understandability.
Conclusions:
Our findings strongly support the relevance of ETHIC's sections and items. An updated version of the instrument matching exhaustivity, readability, and understandability criteria was obtained, which will be assessed for further steps of the validation process.
... Both paradigms -in contrast to positivism -reject the notion of a single, verifiable reality, and believe instead in socially constructed multiple realities and subjective knowledge (Brodsky et al., 2016;Rehman & Alharthi, 2016). ...
In June 2021, the city of Oulu was selected to host the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) 2026. For the old technology city located in the remote, Northern corner of Europe, the designation offers a great opportunity to develop what Oulu2026 calls Cultural Climate Change. However, besides opportunities, the ECoC is also faced with new challenges brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic and the looming risk of youth disillusionment.
This qualitatively driven mixed case study research focuses on the challenges and opportunities related to young adults’ cultural participation in Oulu2026. The aim of the study is to explore and understand if and how Oulu can address the risk of youth disillusionment by fostering cultural participation in the context of the ECoC project. The research pays special attention to questions of marginalisation and disadvantage, the importance of which is also highlighted by the ECoC initiative.
The study adopts an interdisciplinary approach and operates mainly in the fields of cultural planning, cultural policy, and arts management. The primary data consists of a survey among young adults in the Oulu2026 region, three semi-structured interviews with representatives of Oulu2026 and the city of Oulu, and document analysis focusing on the Oulu2026 bid book.
The findings suggest that youth disillusionment is a real issue in the Oulu2026 region and that a link between cultural participation and youth disillusionment exists. Oulu2026 was found to address and respond to many real and existing cultural participation challenges among young adults in the region. However, an awareness of the diverse diversity of young adults still appeared to be lacking. The study suggests enhancing a cultural citizenship approach to participation and embracing a pluralist and intersectionally aware approach at all stages of cultural planning processes.
... Reliability of the data was ensured by including detailed descriptions of the data collection methods. In addition, I engaged in a thorough data analysis process to ensure my findings were accurate within the context of the study (Brodsky et al., 2016). ...
This thesis investigates the impact of an exemplary post-graduate initial teacher education (ITE) programme, the MTchgLn, on beginning teachers’ professional preparedness to cater for diverse learners. In comparison to similar cohorts in other OECD countries, a huge gap exists between high-achieving Pākeha students and low-achieving
priority learners, i.e. "Groups of students who have been identified as historically not experiencing success in the New Zealand
schooling system. These include many Māori and Pacific learners, those from low socio-economic backgrounds, and students with special education needs (Education Review Office, 2012, p. 4). With existing studies mapping the exemplary ITE terrain, the research field is now moving towards building a sounder basis on which to benchmark equity-centred ITE programme design.
For this purpose, a mixed-methods approach was adopted to assess the effectiveness of the programme on the Graduate Teachers’ (GTs) practice. Twenty-five GTs completed an online questionnaire to assess their perceptions of confidence to teach all learners, as well as to assess their perceptions of the value of the programme in enabling them to teach all learners. Interviews were then conducted with 12 GTs and four Lead Teachers (LTs) to better understand the GTs’ responses and to investigate the LTs’ perceptions of the GTs’ professional preparedness. The present study findings indicate that most GTs were confident in developing the professional standards required for the profession and felt that their learning was supported by the programme’s innovations: (i) extended clinical placements in partner schools; (ii) evidence-informed inquiry; (iii) exemplary school visits; (iv) culturally responsive practices; and (v) community placements. Likewise, all the LTs felt that the GTs were professionally prepared with the necessary skills and competencies to teach diverse students effectively and improve their outcomes.
This study has provided evidence of the positive contributions of an equity-centred ITE programme’s design to create an informative learning experience for the GTs to ensure informed links between research and practice, driven by equity and social justice. Implications
based on these findings are considered for ITE educators and education policy makers to respond to the challenges of today’s multicultural education by prioritizing equity.
... In comparison with post-structural paradigms, postpositivism does not specifically study individuals as subjects of discourses, but as objects of the study (Grant & Giddings, 2002). At last, the values that people may hold are not a field of inquiry for postpositivism (Brodsky, Buckingham, Scheibler, & Mannarini, 2015). 34 '… the frame of reference that defines the attitude and relation of the researcher to the production of data and the selection of research tools and methods' (Adam, 2014, p. 5). ...
The goal of this thesis is to explore the effects of large agricultural investments on food systems change around Nanyuki, Kenya and in the Nacala corridor, Mozambique. Specifically, the effects of these investments on land, the food supply chains, food environments, and food consumption were studied. In Africa, food systems already change against a backdrop of global food system pressures, such as the inroads of supermarkets, and local drivers, such as demographic and economic changes. The large agricultural investments likely intersect with these changes, but if the LAIs amplifies them, and to what degree, is less known. Methodologically, a postpositivist mixed-methods approach was used for an instrumental case study design with study areas in Kenya and Mozambique. Multiple data collection techniques were used, including (un)structured interviews and a household survey, and data were analysed through inductive thematic analysis and between-groups analysis. The results show myriad effects of the investments to food systems, including to land, self-production, agricultural engagement, food distribution and food environments. Overall, the investments linked with more modern food systems that were characterised by lower self-production and higher diet diversity. This change occurred through ‘hybrid modernity’ rather than linear modernity as certain traditional dynamics strengthen alongside modernisation processes. In the end, more inclusive food governance arrangements, such as food sovereignty, can counteract some of the adverse effects of large agricultural investments.
... In qualitative research, data analysis is not entirely a separate process from data collection (Miles et al. 2014;Nowell et al. 2017). It is an iterative process whereby the researcher does informal analysis right from the period of data collection, which then further informs the subsequent data collection process (Brodsky et al. 2016). Data analysis is an ongoing process from research idea conception, setting objectives, methods, actual data collection and analysis and final writing of the report. ...
The dissertation analyses the transitioning of the port sector towards sustainability in environmental and social terms. In specific, it explores how port authorities in Europe and West Africa engage with the globalising green port idea, and what role is played by contextual factors in determining the choice of policy measures and technological tools they adopt or implement. The dissertation further examines the extent to which sustainability-oriented network(ing) bring to bear positive influence on sustainability practices of participating ports (authorities) and facilitates environmental upgrading along the maritime value chain. Finally, it interrogates outcomes of stakeholder-inclusive port development discourses and mechanisms. It does this by combining concepts and theories such as policy mobilities, sustainability fix and critical debates on network theory and network governance. Methodologically, the dissertation draws on information collected through a triangulation of qualitative research methods and document analysis. The findings show that sustainability schemes and green initiatives of ports are crucially 'translocal', and draws attention to contested outcomes in port networks and stakeholder-inclusive initiatives and discourses of ports.
... Untuk tujuan tersebut sangat penting bagi peneliti untuk mengenal subjek penelitian yang meliputi konteks kebudayaan masyarakat setempat. Beberapa fungsi pendekatan kualitatif antara lain (Brodsky, Buckingham, Scheibler, & Mannarini, 2016): ...
The aim of this research is to search for the potensial of the tourism development in East Aceh Regency based on the concept of sustainable tourism develepment. This research is using qualitative approach to identify the appropriate pattern for tourism development in coastal area in East Aceh Regency. Based from this research, it can be concluded that education for the local people to change their way of thinking on tourism is very important. The support from the local people is essential for the planning of sustainable tourism development. Sense of belonging for the culture and tourism will promote proudness and will get the local people to participate in tourism development in their area.
... That is, findings in this study suggest that similar experiences with violence may yield different outcomes for youth in the same context, and future research should examine the processes that may inform methods of coping with varying forms of violence. Employing several methodological approaches within one study afforded the opportunity to understand these key nuances in within-group differences, and specifically among youth in a similar context (Brodsky et al., 2016;Glaser & Strauss, 1967;Greene et al., 1989). ...
Relative to their peers, Latino youth are underinvolved in organized community activities (e.g., Boys and Girls Club), and their experiences lack examination. This study employed a neighborhood case-study approach to examine the experiences of Latino youth in a neighborhood with high levels of violence and their participation in organized community activities. Employing a cluster sampling design (Lohr, Sampling: Design and analysis. Pacific Grove, CA: Nelson Education, 2009), we used quantitative, spatial, and qualitative data to understand adolescents' participation in organized community activities. Furthermore, to understand how adolescents from the same neighborhood may experience violence differently we examined gender differences. Those who participated in organized community activities witnessed more violence, regardless of gender. General violence (e.g., robberies, shootings) was dispersed throughout the neighborhood, but gender-specific violence was concentrated along the main street of the neighborhood. In qualitative interviews, adolescents reported this concentration of violence a deterrent to their participation: sexual harassment for girls and gang intimidation for boys. Our findings highlight the unique experiences of youth in violent neighborhoods and the importance of examining differential constraints for those within the same neighborhood.
... We conducted analyses using a five-phase team approach (see Table 1; Brodsky, Buckingham, 2016; Brodsky, Mannarini, Buckingham, & Scheibler, 2016. ...
While research has shown that cultural navigation, or "acculturation" depends on context, most
of the literature remains acontextual. Consequently, we used community-based explanatory
mixed methods to understand acculturation in context, examining how and why some Latinx
Immigrants’ desire to acculturate differently than they actually acculturate. To study the
phenomenon of acculturation, we administered bilingual surveys and conducted focus groups
with unauthorized and authorized Latinx immigrants living in Arizona, New Mexico, Maryland,
and Virginia. We analyzed the quantitative data using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and path
analysis, and we analyzed the qualitative data using grounded theory, informed by the
constructs under study. Our results suggested that Latinx immigrants desire to and do
acculturate differently according to their contexts. In this way, both personal and contextual
factors explained how Latinx immigrants acculturated better than their mere desire to
acculturate. In sum, our research provides insight into reasons for the diverse array of Latinx
immigrant acculturation in the United States in light of their disparate contexts, preferences,
and experiences. This case study explores how our qualitative and quantitative data
complemented one another to provide a richer and more comprehensive understanding of
acculturation across these individuals and their contexts. Students will gain an understanding
of the utility of using mixed methods with groups underrepresented in research, the
practicalities of conducting community-based research, gaining entry into these communities,
and producing actionable findings for key stakeholders.
... Such an approach is important in conducting research with oppressed and marginalized groups such as Black gay and bisexual young men living with HIV because it allows for the phenomena of interest to be explored using the unique conceptualizations and words typically used by the population as opposed to those imposed by the researcher. Qualitative methodologies have been shown to be particularly useful in developing interventions that are culturally meaningful and effective in applied settings because they help researchers and interventionists to understand the ways in which members of a particular group conceptualize their lives and interact within their cultural and environmental contexts (Brodsky, Buckingham, Scheibler, & Mannarini, 2016;Harper, Lardon, Rappaport, Bangi, Contreras, & Pedraza, 2003). ...
Black gay and bisexual young men carry a disproportionate burden of HIV in the United States. This study explored Black gay and bisexual young men living with HIV's identification and interpretation of race-specific cultural messages regarding substance use, sexual activity, and condom use. A total of 36 Black gay and bisexual young men living with HIV (ages 16-24, mean = 20.6 years) from four geographically diverse regions of the United States participated in qualitative in-depth interviews. Results from this study elucidate the ways in which these young men interpret various forms of race-specific cultural messages and experiences regarding substance use, sexual activity, and condom use. Participants discussed cultural messages and experiences promoting and discouraging condoms and substance use. Regarding sexual activity, only messages and experiences promoting sex were reported. Across all three categories, messages and experiences promoting risk were predominant. Data further revealed that socially transmitted cultural messages received by young men emanated from multiple sources, such as family, peers, sexual partners, community/neighborhood, and the broader society. Race-specific cultural messages and experiences should be addressed in interventions for this population, and programs should assist young men in developing a critical consciousness regarding these messages and experiences in order to promote health and well-being.
... Such an approach is important in conducting research with oppressed and marginalized groups such as Black gay and bisexual young men living with HIV because it allows for the phenomena of interest to be explored using the unique conceptualizations and words typically used by the population as opposed to those imposed by the researcher. Qualitative methodologies have been shown to be particularly useful in developing interventions that are culturally meaningful and effective in applied settings because they help researchers and interventionists to understand the ways in which members of a particular group conceptualize their lives and interact within their cultural and environmental contexts (Brodsky, Buckingham, Scheibler, & Mannarini, 2016;Harper, Lardon, Rappaport, Bangi, Contreras, & Pedraza, 2003). ...
Background:
Young Black gay/bisexual men (YBGM) have been disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS in the U.S., thus it's important to develop secondary prevention interventions for HIV+ YGBM.
Methods:
Qualitative interviews were conducted with 36 HIV+ YBGM ages17-24, recruited from four geographically/demographically diverse clinics. Questions explored ethnic/cultural messages HIV+ YBGM receive that either promote or discourage substance use, condom use, and sexual activity.
Results:
Data revealed that cultural messages emanate from multiple sources: family, peers, sexual partners, community/neighborhood, and broader society. Regarding substance use, most messages promoted use: marijuana viewed as natural/not a drug, common community images of use, easy accessibility, and media images of Black men using; with only one message discouraging use: negative images of family substance abuse. Messages promoting non-use of condoms included: increased pleasure with non-use, penis too big, dealing with consequences later, and only used for pregnancy prevention; whereas those promoting condom use included: BGM featured in porn using condoms; high rates of HIV/STIs among BGM, Black-specific television messages promoting use. Messages regarding sexual activity were all risk promoting: pressure to be dominant, inactivity as a sign of weakness, silence due to religion, promotion of irresponsibility, overexposure of sexuality in media, insatiability, objectification (by partners), monogamy viewed as only for White gay men.
Conclusions:
These data demonstrate the wide range of cultural messages related to risk behaviors that may influence HIV+ YBGM. Future secondary prevention programs for this population should assist with developing a critical consciousness regarding these messages in order to promote health enhancing behaviors.
Background
In Australia, there are a range of barriers that may delay or inhibit a woman/pregnant person from accessing abortion, with these barriers disproportionately affecting marginalised populations. The northern metropolitan region of Melbourne, Australia, is home to a large population of women/gender diverse people of reproductive age, many of whom face significant socio-economic disadvantage. This study aims to understand health care provider and community stakeholder perspectives regarding barriers to, and patient experience of, abortion care in Melbourne’s north.
Methods
This qualitative study used individual in-depth semi-structured interviews. Twelve key informants were purposively selected based on their professional work and included abortion care providers, and representatives from local reproductive health, multicultural, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advocacy services. Interviews were conducted via Zoom between June to August 2022. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.
Results
Informants identified a range of barriers to abortion across individual, service, and socio-political levels. Informants expressed concern that individual level barriers such as financial disadvantage meant it could be difficult for consumers to access the services they need (e.g. GP appointments and ultrasound). They highlighted that these barriers can be further amplified for consumers from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, who may face language barriers, racism and difficulty navigating the health care system. The concept of patient resourcefulness and resilience emerged as a novel finding. Informants also identified key factors that impact patient experience of abortion care, including service-based factors (eg. ease of locating a service) and the provision of respectful care. Factors that create barriers to access and negatively impact patient experiences of abortion are interlinked, demonstrating the importance of considering both elements for service quality improvement.
Conclusion
Known barriers to abortion are exacerbated in the region due to the concentration of marginalised populations and lack of affordable abortion services. Quality improvement approaches in this space need to address barriers at the individual, service, and socio-political levels to optimise patient experience and make a meaningful impact. Further research is planned to explore local consumers’ experiences of abortion care and ideas for quality improvement using co-design.
This article presents a detailed case study of a local group of citizens organizing to hold governmental and nongovernmental organizations accountable for improving housing and communities in Kansas City, MO. The case study draws on a review of organizational archival documents (i.e., organizational attendance records and internal reports); public documents from local, state, and federal agencies; media coverage; and a series of qualitative interviews with participants. The case provides an example of successful local community action. Yet, it also highlights many of the challenges that organizing groups face in making lasting community change. Change is constant and ongoing. Citizens' groups must therefore not only mobilize but also achieve a sustainable and politically viable presence to continually exert pressure. This is particularly true because citizen actions on behalf of community interests often provoke reactions from special interests and other defenders of the status quo. Case study methods represent a critical tool for documenting and understanding important community phenomena in a more holistic way. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Resilience and empowerment are widely employed concepts in community psychology and other social sciences. Although empowerment is more closely associated with community psychology, both concepts hone to community psychology's strengths-based values, recognizing, respecting, and promoting local capacity and positive outcomes. Both concepts also have been critiqued for lacking clear consensus regarding definition, operationalization, and measurement (Cattaneo and Chapman in Am Psychol 65(7):646-659, 2010; Luthar et al. in Child Dev 71(3):543-562, 2000). This deficiency is reflected in the wide ranging applications of each term independently, and is particularly concerning when the terms are used together or interchangeably. Theoretical work on these concepts' boundaries and interaction is lacking. This paper builds on the authors' prior work operationalizing the processes and outcomes of each concept (Brodsky et al. in Am J Community Psychol 47(3-4):217-235, 2011; Cattaneo and Chapman in Am Psychol 65(7):646-659, 2010; Cattaneo and Goodman in Psychol Violence, in press) to present a combined transconceptual model illuminating the divergence, convergence, and interactions between the two. Both resilience and empowerment are fueled by unsatisfying states, but are differentiated by, among other things, internally (resilience) versus externally (empowerment) focused change goals. Goal determinants include context, power differentials, and other risks and resources. These concepts have the potential to facilitate each other, and understanding their interaction can better inform community psychologists' work with marginalized populations.
This article presents an overview of philosophy of science and research paradigms. The philosophy of science parameters of ontology, epistemology, axiology, rhetorical structure, and methodology are discussed across the research paradigms of positivism, postpositivism, constructivism-interpretivism, and the critical-ideological perspective. Counseling researchers are urged to locate their inquiry approaches within identifiable research paradigms, and examples of "locating" 2 popular inquiry approaches--consensual qualitative research and grounded theory--are provided. Examples of how counseling research would proceed from varying paradigms are explored, and a call is made for expanding the training students receive in philosophy of science and qualitative approaches to inquiry. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Discusses the proposition that humans are as much possessed
by as they are possessed
of a world view, undergirded by axioms that are never articulated and therefore never examined or challenged. The axiom regarding the unalloyed benefits that accrue to society by virtue of untrammeled scientific inquiry and technological advance is challenged, and examples of such challenges to axioms concerning the harnessing of atomic energy, space exploration, splicing and recombining genes, and inquiry into racial and ethnic differences in intelligence from within and without the scientific and technological communities are discussed. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
"Principles of Community Psychology" . . . is a comprehensive text integrating theory, research, and practice across the diverse subject matter of community mental health and community psychology. Emphasizing an ecological approach, this text places problems in both their current and historical influences that shape and change behavior and mental health. Conceptually built around the models of stressful life events, social support, and coping, it applies these concepts as a key integrative device for analyzing diverse phenomena and interventions which include self-help, prevention, and social action. Thoroughly updated, this 2nd edition has been completely rewritten to include updated references and research, boxes on current topics, chapter outlines, expanded case studies, practical examples, and chapter discussions. The new edition offers students a more accessible text that presents concrete, detailed, up-to-date examples of programs, research, and scholarship from many different fields. . . . [This textbook] challenges community psychologists, as well as students of psychology, sociology, and social work, to look at the impact of the new conservatism on human services and the opportunities that are presented for innovative approaches in the new political climate.
(From the foreword by Seymour Sarason:) Prior to this edition, this book was unrivaled for its scope and depth of the obvious and not-so-obvious psychological implications of what American communities are: what problems they face, how they do and do not change. What this new edition makes abundantly clear is that what is called a "community" is glaringly porous: in the modern, highly technical, mobile world, a community is affected by events near and far from its borders, events that are psychological, sociological, economic, political, and legal. Yes, this is a book written by and for psychologists, but it draws upon the social sciences as no other book in the field. This is more than a book about the American community. It is about America. The details are many, but they are never divorced from the contents from which they emerge and which they illuminate. This book is more than an introduction to community psychology.
Youth Action Research for Prevention (YARP), a federally funded research and demonstration intervention, utilizes youth empowerment as the cornerstone of a multi-level intervention designed to reduce and/or delay onset of drug and sex risk, while increasing individual and collective efficacy and educational expectations. The intervention, located in Hartford Connecticut, served 114 African-Caribbean and Latino high school youth in a community education setting and a matched comparison group of 202 youth from 2001 to 2004. The strategy used in YARP begins with individuals, forges group identity and cohesion, trains youth as a group to use research to understand their community better (formative community ethnography), and then engages them in using the research for social action at multiple levels in community settings (policy, school-based, parental etc.) Engagement in community activism has, in turn, an effect on individual and collective efficacy and individual behavioral change. This approach is unique insofar as it differs from multilevel interventions that create approaches to attack multiple levels simultaneously. We describe the YARP intervention and employ qualitative and quantitative data from the quasi-experimental evaluation study design to assess the way in which the YARP approach empowered individual youth and groups of youth (youth networks) to engage in social action in their schools, communities and at the policy level, which in turn affected their attitudes and behaviors.
This paper explores the role of relationships within and between the community of the researchers and the community of the research participants, as they relate to qualitative, community psychology research. Although relationships are salient to all research, their role is particularly prominent in qualitative research, in which a closer rapport is established between researcher and research participant than in quantitative research, and the impact of both sides of this interaction on the research process is acknowledged. Instead of merely looking at the community and relationships of the participants, the usual focus of research, this paper also explores the often-overlooked community and relationships of the researchers and then goes on to look at the impact on the research process of the interaction of these two separate communities. This inside story, while seldom explicitly explored or articulated, has implications for community research in general and particularly for applied research.
In this paper, we review the result of research conducted in the context of a 13-year collaborative partnership between DePaul University and a community-based, self-run, residential substance abuse recovery program called Oxford House. This collaborative effort highlights several examples of the research and action activities fostering a positive alliance that benefited both the research team and the Oxford House community. It also proposed practical guidelines for developing effective action research collaboratives that may be helpful to others who desire to cultivate and maintain similar mutually beneficial partnerships; including such processes as the development of trust, respecting the personal experiences of the community members and group, commitment to serving the community, validating findings with organization members, and accountability.
With All Our Strength is the inside story of this women-led underground organization and their fight for the rights of Afghan women. Anne Brodsky, the first writer given in-depth access to visit and interview their members and operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, shines light on the gruesome, often tragic, lives of Afghan women under some of the most brutal sexist oppression in the world.
This book combines a focus on understanding social settings as loci for empowering intervention with a focus on understanding and giving voice to citizens. The book illuminates advances in theory and method relevant to changing a broad spectrum of social settings (including programs, organizations, institutions, communities, and social policy) from a strengths-based perspective. Three cross-cutting concepts—a strengths-based approach to research and social action, empowerment, and narrative research methods—serve as integrating and foundational themes. Part I takes up issues of setting processes and outcomes of influence, research methods, and implications for setting and community change efforts and social policy. Part II examines how action scientists have sought to understand and amplify the voices of those individuals and communities who serve as the focus of their research and social change actions. Finally, the chapters in Part III seek to situate the rest of the volume's chapters in the context of decades of work on empowering settings, giving voice and social change.
PART ONE: CONCEPTUAL ISSUES IN THE USE OF QUALITATIVE METHODS The Nature of Qualitative Inquiry Strategic Themes in Qualitative Methods Variety in Qualitative Inquiry Theoretical Orientations Particularly Appropriate Qualitative Applications PART TWO: QUALITATIVE DESIGNS AND DATA COLLECTION Designing Qualitative Studies Fieldwork Strategies and Observation Methods Qualitative Interviewing PART THREE: ANALYSIS, INTERPRETATION, AND REPORTING Qualitative Analysis and Interpretation Enhancing the Quality and Credibility of Qualitative Analysis
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This article is based on over seven months of participant observation in an agricultural cooperative in Nicaragua in 1989, a literature review and interviews in other coops. The article presents an overview of the broader grassroots movement of Nicaraguan cooperative formation (over 3300 agricultural coops were formed in the 1980s). This movement was affected by the coop participants, as they struggled for control, and in turn affected the national social and economic situation. The coops and the broader national coop movement are shown to be empowering of the participants. However, while some factors enhanced the possibility of empowerment, other complex interrelated factors impeded its development. Autocratic leadership was prevalent, intermingled with apprehension about leadership and fears of failure. Outside service providers, although seemingly helpful, also impeded empowerment through subtle condescension and distance. The most effective mutual exchange occurred when outsiders integrated as insiders. Lessons are drawn for service to the grassroots coop movement through “accompaniment” or processes of participant action research.
Counseling psychologists face many approaches from which to choose when they conduct a qualitative research study. This article focuses on the processes of selecting, contrasting, and implementing five different qualitative approaches. Based on an extended example related to test interpretation by counselors, clients, and communities, this article provides a detailed discussion about five qualitative approaches— narrative research; case study research; grounded theory; phenomenology; and participatory action research—as alternative qualitative procedures useful in understanding test interpretation. For each approach, the authors offer perspectives about historical origins, definition, variants, and the procedures of research.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
[discusses] qualitative sampling strategies [in primary health care research] with a study designed to understand why particular doctors seem to attract particular patients (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Conclusion
Each ethical decision is a blend of general principles and contextual features. Many require compromises between competing values, must be made in the absence of perfect information, and require the courage to confront mistakes.
In community intervention, we have seen that adopting a collaborative paradigm imposes the freedom to determine to whom we are responsible for our actions. A rationale was offered for giving priority to the most vulnerable group, even though this strategy leaves us with an accountability gap in which the group to whom we owe primary loyality is least likely to be able to call us to account.
When we reject the professional‐client paradigm in community psychology, we lose the formal contract as a device for setting the terms and limiting the scope of our responsibility. We do the best reconnaissance we can, but even with careful data‐gathering we are condemned to act on the basis of imperfect information. We must follow through on unforseen consequences even when we have no formal role to mandate our perseverence.
The community as a setting for psychological intervention faces us, then, with ethical challenges: we work for the well‐being of groups too broad to give informed consent to our interventions; we act in collaboration with others, but collaborative action does not free us from professional obligation; we reconnoiter, but reconnaissance does not provide us with perfect information; we may advise while others act, but we cannot walk away from the consequences of their actions. Ethical decision making, in the community as elsewhere, is a creative act in which we invent our profession choice by choice.
This paper examines individual and organizational resilience processes among members of The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, (RAWA), an Afghan women's underground resistance organization located in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since 1977, RAWA has used humanitarian and political means to educate, serve, and motivate women and to advocate for peace, secular democracy, and human rights. The authors analyzed 110 qualitative interviews, collected in Pakistan and Afghanistan between December 2001 and July 2002. An iterative coding framework identified processes of resilience and domain specific stressors (risks) and resources (protective factors) at the individual and organizational level. Further analysis found that these process codes clustered by function into components of an operational model of individual and organizational resilience. While individual and organizational resilience are described by the same model, these two levels of resilience were found to operate in synergy as well as in conflict. Although this paper explores a unique setting, we argue that a better understanding of resilience processes in general will come from increased attention to context.
In this companion volume John van Maanen's Tales of the Field, three scholars reveal how the ethnographer turns direct experience and observation into written fieldnotes upon which an ethnography is based. Drawing on years of teaching and field research experience, the authors develop a series of guidelines, suggestions, and practical advice about how to write useful fieldnotes in a variety of settings, both cultural and institutional. Using actual unfinished, "working" notes as examples, they illustrate options for composing, reviewing, and working fieldnotes into finished texts. They discuss different organizational and descriptive strategies, including evocation of sensory detail, synthesis of complete scenes, the value of partial versus omniscient perspectives, and of first person versus third person accounts. Of particular interest is the author's discussion of notetaking as a mindset. They show how transforming direct observations into vivid descriptions results not simply from good memory but more crucially from learning to envision scenes as written. A good ethnographer, they demonstrate, must learn to remember dialogue and movement like an actor, to see colors and shapes like a painter, and to sense moods and rhythms like a poet. The authors also emphasize the ethnographer's core interest in presenting the perceptions and meanings which the people studied attach to their own actions. They demonstrate the subtle ways that writers can make the voices of people heard in the texts they produce. Finally, they analyze the "processing" of fieldnotesâthe practice of coding notes to identify themes and methods for selecting and weaving together fieldnote excerpts to write a polished ethnography. This book, however, is more than a "how-to" manual. The authors examine writing fieldnotes as an interactive and interpretive process in which the researcher's own commitments and relationships with those in the field inevitably shape the character and content of those fieldnotes. They explore the conscious and unconscious writing choices that produce fieldnote accounts. And they show how the character and content of these fieldnotes inevitably influence the arguments and analyses the ethnographer can make in the final ethnographic tale. This book shows that note-taking is a craft that can be taught. Along with Tales of the Field and George Marcus and Michael Fisher's Anthropology as Cultural Criticism, Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes is an essential tool for students and social scientists alike.
The study of positive outcomes associated with strong psychological sense of community (PSOC) has grown worldwide. Yet most research explores PSOC as a uni-dimensional (positive) variable operating in a single referent community. Theoretical and empirical literature has suggested, however, that PSOC can be positive, neutral or negative (Brodsky in J Commun Psychol 24(4):347-363, 1996; Brodsky et al. in Psychological sense of community: Research, applications and implications. Kluwer, New York 2002) and since people live in multiple physical and relational communities, there may be multiple PSOCs (M-PSOC) operating simultaneously and interactively (Brodsky and Marx in J Commun Psychol 29(2):1-18, 2001). This paper explores the operation of M-PSOC in the lives of Afghan women, and male supporters, who belonged to a resistance organization before, during and after the Taliban regime. Decisions to join and stay in this community can be explained, in part, through the differentiation of positive, organizational-level PSOC from negative, macro-community-level PSOC. In addition, M-PSOC suggests unique cultural meanings of the terms "community" and "choice." Findings have implications for cross-cultural community work and for fostering resilient sub-communities in the face of macro and societal-level risks and oppression.
Photovoice is a process by which people can identify, represent, and enhance their community through a specific photographic technique. As a practice based in the production of knowledge, photovoice has three main goals: (1) to enable people to record and reflect their community's strengths and concerns, (2) to promote critical dialogue and knowledge about important issues through large and small group discussion of photographs, and (3) to reach policymakers. Applying photovoice to public health promotion, the authors describe the methodology and analyze its value for participatory needs assessment. They discuss the development of the photovoice concept, advantages and disadvantages, key elements, participatory analysis, materials and resources, and implications for practice.
Qualitative research methods could help us to improve our understanding of medicine. Rather than thinking of qualitative and quantitative strategies as incompatible, they should be seen as complementary. Although procedures for textual interpretation differ from those of statistical analysis, because of the different type of data used and questions to be answered, the underlying principles are much the same. In this article I propose relevance, validity, and reflexivity as overall standards for qualitative inquiry. I will discuss the specific challenges in relation to reflexivity, transferability, and shared assumptions of interpretation, which are met by medical researchers who do this type of research, and I will propose guidelines for qualitative inquiry.
Research in which the researcher and the participants come from different contexts and communities always presents challenges. This paper is based on qualitative, community-based research carried out by a U.S. researcher in Pakistan and Afghanistan with an underground Afghan women's humanitarian and political organization. Written from the perspectives of two authors, one an organization insider and the other the outside researcher, it presents some unique examples of diversity challenges, while also illuminating issues that exist in subtle ways even in more common research experiences. Within the context of multiple diversities, two challenges to bridging diversity are discussed: (1) Can or should all diversities be bridged? and (2) Can narrow attention to diversity lead to ignoring similarities? We argue that the definitions of success and failure in bridging diversity are themselves relative terms, grounded in this very diversity. Further, even when research fails to bridge diversity it may, in fact, not only honor and respect that diversity, but ultimately lead to a better understanding of it.
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