Constructing qualitative knowledge in psychology: Students and faculty negotiate the social context of inquiry.

Abstract

Abstract Based on interviews with 13 graduate students and 21 faculty from diverse areas of Canadian departments of psychology, I report researchers' views on qualitative methods in terms of social historical, systemic influences on constructing psychological knowledge. These ideological and structural systems include the historical place of qualitative research in scientific psychology,, education in alternative research methods, the socioeconomic reward system for faculty, and potential for changes in the discipline that could facilitate the legitimation of qualitative methods. The major finding was the desire for methodological pluralism, even among mainstream faculty. In light of the researchers' textured commentaries, I discuss the fate of attempts by some psychologists to expand traditional investigative boundaries, the potential for a shift in the discipline to methodological pluralism, and the implications for the education of undergradute and graduate students in psychological research. Transformations in conducting and writing about research, including the use of qualitative methods, have gained momentum in recent decades within such circles as the history and philosophy of psychology, feminist psychology, community psychology, and the study of social issues ( Kidder & Fine, 1997; Kvale, 1992.) As Kidder and Fine (1997) noted, qualitative methods actually have a long historical tradition. Their present revival is exemplified by the 1999 special double-issue of the Psychology of Women Quarterly on innovative methods in feminist research, which is available as a book (Crawford & Kimmel, 1999). A few articles reporting qualitative research even are seeping into some mainstream journals. These developments prompt several questions about psychologists' receptivity to alternative research practices, given the discipline's century-old primary commitment to quantitative research. For instance, how do qualitative researchers negotiate pathways within the discipline to create discursive space for qualitative research in psychology? On the other hand, how do faculty and students who do not identify with the turn to qualitative methods construe them? One useful source of evidence on the present and future status of qualitative methods in psychology is investigators' accounts of their own experience as researchers, authors, teachers, supervisors, and students. Researchers' accounts can illuminate the psychosocial link between the immediate investigative situation of researchers and participants and the complex, layered dimensions of institutionalized structures, norms, and ideologies of scientific psychology that envelop any form of psychological knowledge-- making. As the literature on the social origins of psychological investigations has shown, the investigative situation is fundamentally a relationship between researchers and participants that is laden with social historical influences and subjective meaning (Danziger, 1990; Morawski, 1988). Once methodological, ethical, and report-writing norms for the research relationship were established in the discipline, they were - and are - difficult to modify because scientific psychologists and their students tend to take these deeply embedded investigative standards for granted (Danziger, 1990). Psychologists' scientific traditions not only have shaped their research methods but also the roles that investigators, research assistants, and participants play in the immediate research situation, as well as the ethical standards for investigative conduct and the compositional and stylistic guidelines for writing an empirical journal paper (Walsh-Bowers, 1995, 1999). In addition to methodological, ethical, and reporting norms, the structures, mores, and ideologies of scientific psychology as a social institution also mould workaday investigative practice (Danziger, 1990). These more systemic but typically covert features of the research landscape include epistemological assumptions about making scientific knowledge; the enculturation of students in investigative customs, mediated by course instructors and research supervisors; the function of research productivity within the academic reward system; methodological criteria promoted by funding sources, journal editors, and grant and journal reviewers; and psychologists' beliefs, feelings, and wishes about what constitutes rigorous methodology. …