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Work conducted in the critical posthumanisms and postqualitative inquiry (i.e., the posts) has expanded in many fields, including psychology. Despite claims that the posts can help inquirers venture beyond the purported limits of conventional qualitative research (i.e., the conventional), the posts are not absolved of questioning. The present paper experiments with cascade questioning to interrogate what is with the intent to instigate what could be by contemplating the entangled identity politics of the conventional/posts. The paper begins with an introductory anecdote, followed by conjectures on identity and politics. Six interrogations/contemplations are then offered. The first five interrogations/contemplations present key criticisms that have been attributed to the conventional and the posts. The paper subsequently adopts a more conciliatory tone, with the sixth interrogation/contemplation (i.e., envisioning entangled futurities for methodology) positioning the conventional/posts not as antagonists but as always already entangled in their coarticulated becomings. Implications for the human subject and for psychology are offered, followed by concluding thoughts. Ultimately, if the posts are to fulfil their political promise, they must remain nimble and open for debate by constantly challenging the identities they erect and the futurities they create relative to the conventional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, the Association of European Qualitative Researchers in Psychology (EQuiP) was founded – a society that aims to create bridges among qualitative researchers in psychology across Europe – between researchers from different European countries but also between different traditions of qualitative inquiry in psychology, and bridges between academics and practitioners. In this paper, we will present the work of EQuiP in order to make it known do a wider audience. We will start by providing an overview of the history of EQuiP and the aims it pursues. We will also present an update on past and present activities and events of the association, including an outlook on the upcoming international conference in 2024 in Milano. We invite scholars to join us in our endeavour not only to strengthen qualitative research in psychology across Europe but also to highlight the plurality and heterogeneity that are inherent to this kind of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are we becoming ‘posthuman’, and, if so, what does that mean for our understanding of ourselves as persons? In this paper, I argue that we have good reasons to retain a notion of personhood despite posthuman claims, but that the science of psychology, which ought to be well-equipped to study and defend human personhood, has – with some notable exceptions – failed to develop illuminating ideas of what persons are and how they come into the world phylogenetically, ontogenetically, and sociogenetically. First, I articulate a short history of the concept of the person from antiquity and to the Enlightenment. Second, I describe four current challenges to these modern approaches to personhood. Third, I argue that personhood is inescapable in psychology and human life as such, and that a qualitative psychology should try to find a way of preserving the insights of posthuman thinking and its critiques without thereby abandoning personhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we present a psychogeographical community project involving members of an arts and health organisation. Using creative ways to improve the mental health and well-being of individuals, we draw on the concepts of trace and spaces to map relationships between researchers and participants. This project was underpinned by three aims which were: to do community group work to produce contributions both in and beyond the University; to playfully critique everyday life in consumer capitalist society and finally, to consider the extent to which personal and social changes could be enabled. To realise those aims, we put into practice a range of architectural, community psychological and psychogeographical methods such as photo-elicitation, dice walking and scavenger hunting. We also facilitated participatory workshops which involved the production of artistic maps, writing poems and short stories. We conclude the paper with reflections from stakeholders with conclusions and future psychogeographical research being considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the teaching of the qualitative method, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), to healthcare professionals (HCPs). It introduces briefly the philosophical background of IPA and how it has been used within healthcare research, and then discusses the teaching of IPA to HCPs within received educational theory. Lastly, the paper describes how IPA has been taught to students/trainees in some specific healthcare professions (clinical psychology, medicine, nursing and related disciplines). In doing this, the paper demonstrates the essential simplicity, paradoxical complexity, and methodological rigour that IPA can offer as a research tool in understanding healthcare and illness from the patient or service user perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a discursive perspective on a concept used within sport psychology, in both its academic and practical discourse, namely 'the zone.' This extraordinary state is one of exceptional peak performance whereby an athlete claims to perform effortlessly, automatically, and successfully. The focus of this paper is the use of the zone as a discursive resource in accounting for successful performance. Through the examination of two televised accounts of performance by elite athletes, I argue that the zone can be used as a way of managing agency for a performance for diluting or softening accounts of success, or as a way of claiming success was probable when failing due to injury. The paper proposes a number of rhetorical contrasts that are evident in the discursive deployment of the zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use made of descriptions of embodiment and embodied activity in a collection of articles, which include case histories in different therapeutic traditions. As a context, the paper draws on three interests of ethnomethodology: how description is constructed; what competent ordinary members (of society) understand as elicited from accounts; and how work practice can be articulated. Primarily using introductory sections of accounts about cases in a spread of therapeutic traditions, the paper analyses how ordinary commonplace accounts of embodiment may offer initial clues as to the 'state' of the client, present a picture of the problem, or be used as relevant biographical data. A key feature of the analysis is to show that these embodied accounts, using ordinary lay language, do important work in establishing problems as 'in and part of the world', but are also an appropriate supplement to therapeutic accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper distinguishes a series of contingent and necessary problems that arise in the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of open-ended or conversational qualitative interviews in psychological research. Contingent problems in the reporting of interviews include: (1) the deletion of the interviewer; (2) the conventions for representing interaction; (3) the specificity of analytic observations; (4) the unavailability of the interview set-up; (5) the failure to consider interviews as interaction. Necessary problems include: (1) the flooding of the interview with social science agendas and categories; (2) the complex and varying footing positions of interviewer and interviewee; (3) the orientations to stake and interest on the part of the interviewer and interviewee; (4) the reproduction of cognitivism. The paper ends with two kinds of recommendation. First, we argue that interviews should be studied as an interactional object, and that study should feed back into the design, conduct and analysis of interviews so that they can be used more effectively in cases where they are the most appropriate data gathering tools. Second, these problems with open-ended interviews highlight a range of specific virtues of basing analysis on naturalistic materials. Reasons for moving away from the use of interviews for many research questions are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses epistemological and methodological issues that surfaced for the authors in a visual research project. Engaging with visual discourse necessitated the authors' interrogation of their own take on issues associated with text and context and the role of reflexivity in the research process. This reflection led us to ruminate still further about the insights that visual discourse could have for qualitative data in general. Thus, the paper first considers the validity of visual data before moving on to address issues of text/context and reflexivity through reference to our work with racist graffiti, in particular, that aimed at people seeking asylum in the UK. In conclusion, the paper argues that there is much to learn from engaging with visual discourse, in terms of understanding social phenomena as well as the process of doing research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The companion piece to an article on the shortcomings of much discourse analysis in psychology, this paper offers an exposition of Foucault's genealogical method as a mode of critique better able to accommodate those dimensions of discourse (history, materiality, the conditions of possibility underwriting 'knowledge') less facilitated by more textually focused or less historically sensitive models. Opening with a discussion of Foucault's 'epistemology of critique' and moving to a close reading of his Nietzsche, genealogy history (1977a) this paper both extends Foucault's analytical principles for the analysis of discourse (reversal, discontinuity, specificity, exteriority) and develops, through a series of methodological injunctions (the category of the 'event', the dissipation of the object, the effacement of the self-constituting subject, the prioritization of the procedures of 'emergence' and 'descent'), an account of genealogy as a mode of effective critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has a marked practical aspect. We wish to encourage and facilitate the use of Q methodology amongst psychologists interested in qualitative research. The paper duly answers a number of pertinent 'how to do Q' questions. Yet our primary intention is not to produce an exhaustive 'how to do Q' guide. In discussing issues of theory, method and interpretation in Q methodology, the main aim of the paper is rather to address some of the more common misunderstandings and misrepresentations that constitute obstacles to the use of one of the very first 'alternative' methods to have been developed in the context of psychology. In addressing such obstacles, the paper hopes to bring ' Why do Q?' questions to the fore. In so doing, Q methodology will also be 'positioned' in relation to a number of other qualitative research methods, each of which currently enjoys a degree of prominence within the psychological discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on the development of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) as one particular qualitative approach to psychology. After a brief introduction to IPA, the paper outlines what can be described as its characteristic features: idiographic, inductive, interrogative, illustrating each feature with examples from studies which have been conducted with IPA. The paper then considers the different levels of interpretation, which are possible with IPA and discusses the notion of when an interpretation is 'good enough'. It goes on to consider issues around the types of topics for which IPA is suitable and the emerging pattern of work using the approach. The next section considers how IPA studies can widen the type of participants included and also examines the suitability of different data collection methods. The paper finishes by bringing together some thoughts on the future development of IPA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a guide for developing a qualitative methods course in psychology that organizes students into a research team conducting a joint project toward the goal of publishing a paper in an academic journal. This class structure allows for students to consider qualitative methods and epistemologies through a process of engaged learning. Tips on creating a research team environment, planning a survey component of the course, guiding students through a grounded theory analysis, and organizing the students toward writing a manuscript are presented. Issues raised for consideration also can be useful when supervising individual students' grounded theory projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The teaching of qualitative methods is now a required element of degree courses in the UK which seek to gain professional accreditation. This paper reports the work of a network group focused on enhancing the teaching of qualitative methods at the undergraduate level. Following a brief summary of the results of a survey into current teaching practices we indicate potential areas of resource support with linked references to examples produced by the network group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The positioning of the reproductive body as a site of madness or badness functions to marginalize women and to medicalize their distress. Taking Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) as a case example, this paper rejects this pathologization and argues that self-policing practices are associated with the experience and construction of premenstrual change as PMS. Drawing on interviews with 12 British women, it is argued that women's experience of distress or anger premenstrually is connected to self-policing practices of self-silencing, self-surveillance, overresponsibility, self-blame, and self-sacrifice, and that their positioning of this distress as PMS takes place through a process of subjectification. An outline is given of a woman-centred psychological intervention, which identified and challenged these self-policing practices. It aimed to allow women to develop more empowering strategies for reducing or preventing premenstrual distress, build an ethic of care for the self, and no longer blame the body for premenstrual anger or depression. Pre-intervention, the themes which emerged in interviews were: PMS sufferer as split; self-silencing; and overresponsibility. Post-intervention, the themes were: increased equality and agency; resisting pathologization; and resisting self-sacrifice and overresponsibility. The implications for the conceptualization and treatment of PMS and for the positioning of the reproductive body as site of psychiatric disorder are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thematic analysis is a poorly demarcated, rarely acknowledged, yet widely used qualitative analytic method within psychology. In this paper, we argue that it offers an accessible and theoretically flexible approach to analysing qualitative data. We outline what thematic analysis is, locating it in relation to other qualitative analytic methods that search for themes or patterns, and in relation to different epistemological and ontological positions. We then provide clear guidelines to those wanting to start thematic analysis, or conduct it in a more deliberate and rigorous way, and consider potential pitfalls in conducting thematic analysis. Finally, we outline the disadvantages and advantages of thematic analysis. We conclude by advocating thematic analysis as a useful and flexible method for qualitative research in and beyond psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss two complementary commitments of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA): the phenomenological requirement to understand and 'give voice' to the concerns of participants; and the interpretative requirement to contextualize and 'make sense' of these claims and concerns from a psychological perspective. The methodological and conceptual bases for the relationship between these phenomenological and interpretative aspects of IPA appear to be underdeveloped in the literature. We, therefore, offer some thoughts on the basis of this relationship, and on its context within qualitative psychology. We discuss the epistemological range of IPA's interpretative focus, and its relationship to the more descriptive features of phenomenological analysis. In order to situate our conclusions within a contextualist position, we draw upon concepts from Heideggerian phenomenology. The argument is illustrated by excerpts from our own research on relationship break-up. We conclude by encouraging IPA researchers to embrace the interpretative opportunities that are offered by this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an in-depth phenomenological exploration of the self-cutting experience and the meanings of the gesture, the wound, and the resulting scar. The phenomenon of self-cutting lends itself to qualitative questions. To address these questions, six female self-cutters were interviewed. Their audiotaped responses were analysed according to the phenomenological method of data analysis (Giorgi, 1975). The purpose of such research is to explicate the structure of a phenomenon from the descriptions of individuals who experience it. By including all that was common across participants' situated structures, the general structural description or essential meaning of the phenomenon was reached. Results revealed that 'bodily mineness', pain, despair, and competence all factor into the embodied nature of self-cutting. The act of self-cutting pulls the individual together while simultaneously tearing her apart with its self-destructive, shaming, and addictive consequences. Nevertheless, findings reveal how 'wounding to heal' is the cutter's way of coping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based upon the work of an ongoing, collective research project that is concerned with embodiment. The co-researchers have used a variety of methods, including memory work and the analysis of discourse, in order to trace the ways in which meanings are constructed and lived, with and through the body. These methods have relied solely on transcripts of text as data. Growing awareness of the limitations this imposed on the research, particularly for topics that focus on bodily experience, led the group to experiment with nonlinguistic forms of data production. Here, the group produced paintings in response to the trigger 'ageing'. These, together with tape-recorded discussions of one another's paintings, constitute our data. The analysis generated a number of themes, focused within the concepts of boundaries, time and transformation. These are discussed in terms of methodological, epistemological and theoretical issues that inform our understanding of subjectivity and embodiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends earlier interview-based work on youth in institutions, which is seldom grounded in actual analysis of the interaction taking place in the parties to the interview. In line with work within discursive psychology (DP) as well as ethnomethodology (EM), it fleshes out the interactional means through which both parties concertedly produce and interpret locally sensitive formulations, descriptions and accounts. The data consists of ten interviews with female residents in Swedish Youth Detention Homes specialized in assessments and/or treatment. Broadly, the study shows how various notions of 'normality' are locally constructed and exploited to account for presumably deviant behavior, typically by relocating the notion of device from the subject herself to the social circumstances. Finally, direct claims of being normal served to build up explicit opposition toward previous institutional categorizations of the teenager. This research emphasises the need for researchers to attend to such interactional phenomena as joint categorization of persons, construction of events and production of accounts, as well as the locally relevant rationalities underlying these discursive constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the range of papers on qualitative research published in the journal "Qualitative Research in Psychology." The editor is increasingly impressed with the range of papers submitted to the journal, both in terms of methodological orientation and place of origin. If one is are indeed part of an active qualitative research team with pertinent issues to share with peers, one might think of proposing a special issue. On the other hand, one could simply propose a lead paper on a topic of significance and invite commentaries from others working in the same area. The editors are happy to field queries about proposed special issues or lead papers.

The article presents information on the journal "Qualitative Research in Psychology." The author states that this peer-reviewed journal's principal aim is to promote good qualitative research in psychology. It states that the journal intends to publish papers emanating from a wide variety of methodological and epistemological positions and to wishes to encourage critical discussion of processes and products deriving from qualitative research. The journal invites papers on a range of critical issues, including reflexive practices, power dynamics, representing others and quality criteria.

Introduces the theme of the research papers featured in the April 2005 issue of the journal "Qualitative Research in Psychology." Discussion on grounded theory and phenomenology; Importance of qualitative research training; Difference between qualitative and critical psychology.