Qualitative Research Methods in Mental Health and Psychotherapy E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 516

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

This book provides a user-friendly introduction to the qualitative methods most commonly used in the mental health and psychotherapy arena.

• Chapters are written by leading researchers and the editors are experienced qualitative researchers, clinical trainers, and mental health practitioners
• Provides chapter-by-chapter guidance on conducting a qualitative study from across a range of approaches
• Offers guidance on how to review and appraise existing qualitative literature, how to choose the most appropriate method, and how to consider ethical issues
• Demonstrates how specific methods have been applied to questions in mental health research
• Uses examples drawn from recent research, including research with service users, in mental health practice and in psychotherapy

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

About the Contributors

Acknowledgements

Part I: Getting Started

1: Introduction

A Short and a Long History of the Use of Qualitative Methods in Mental Health Practice

What Can Qualitative Research Do?

Types of Qualitative Research and the Importance of Reflexivity

What is in the Book

2: Identifying and Synthesizing Qualitative Literature

Fitting Qualitative Research into the Hierarchy of Evidence

Identifying Qualitative Literature

Synthesizing Qualitative Evidence

3: Ethical Issues in Qualitative Mental Health Research

Introduction: Codes, Principles and Laws are Useful but it is About Judgement and Everyday Practice

Ethical Review: Moving Towards Inclusive Practice

Vulnerable Participants and Sensitive Topics: Recognizing That We Are All Vulnerable

Informed Consent and Respect for Autonomy

Confidentiality and Privacy

Avoiding Harm

Multiple Roles and Dual Relationships

Power and Politics

Future Directions, Concluding Comments and Some ‘Practical Guidelines’

4: Participation and Service User Involvement

History and Origins

The Policy Framework

Research Methods

Benefits of Service User Involvement

Challenges of Service User Involvement

Conclusions

5: Qualitative Data Collection: Asking the Right Questions

What Data Collection Method Should I Use?

Does the Data Collection Method Allow Me to Answer my Research Question?

Does the Data Collection Technique Fit with the Epistemological Assumptions that Underlie the Research?

Will the Data Collection Method Suit the Participant Group and Their Abilities and Interests?

How Does the Method Structure the Process of Engagement?

How Will my Participants Make Sense of This Method?

Conclusions

6: Qualitative Methods for Studying Psychotherapy Change Processes

Introduction

Epistemological Issues and the History of Change Process Research

Research Questions in Change Process Research

Collecting Change Process Research Data

Examples of Qualitative Change Process Research Data Collection Methods

Qualitative Data Analysis Options

Discussion: Issues in Qualitative Change Process Research

7: Choosing a Qualitative Research Method

Introduction

A Pragmatic Approach to Choosing an Analytic Method

Developing a Research Question

Qualitative Methods and Their Assumptions

What is Epistemology and Why Does it Matter?

Part II: Methods

8: Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis in Mental Health and Psychotherapy Research

Description of the Method

Origins and Influences

Epistemological Assumptions

What Kind of Research Questions Suit IPA?

What Kind of Data is Appropriate for IPA?

How Can IPA Involve Service Users and People from the Research Population Under Study?

A Step-by-Step Approach to Using IPA

Quality Issues

How Might Studies Using This Method Relate to the Development of Mental Health Policy?

Future Directions

9: Existentialist-Informed Hermeneutic Phenomenology

Influences and Affinities

Epistemology

Research Questions

Research Process

Role of Research Participants

An Example of Existentialist-Informed Hermeneutic Phenomenology

Conclusions

Reflections

10: Grounded Theory Methods for Mental Health Practitioners

History of Grounded Theory

Introduction to the Method

What Kinds of Research Questions is Grounded Theory Most Suited To?

What Kinds of Questions is Grounded Theory Not Suited To?

Collecting Data: What Constitutes Data and How Much Should I Collect?

How Might Participants and Service Users be Involved in Grounded Theory Studies?

How Does a Researcher Use Grounded Theory?

What Makes for a Better Quality Grounded Theory Study?

Future Directions for Grounded Theory

Acknowledgement

11: Discourse Analysis

Description

Historical Origins and Influences

Key Epistemological Assumptions

Research Questions

Appropriate Data

Involvement of Research Participants and Mental Health Service Users

Use of the Method and Example

Quality Criteria

Application

Conclusions

12: Narrative Psychology

Description of Method

Historical Origins and Influences

Key Epistemological Assumptions

Types of Research Questions

Sorts of Data

Involvement of Research Participants

Details of Using Method

Quality Issues

‘Evidence’ and Policy

Recent Developments

13: Ethnomethodology/Conversation Analysis

Ethnomethodology/Conversation Analysis

Historical Origins

Key Epistemological Assumptions

EM/CA Research Questions

Doing EM/CA: What Kind of Data?

Involving Research Participants and Mental Health Service Users

How to use EM/CA

Better Quality Studies

EM/CA, Mental Health Policy and Future Developments

Acknowledgements

14: Q Methodological Research in Mental Health and Psychotherapy

Introduction

A Short Introduction to Q Methodology

History

Epistemological Assumptions

Research Questions

What Kind of Data are Most Appropriate for Q Methodological Studies?

Involving Research Participants and Service Users

How to Perform a Q Methodological Study

Principles of a Good Q Study

Q Methodology and Policy

Recent Innovation in Q Research

15: Thematic Analysis

Description of the Method

Historical Origins and Influences

Key Epistemological Assumptions

What Kind of Research Questions is Thematic Analysis Most Suited to Addressing?

What Kinds of Data are Most Appropriate and From Whom Should They be Collected?

What Approach is Taken to the Involvement of Research Participants, Including Mental Health Service Users?

How to Use This Method

What Makes for a Better Quality Thematic Analysis?

What are the Recent Developments and Innovations Concerning this Method?

Conclusions

Acknowledgements

Part III: Establishing Good Quality Qualitative Research in Mental Health

16: In Pursuit of Quality

The ‘Quality’ Debate

Some Guiding Principles

Quality in Practice

Conclusions

17: Emerging Issues and Future Directions

The Range of Data Available for Qualitative Research

Emerging Ethical Issues

Service User Involvement

Qualitative Research and Evidence-Based Practice

Dissemination

Future Directions

Index

This edition first published 2012 © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Qualitative research methods in mental health and psychotherapy : a guide for students and practitioners / edited by David Harper & Andrew R. Thompson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-470-66373-8 (cloth) – ISBN 978-0-470-66370-7 (pbk.) 1. Mental health. 2. Qualitative research. 3. Psychotherapy–Methodology. I. Harper, David, 1965– II. Thompson, Andrew R. (Andrew Robert), 1970– [DNLM: 1. Mental Disorders. 2. Qualitative Research. 3. Psychotherapy–methods. WM 20] RA790.Q34 2012 616.89–dc22 2010052118

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is published in the following electronic formats: ePDFs 9781119973256; Wiley Online Library 9781119973249

About the Contributors

Evrinomy Avdi is a clinical psychologist and Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the School of Psychology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Her research interests lie in the application of discourse and narrative analytic approaches to the study of various domains of clinical psychology practice, and more specifically diagnosis, psychotherapy and the experience of living with cancer. She is interested in exploring the links between deconstructive research and actual clinical practice.

Abi Billin completed her counselling psychology training at City University London in 2009 and was awarded a Doctorate in Counselling Psychology in 2010. She conducted her doctoral research into the experience of the end of life. Abi is interested in existential phenomenology and humanistic approaches to counselling psychology.

Eleni Chambers works as a researcher within the School of Health and Related Research at the University of Sheffield. Her background is in conflict resolution and mental health in a variety of settings, mainly in the voluntary sector. Eleni is also a long-term user of mental health services and brings this perspective to all her work. Her current interests are in user involvement in health and social care services and research, psychological therapies and self-management.

Kathy Charmaz is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Faculty Writing Program at Sonoma State University, a program for supporting faculty members' scholarly writing. She has written, co-authored or co-edited nine books including Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis, which has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Polish and Portuguese. Among her most recent writings are two multi-authored books, Five Ways of Doing Qualitative Analysis: Phenomenological Psychology, Grounded Theory, Discourse Analysis, Narrative Research, andIntuitive Inquiry, forthcoming with Guilford and Developing Grounded Theory: The Second Generation. She is past-president of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.

Phillip Dyson is a graduate student in the Faculty of Health and Social Care at the Open University. His research explores the different ways used to explain and make sense of 'what is going on' in self-harm. He is pursuing this through three identities -- researcher as 'voyeur' (scrutinizing Facebook postings); researcher as 'lurker' (listening in on conversations going on in online chatrooms); and researcher as 'detective' (using Q methodology). He is particularly interested in discovering how innovations in IT can open up new methodological frontiers, boldly going to places never reached before.

Robert Elliott, is Professor of Counselling in the Counselling Unit at the University of Strathclyde. A Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Toledo (Ohio), he is co-author of four books, including Learning Process-Experiential Psychotherapy (2004), and Research Methods in Clinical Psychology (2002), as well as more than 120 journal articles and book chapters. He previously co-edited Psychotherapy Research and Person-Centered Counseling and Psychotherapies. In 2008 he received both the Distinguished Research Career Award of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, and the Carl Rogers Award from the Division of Humanistic Psychology of the American Psychological Association.

Alison Faulkner is a freelance researcher, trainer and consultant, working from a service user perspective. She has over 20 years' experience of social research mainly in the mental health field, and has worked for most of the national mental health charities. Alison is herself a mental health service user/survivor, and has written and presented extensively on the subject. In a freelance capacity, she drafted the guidance on service user involvement for the MHRN Service User Research Group, England, and researched and wrote The Ethics of Survivor Research for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (Policy Press, 2004). She was a co-editor of This is Survivor Research (PCCS Books, 2009).

Hannah Frith is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Brighton. Her research interests cover visual identity, body image, sexuality and mental health. Underpinning these varied interests is a focus on embodiment and exploring ways in which being in the body is socially constructed. Hannah uses a range of qualitative methods to explore these issues and recently her research has explored the use of visual methods to explore embodied experience (such as the experience of undergoing chemotherapy). She has become interested in analysing media texts which present multi-faceted representations of embodiment such as 'How to Look Good Naked'.

Eugenie Georgaca is Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the School of Psychology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She teaches, researches and publishes in the area of clinical psychology, psychotherapy and mental health, and especially qualitative methodology, psychoanalysis and critical perspectives on psychopathology. She was a co-author of Deconstructing Psychopathology (Sage, 1995) and has published articles on psychotic discourse, delusions, discursive approaches to analysing psychotherapy, discourse analysis and social constructionist notions of subjectivity.

Kate Gleeson is an independent trainer in research and professional development. This follows a 25 year career in higher education which culminated in 7 years as Research Director on the Bristol Doctorate in Clinical Psychology. Kate's research interests lie in visual identity and personhood, and in developing research methods that enable an exploration of visuality and subjectivity. Kate's most recent projects have focused on the visual identity of young women and people with learning disabilities.

David Harper is Reader in Clinical Psychology at the University of East London (UEL). His research interests are in critical psychology and social constructionist approaches in mental health, particularly in relation to psychosis. He is a co-author of Deconstructing Psychopathology (Sage, 1995) and a member of UEL's Psychology and Social Change research group. He works one session a week as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist for East London NHS Foundation Trust.

Helene Joffe is a Reader in Social and Health Psychology in the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London (UCL). Her area of interest is public engagement with risks ranging from emerging infectious diseases to earthquakes and climate change. She uses thematic analysis in studying these phenomena and teaches this method at a post-graduate level at UCL.

Michael Larkin works as a Senior Lecturer in Psychology on the University of Birmingham's doctoral training course for Clinical Psychology. He has a specific interest in phenomenological and cultural approaches to psychology. Much of his research explores the experiences of families and young people who are using psychology services.

Michael Murray is Professor of Social and Health Psychology at Keele University, UK. Prior to that, he held appointments at other universities in England, Northern Ireland and Canada. He has (co-)edited several collections on critical and qualitative approaches to health psychology including Qualitative Health Psychology: Theories and Methods (with Chamberlain, Sage 1999) and Critical Health Psychology (Palgrave, 2004). He has also published articles and chapters on narrative psychology in the Journal of Health Psychology, Social Science Information and in several edited collections. His current research interests include the use of participatory methods to engage communities in various forms of collective action.

Mark Rapley is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of East London. He is the author of The Social Construction of Intellectual Disability (Cambridge University Press), Quality of Life Research (Sage) and, with Susan Hansen and Alec McHoul, Beyond Help (PCCS Books). He lives in London, but wishes he did not.

Sally Sargeant is a Lecturer in Psychology at Keele University and a chartered member of the British Psychological Society. She has diverse interests that span chronic illness, mental health, consumer behaviour and the psychology of art. Her PhD work developed an audio diary intervention for young people with a chronic illness, which led to her interest in qualitative health research. Sally's more recent projects involve examining children's levels of trust in their physicians, and also psychological implications of new breast cancer treatment pathways.

Rachel Shaw is a Health Psychologist registered with the Health Professions Council and a Chartered Psychologist of the British Psychological Society (BPS). She is Honorary Secretary of the Qualitative Methods in Psychology Section of the BPS. Rachel currently works as a Lecturer in the School of Life and Health Sciences at Aston University. Her research interests include illness experience, health management, media framing of health issues, meta-synthesis of qualitative evidence, interpretative phenomenology and reflexivity. Rachel has publications in health psychology and qualitative methodology in psychology. She is also author of several chapters in qualitative methods textbooks.

Liz Spencer is a research consultant with more than 30 years' experience of qualitative methods in both academic and applied policy research. She is currently a Research Associate at the University of Essex, as well as an academician of the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS).

Jane Ritchie was the founder and first Director of the Qualitative Research Unit at the National Centre for Social Research and is an AcSS. With Liz Spencer, whilst at NatCen, she conducted a review of quality in qualitative research and evaluation for the UK Cabinet Office, which is widely respected and used by researchers.

Wendy Stainton Rogers is Professor of Health Psychology at the Open University and is an internationally recognized expert in Q methodology. Her publications include Explaining Health and Illness (1991) and The Psychology of Gender and Sexuality (2001) (with the late Rex Stainton Rogers). In 2009, she co-edited (with Carla Willig) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology and is currently producing a second edition of her Social Psychology: Experimental and Critical Approaches, to be published in 2011. She was a member of the NICE Development Group on Behaviour Change, and is currently the Chair of the International Society for Critical Health Psychology (ISCHP).

Andrew Thompson is a Reader in Clinical Psychology. He is a Chartered Clinical and Health Psychologist. He is the Director of Research Training at the Clinical Psychology Unit at the University of Sheffield. He is clinically active and is also a practitioner of cognitive analytic therapy. He has a long-standing interest in the use of qualitative methods in clinical psychology and has supervised many mental health practitioners and trainee clinical psychologists in the use of such methods. His research interests focus on adjustment to appearance altering conditions.

Alison Tweed is Clinical Director and Principal Lecturer on the Doctoral Clinical Psychology Training Programme based at the Universities of Staffordshire and Keele. She is a clinical psychologist and qualitative researcher with interests in the areas of medical psychology, particularly chronic illness and clinical psychology training. Her current research involves the evaluation of new innovations in the assessment of trainees' therapeutic skills within a competency-based framework.

Carla Willig is Professor of Psychology at City University London. She is also a counselling psychologist with an interest in existential phenomenological approaches to psychotherapy and counselling. Carla has a long-standing interest in qualitative research methodology and she has published books and papers concerned with both methodological and epistemological issues. Recently, Carla has begun to bring together her interests in counselling and qualitative research by exploring the meaning and practice of 'interpretation'.

Acknowledgements

David Harper would like to thank Sarah Amoss, Gary Brown, Pippa Dell, Ken Gannon, Mick McKeown, Ian Parker, Neil Rees, Sam Warner and Carla Willig for helpful exchanges about various aspects of the book. In addition, I owe a debt of gratitude to the University of East London's Psychology and Social Change research group, the clinical psychology programme team and past and present trainees and research supervisees. Many thanks to Andrew for having the initial idea, inviting me to join him and for his hard work and support over the last 2 years.

Andrew Thompson would like to thank the University of Sheffield for its generosity in granting a period of study leave which allowed the transformation of the idea for this book to make it into a proposal. A particularly big thank you to David for joining me in this venture and making it a reality.

Thanks are due to Wiley-Blackwell for their support with the project. Lastly, we both want to express our gratitude to the contributors who have been unfailingly generous in responding to our editorial requests. All research participants' identifying details have been anonymized.

Part I

Getting Started

1

Introduction

Andrew R. Thompson and David Harper

This book aims to provide a user-friendly introduction to the qualitative methods most commonly used in the mental health and psychotherapy arenas. A number of different professional groups and academic disciplines contribute to mental health care and our aim in putting together this book has been to create a text that shows how qualitative methods can generate knowledge specifically relevant to mental health and also to show how these approaches have the potential to improve practice and drive policy. We envisage this book being read by students, trainees and qualified practitioners from a variety of professions: clinical psychology; mental health nursing; social work; psychiatry; occupational therapy; family therapy; and those working in a wide variety of psychological therapies.

Mental health practitioners are used to working alongside their clients or with service users (we shall use these terms interchangeably throughout), with the aim of enhancing emotional well-being. Most will be trained to understand the phenomenon of mental distress from an individualized or idiographic perspective that acknowledges the role of social and cultural as well as biological influences upon behaviour, affect and experience. As such they will be used to ‘collecting data’ and ‘making sense of’ peoples’ complex and rich personal histories and experiences in order to deliver care and support. Indeed, as we discuss below, several therapeutic approaches have their origins in qualitative and subjective exploration.

Although caution should be expressed in naively assuming counselling and other practitioner competencies can be simply transferred into the research setting (see Thompson & Russo, in press), we believe that many of the core competencies of mental health practitioners are highly transferable. However, for many the transfer of these competencies somehow gets lost when they move between practitioner and researcher roles. Consequently, it is our core ambition with this book to help both student and qualified mental health practitioner understand qualitative approaches, so as to have the confidence to conduct creative qualitative research of a high standard.