Search results

Therapy is reflexive but not synonymous with therapists' accounting practices. It is displayed and engenders dominance but it is not an institutional rhetoric or a mechanism of social control. Six properties of therapeutic work are enumerated — reflexiveness, interpretativeness, interventionalism, domination, habituation tendencies and selectivity. All apart from reflexiveness are subject to differences of form and extension in different therapeutic communities. These variations in therapeutic work and communities can be empirically mapped. Such a conception of therapeutic work may have applications to therapeutic work outside the therapeutic communities and any other institutional setting. Two data extracts empirically ground the discussion.

In this paper on focus group discussion (FGD), the author reviews the origins of FGD during World War II to its current usages, epistemological positions underpinning FGDs that shape its design and implementation including composition and group size, competencies required for facilitators, recruitment of participants, recording and transcribing FGDs, technology-supported virtual group designs, and ethical considerations of data collection in a social setting.

Our concern in this article is with the feeding back of sociological descriptions to those whom these descriptions purport to be about. This in particular is what we mean in our title by the ‘retrieval of sociological description’. We would like to consider here some of the issues surrounding any attempt on the part of the sociologist to offer his account for inspection by his research respondents, why one may attempt such an exercise and, tentatively, what any such exercise might look like. In particular, we wish to link such ‘feeding back’ of the sociologist's descriptions to the related issue of the validation of social research. Conventionally, validation of sociological research is thought to consist in internal methodological procedures, e.g. triangulation, random allocation, etc., but validation by respondents may represent a feasible alternative to such procedures. By respondent validation is meant here any attempt on the part of the researcher to establish a

This chapter draws on a study on Adivasi identities in a context of protracted violence and conflict in India. The chapter examines the ethical issues that emerged during the research with young people, through a critical exploration of researcher positionality and power. The chapter is informed by a naturalistic inquiry into community interactions and youth voice in an area of civil unrest in India, and specifically, with young people from the historically marginalised Adivasi community. I reflect on my theoretical transition to poststructuralism in the doing of this research, enriched by postcolonial and feminist perspectives, which emphasises the centrality of context and the inextricability of the researcher from the researched. By critically reflecting on my power and positionality as an adult researcher, I question how the particular context of the young participants, my presence and participation within it produced particular responses, understandings and identities of young people. These understandings are entangled with ethical challenges in relation to the navigation of the research context, gendering and hierarchisation within local community relations. In encountering these complexities, my ethical positioning raises questions about ‘representation’ in the capturing of youth voices in the Indian context. The chapter suggests an articulation and linking of the ethical tensions to a substantiation of the theoretical and methodological framings of research, informed through the research context and the researcher’s positionality.

This study identifies and interprets the experiences and relationships of a host community to a marine national park in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, as it transformed from a local recreation site into an international tourist destination. This chapter elaborates on an original and innovative amalgamation of qualitative methods used to collect data consisting of verbal and pictorial techniques, including focus group interviews, visitor employed photography, and an adapted Q-methodology incorporating photo-elicitation. The research design for data collection is provided as a guideline to illustrate how the study progressed through two essential parts. This study contributes to a gap in method on how to extract pictorial measures on a collective basis to systematically to produce group place meanings. Recommendations are suggested based on the challenges faced in this study. This innovative qualitative method was successful in deriving sense of place for a marine park.

To inform policy, curricula, and future research on cyberbullying through an exploration of the moral reasoning of digitally active 10–14-year olds (tweens) when witnesses to digital abuse.

Conducted interviews with 41 tweens, asking participants to react as witnesses to two hypothetical scenarios of digital abuse. Through thematic analysis of the interviews, I developed and applied a new typology for classifying “upstanders” and “bystanders” to cyberbullying.

Identified three types of upstander and five types of bystander, along with five thinking processes that led participants to react in those different ways. Upstanders were more likely than bystanders to think through a scenario using high-order moral reasoning processes like disinterested perspective-taking. Moral reasoning, emotions, and contextual factors, as well as participant gender and home school district, all appeared to play a role in determining how participants responded to cyberbullying scenarios.

Hypothetical scenarios posed in interviews cannot substitute for case studies of real events, but this qualitative analysis has produced a framework for classifying upstanding and bystanding behavior that can inform future studies and approaches to digital ethics education.

This study contributes to the literature on cyberbullying and moral reasoning through in-depth interviews with tweens that record the complexity and context-dependency of thinking processes like perspective-taking among an understudied but critical age group.

The purpose of this paper is to present a qualitative methodological model applied in the human security research in local communities as a part of a wider community‐based participatory research (CBPR).

This paper synthesizes methodological experience from four empirical researches where a qualitative model of studying the security indicators in the local communities of Serbia has been applied. The paper presents how to apply qualitative approach and indicates its potentials, and suggests how to implement the study, design the sample plan and analyse obtained data.

The research of complex phenomenon of social perception of security demands a complementary approach strategy. At the most general level, it means the application of quantitative and qualitative research methods in order to achieve an integral insight into the self‐reflection of citizens about their individual and collective security.

The methodological experience from four conducted investigations on which this paper is based, gives only an initial foundation for the creation of a successful model of security appraisal. Further elaboration of this model demands inclusion of the findings from other surveys.

The suggested model may be further developed as well as in the sense of methodological subtilization, and as a practical model for the appraisal of security condition in a local community. This would be the starting point for creating strategies and their operationalization into specific action plans, in order to improve those indicators, which are established as expressing some form of security threat in the local communities studied.

By complementary application of qualitative and quantitative research perspective (using CBPR approach), we can get profound insights into the causes and character of security threats inside communities. Through application of this approach we get deeper understanding of comparable and representative (in)security survey findings, as well as significant participant's opinions about a potential model of action for improving their security and safety.

This study explores young people's perceptions of eating disorders, the risks and consequences of developing an eating disorder, and the effectiveness of education and prevention programmes. Eating disorder prevention programmes are predominantly school‐based, target young women, and are delivered in weekly sessions for a six or eight‐week period. There is evidence that programmes can increase short‐term knowledge but less evidence for their impact on attitudes and behaviours. Focus groups were undertaken with 96 male and female participants, aged 13‐18, drawn from schools and informal youth settings in three local authority areas in Scotland. Participants demonstrated good understanding of eating disorders; insight into the complexity of reasons for developing a disorder (with a belief that celebrity culture and associated thin imagery has the largest influence) and strong empathy for those who experience eating disorders (as opposed to people who are obese). Television and magazines were cited as the main sources of information, with parents and friends identified as key sources of support rather than professionals. Participants indicated a desire to discuss eating disorders and for this to be incorporated into school health education programmes. Key features of school‐based programmes indicated by participants include single gender discussion groups and development of critical thinking towards the media. The study supports the need for multi‐agency discussion‐based education programmes, long‐term evaluation of impact, and the enhancement of peer support and parental awareness of issues surrounding eating disorders. It also highlights a number of gaps in research in this field.