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This paper draws upon research projects in which efforts have been made to find ways of listening to young children’s voices in early years contexts. This listening, namely in the mosaic approach, helps us to see how children make sense of their world, and adopt our planning and ‘being with’ young children. After setting the context of early years pedagogy and ideology of mosaic approach, this paper focuses on the researcher’s journey to turn her gaze inward before making any claims about her engagement with and listening to young children. Since this approach purposely leaves unanswered the question what kind of data is going to be collected, researchers have to decide what data is in the course of a research project, through their engagement with children. We argue for befriending uncertainty and dilemmatic thinking as it provides us with a different way of seeing, knowing and listening the hard to know. Through writing about phronêsis, this paper focuses on the process of decision-making and judgements that researchers undertake. The final argument calls for attentiveness and aims to acknowledge practical judgements as a fundamental part of researching early years.

The use of vignettes that are based upon fictionalised accounts is well-established in contemporary social science. Vignettes have been used in a variety of ways to contribute to studies with both a quantitative and a qualitative orientation. This paper reflects on two recent qualitative studies which have made innovative use of ‘real-life’ vignettes. In each case, the paper describes some of the unanticipated and overlapping benefits that accrued from their incorporation into the research design and reflects on the advantages that ‘real-life’ vignettes might bring to future research. Drawing on two different research projects, the paper highlights the further potential contribution of ‘real-life’ vignettes to the repertoire of research methods currently available to social scientists.

Work on epistemics in conversation analysis (CA) has demonstrated how speakers attend closely to the knowledge claims they and others make and how this shapes interaction. This paper uses work on epistemics in CA to explore how interviewers and interviewees orient to knowledge claims involving the asking and answering of questions. Since research participants are recruited to represent a category identified by the researcher, interviewees are assumed to have greater knowledge relative to the research topic as compared to interviewers, who typically work to demonstrate that they are eager learners about others’ experiences, perceptions and beliefs and so forth. This paper examines sequences from research interviews to focus on the fine-grained work involved in asking questions and making knowledge claims within interviews. Epistemics provides a powerful tool to examine how speakers’ orientations to others’ knowledge claims is central to the interactional work of conducting interviews.

Saturation of data has been acknowledged by many social scientists as evidence of rigor in qualitative research. Though there is a consensus about its definition and usefulness in qualitative research, the methods for achieving saturation are scarce while the social scientists who mention data saturation in their research methodologies do not adequately describe how this is achieved. This paper describes a new method for achieving saturation in studies that use interviews. The method is called Comparative Method for Themes Saturation (CoMeTS). CoMeTS is comparative in two ways. First, all themes from all interviews are compared with each other. Second, the sequence of interviews is reordered multiple times in order to check saturation again. This is because the sequence of interviews during the check makes saturation vary and, therefore, reordering helps confirming saturation. This paper concludes that CoMeTS is a simple, comparative and holistic method for achieving saturation and that it can be used in complicated qualitative studies.

This paper discusses telephone interviewing as a qualitative research method and defines qualitative telephone interviews as participant-centered. In a research project which consisted of internet based recruitment, emails sent to set up interviews and an analysis of 39 qualitative interviews conducted over telephone, I contend that being interviewed over the phone may result in more honest data as people have become more accustomed to ‘virtual’ communication, serving to benefit to both the participant and researcher. By merging feminist research methodology with traditional forms of semi-structured interviewing, data collected over the phone can be used when dealing with traumatic or sensitive topics and can result in rich data. Thus, this paper contributes to an ever-evolving conversation regarding the utility of telephone interviewing.

ABSTRACT Although there is increasing demand for syntheses of qualitative research, little is known about papers that aim to report such syntheses. We searched for published reports of attempts to conduct syntheses of qualitative research in health and healthcare. Papers were included if they were published between 1988 and 2004, in the English language, and in a peer-reviewed journal. We identified a modest body of literature (42 papers) reporting syntheses of qualitative research in health and healthcare. We extracted data on the topic of the paper and on reported methods for searching, appraisal, and synthesis. Some papers reported purposive attempts to innovate with, and to adapt, methods for synthesis. Many papers lack explicitness about methods for searching, appraisal, and synthesis, and there is little evidence of emerging consensus on many issues. There was also some evidence of possibly inappropriate use of some techniques. We conclude that continued methodological progress and improved reporting are required.

This paper reflects on the value of diary methods in the context of a qualitative, longitudinal narrative inquiry exploring the higher education decision-making of further education students in England. Event-based diaries were used alongside interviews and focus groups over a 14-month period to gain in-depth insights into the reasons and influences informing their decision-making trajectories. I explore the challenges, successful approaches and advantages of employing diary methods with young people in this context. Challenges consisted of maintaining participant engagement, which was overcome by combining methods and incorporating a reactive co-participatory element. Yet, a number of advantages emerged from participants' engagement with diary keeping which enhanced the richness of the data; this inspired deeper reflections on decision-making and influences and provided a private space for participants to disclose personal difficulties that could not be obtained via interviews.

This paper explores the methodological possibilities of listening to more-than-human sounds as an entry point to critical analysis. Through attending to the sound of a leafblower as it resonates across a university campus, this article draws lines between the resonances of the leafblower, higher education, and white supremacy to explore how sounds become embedded in bodies and spaces. In addition, this article offers a methodology of listening as a process of attunement that provokes readings beyond what is immediately heard, seen, or felt. To listen to the sound of the leafblower and what it does, how it resonates is to attune to how that sound works, how it operates in the production and discourses of place. In other words, this article wonders how listening, as a methodological practice, provokes critical questions about place and space, and how sound (and particularly nonhuman or more than human sounds) functions in qualitative methodology.

This article explores ‘diary-keeping behaviour’, or the ways in which participants conduct the completion and submission of diaries in diary research. There is a paucity of methodologically oriented literature on diary method and as such this article makes a contribution to extending the existing knowledge of this method. The primary aim of this article is to set out in detail the key issues relating to diary-keeping behaviour, in order to provide a foundation for future critical explorations of this facet of diary research. The research that this paper is based on involved a 12-month diary-interview study. This project explored the employability management of Chinese international Master’s students in social sciences studying in the UK during one academic year. The article sets out key facets of diary-keeping behaviour and explores specific considerations for diary studies in higher education contexts, where diary research has been particularly neglected.

The use of audio recordings has become a taken-for-granted approach to generating transcripts of in-depth interviewing and group discussions. In this paper we begin by describing circumstances where the use of a recorder is not, or may not be, possible, before sharing our comparative analysis of audio-recorded transcriptions and interview scripts made from notes taken during the interview (by experienced, well-trained interviewers). Our comparison shows that the data quality between audio-recorded transcripts and interview scripts written directly after the interview were comparable in the detail captured. The structures of the transcript and script were usually different because in the interview scripts, topics and ideas were grouped, rather than being in the more scattered order of the conversation in the transcripts. We suggest that in some circumstances not recording is the best approach, not ‘second best’.

Purpose: The current paper aims to present four studies which investigated whether hermeneutic phenomenological research writing provided opportunities for intellectual reflection and development in 15 participants who received their Masters or/and Doctorate degrees in Art Psychotherapy. Methods: 111 pieces of writing, 65 images and 8 poems representing experiences framed by a hermeneutic phenomenological approach were collected between June 2015 and February 2017. Results: The findings from the four studies relate to fundamental themes and demonstrate how participants were able to experience a more perceptive reflection on the content of their graduate studies with the passing of time after graduation. Conclusion: It is thus further implied that qualitative research, with its highly adaptable and flexible qualities, can be taken beyond its use as a methodology into additional developmental possibilities.

Social Network Analysis (SNA) is often criticised for being too quantitative in focus and network scientists have commented on a lack of engagement from qualitative researchers. This paper will contribute to these debates by critically reflecting on a qualitative study of gambling where social network research methods were adapted and applied to narrative interviews. Egocentric sociograms (maps of participant social networks, using a name generation question and concentric circles) were created for 23 participants. These sociograms were used as an interactive tool, with the addition of coloured dots, to stimulate discussion and so generate rich narrative and visual data on the impacts of gambling behaviour on participants’ wider social networks. This approach represents an extension to existing SNA methods that has not previously been utilised.

This article promotes an interviewing technique that could be used when interviewing elite policy-making respondents who fear repercussions for divulging information and who, as a result, either become too emotionally unstable to allow for rapport or begin to resist disclosing information. Based on two independent research projects in Bulgaria and Cyprus, the article advocates the active use of a new type of research participant, the intermediary. This relatively new interview participant is used to introduce and vouch for the credibility of the researcher. The paper argues their inclusion in the interview decreases a respondent’s resistance by improving rapport and by preventing concealment of information. They achieve the former by: creating an aura of trust, by providing emotional support to the respondent and by converting the interview to a friendly conversation. They achieve the latter by intervening at the moments when they consider the respondent is deliberately or unintentionally withholding information.

Informed consent is a key issue in qualitative research. Conducting qualitative research longitudinally adds further complications to obtaining and maintaining informed consent. This paper illustrates how essential qualities of longitudinal research can be conceptualized as a resource to enhance ethical practice. In a research project on intimate relationships conducted with a cohort of participants, informed consent was addressed orally throughout the duration of the project. Following completion of the longitudinal data gathering, the formalities required as evidence of informed consent were only then conducted with each participant. With the written component of informed consent pending throughout the two year period of data collection, ongoing reflexivity during ethically important moments was enhanced. The author proposes that marking the conclusion of data gathering by obtaining written evidence of informed consent affords a means of enhancing ethical practice.

This paper draws attention to the narrative potential of longitudinal studies such as the British Birth Cohort Studies (BBCS), and explores the possibility of creating narrative case histories and conducting narrative analysis based on information available from the studies. The BBCS have historically adopted a quantitative research design and used structured interviews and questionnaires to collect data from large samples of individuals born in specific years. However, the longitudinal nature of these studies means that they follow the same sample of individuals from birth through childhood into adult life, and this leads to the creation of data that can be understood as a quantitative auto/biography.