LeCompte-Margaret-D-2000 Analysing qualitative data.pdf

2019

This course is intended to introduce you to social theory, the process of theorizing, and the canonical works that arguably serve, and some that should serve, as the core of an inclusive professional identity for sociologists. As a one semester course, this can by no means be a comprehensive theory survey: the goal is help you develop a basic literacy of key sociological texts ranging from the 19th century to the present that can serve as a foundation and springboard for your own research and teaching interests. The course asks what it means to think sociologically: What is social reality? Which components are important? How do we go about analyzing these? It traces out lineages of how social scientists have addressed these questions, the logics and styles that set different streams apart from each other, and the substantive areas they do and do not address. During the course, we will be thinking through three overarching questions. First, many of the "canonical" social theory texts were written from the standpoint of a relatively small cultural group in the Global North but have been read over the years as presenting a universalistic vision of humanity that tends to ignore gender, race, sexual orientation, and empire/colonialism. We will ask how classical and contemporary theorists' treatment-explicit or implicit-of race, sex, and empire affected their work and its potential to provide satisfactory explanations of important social phenomena. Second, middle-range theory has dominated sociology for decades now. By considering these larger theoretical frameworks, this course implicitly rejects the view that middle-range theory alone can guide and organize research in the social sciences and encourages you to reflect on the relationship between the works under consideration and the project of middle-range theory building. Third, we should all reflect on how to use theory and theorize in our own research practice.

Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 2015

The future of qualitative methods regards the kind of object cultural psychology is interested and the kind of questions it can ask. I propose that the object should be experiencing, understood as a complex whole, consisting of lived-by action and counter-action, that is contextual inter-action with the world in the form of an experiencing subject and otherness. The kind of questions cultural psychology can ask is instead related to the epistemological status attributed to both researcher and participant. Probably few scholars such as Vygotsky, Piaget and Lewin understood to what extent experiencing is always changing, because the relationship between mind, alterity and culture is co-generative. This also implies a relativization and a decentralization of the psychology's perspective. Finally, I provide some examples from the history of psychology and some suggestions to work at the level of such complexity by using methods that can work with complex objects such as products of human activity (e.g., art, literature, architecture, etc.).

Developmental Review, 1992

ntu.edu.sg

Theory building and testing is the core of scientific investigation. Based upon the lessons we have learned from conducting research in social identity and intergroup relations, we propose a four-step approach in building and testing psychological theories: (1) selecting phenomena: observing events that happen around us and around the world; (2) finding critical commonalities: identifying common components across the different events; (3) abstracting (theorizing): extracting the underlying psychological processes inform the observed commonalities, and relating the processes to new or existing theories; and (4) hypothesis testing: examining and testing the theories empirically. These four steps allow researchers to base their scientific investigation on real-life social events. We illustrate this four-step approach with examples from our research on hierarchical identity, identity hegemony, and bridging identity/symbol, and we suggest guidelines for conducting programmatic research in social and personality psychology. A Socially Grounded Approach 3 A Socially Grounded Approach to Test Theories in Psychology: Experiences from Conducting Social Identity Research. "There is nothing so practical as a good theory." Kurt Lewin Kurt Lewin's quote is perhaps one of the most well-known adages in psychology. It is never too excessive to emphasize the value and importance of theories in social psychology, as they are fundamental to research and scientific discoveries. Without theories, we would approach social phenomena in a piece-meal, descriptive, and post hoc manner. Importantly, the function of a theory is to guide researchers in formulating research questions and hypotheses and in selecting or creating the appropriate methods and analytical (statistical) strategies for testing those hypotheses. Social and personality psychology is characterized by creative and diverse research methods, ranging from participant-observation, psychometric test construction, experimental manipulation, to neuroimaging, to name a few (see the Handbook of Research Methods of Social and Personality Psychology by Reis and Judd, 2000). However, without knowing what goals they want to attain (i.e., what theory to test), researchers would easily drown in the sea of potential methodologies; at the same time, we do not mean to discourage the learning of research methods. On the contrary, we feel that it is important for all researchers to fill their research toolboxes with a diverse set of tools (research methods), and at the same time be aware that the methods used should be guided by theories. In effect, a theory is to a research method as a horse is to a carriage. Putting the carriage in front of the horse would never work. Take painting as another metaphor. Artists need to acquire various skills in painting, such as using linear perspectives in creating depth. However, these skills are just a means in achieving the end of expressing the artist's thoughts and visions. A piece of artwork that demonstrates the artist's skill A Socially Grounded Approach 4 35 Condition 1: Joint presentation of Chinese and Western cultures, with the Beijing Olympic icon. Condition 2. Joint presentation of Chinese and Western cultures. Condition 3. Single presentation of Western culture. Condition 4. Presentation of abstract graphic design unrelated to culture.

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2009

Wiley Blackwell, 2010

Theory's secure place in qualitative inquiry is challenged on three counts. First, it is argued that the search for theory in such inquiry originates in a kind of crypto-functionalism, and makes any inquiry dependent on its discovery inconsistent with the starting points of qualitative inquiry. Second, theory's supposed importance for policy formulation cannot in itself justify it, even if theory had the right credentials for that purpose (which it does not). Third, arguments that it is used successfully and uncontroversially in the arts and humanities-and even that its pursuance there represents some essence of scholarship-are belied by examining discussion about theory in those arenas. The author concludes by arguing that educators' irrepressible interest in theory leads qualitative inquiry into sterile terrain.

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2009

Throughout most of its history it would have been unlikely that the Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology would have shown interest in a special issue devoted to qualitative and methods. Indeed we were surprised by the tremendous support and enthusiasm shown by JCCP editors when we first proposed the idea for this project in the summer of 2006. But today it is evident that qualitative and mixed methods research is enjoying a renaissance in psychology, as in the other social and health sciences. Signs of a resurgence are everywhere, ranging from a report from the United States National Institutes of Health encouraging the submission of qualitative applications (Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, 1999), to the emergence of new journals emphasizing qualitative and mixed methods, to the establishment of the American Psychological Association's new division of qualitative research. Of course, the interest is hardly new. Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of experimental psychology, proposed qualitative methods for the study of psychology in its cultural context and wrote a vast tome, Voelkerpsychologie, on the subject (Wundt, 2008). Even as the twentieth century progressed, researchers in experimental, personality, and clinical psychology continued to use qualitative and mixed methods, though they may not have articulated them as such (Ashworth, 2003). Yet over the past fifty years, qualitative research in psychology has been largely marginalized. Qualitative researchers have been barred from large research departments and have found it difficult to publish their work in major journals. Mixed methods research has fared even less well, although it is now beginning to re-establish itself in the applied sub-disciplines such as educational and industrial psychology. The origin of psychology's marginalization of qualitative inquiry has been the focus of several historical accounts (Ashworth, 2003; Tesch, 2009) and doubtless reflects larger forces shaping the modern history of the social sciences. However, a key proximal cause of the isolation of qualitative research was the development, at mid-century, of the "incompatibility hypothesis." This hypothesis asserts that qualitative and quantitative research paradigms are inherently incompatible-differing not only in their strategies of inquiry, but also by their research goals, and, most importantly, by the epistemologies in which they are anchored. According to the hypothesis quantitative research is inseparable from a "positivist" epistemology, while qualitative research is inherently inseparable from a "constructivist," or "naturalist" epistemology (Tesch, 2009; Maxcy, 2003). In this view, quantitative, empiricist research attempts to gauge reality as it really is; constructivist research seeks to describe the "realities" constructed by subjects. The incompatibility hypothesis escalated into an acrimonious conflict-the "paradigm wars"-that raged furiously throughout the nineteen seventies and eighties. Warriors on both sides declared not only the impossibility of dialogue, but also the irreducible superiority of

Editorial paper (Culture & Psychology; SAGE) by Jaan Valsiner, in march 2014, concerning the up-to-date and the necessary advancements in Cultural Psychology's methodological efforts.