Enhancing the Qualitative‐Research Culture in Family Studies

Abstract

Key Words: feminist theory, qualitative research, symbolic interaction.Ralph LaRossa (2012) did a fine job of identifying three issues that authors of qualitative submissions to the Journal of Marriage and Family (JMF) should take into account because reviewers are likely to attend to them. His intention was to assist communication between authors and reviewers in order to increase the representation of qualitative articles in and the visibility of qualitative family research in general. Prospective authors will find the advice useful when deciding whether to submit to and when honing their papers. Reviewers will be assisted by considering three additional dimensions on which to evaluate qualitative submissions.In my response to LaRossa' s article, I begin by examining qualitative articles that have been published in in the past 4 years (2008-2011) to see whether they conform to the qualitative-research LaRossa identified. I then raise additional issues that, in my opinion, contribute to the poor representation of qualitative research articles in and make suggestions for ways to overcome them.QUALITATIVE ARTICLES IN JMFCurious to know how well qualitative research articles are represented in and the degree to which they conform to LaRossa' s criteria, I identified the qualitative articles in the four volumes (20 issues) of published from February 2008 through October 2011, the 4 years in which David H. Demo has been Editor of and Ralph LaRossa has been a Deputy Editor. Although this is a relatively small population, the four volumes constitute the most recent history of the journal. Not including the decade review articles published in 2010, and counting as one article each of the six symposia, 317 articles were published. Of these, 21 (6.6%) were based to varying degrees on qualitative data (see Appendix). Fifteen articles (4.7%) were based solely on qualitative data. Six (1.9%) were mixed-method articles; that is, they based findings in both quantitative and qualitative data, although one focused more on the benefits of combining them than on findings per se (Bernardi, 2011). Among the mixedmethods articles, excerpts from interviews were used to generate hypotheses that were then tested using quantitative data (e.g., Mistry, Lowe, Benner, & Chien, 2008), or qualitative data were used to illustrate the quantitative findings (e.g., Machines, 2008; Mills & That, 2010). Whether these mixed-method articles would have been accepted had they presented findings based only on the qualitative data is open to consideration. I was surprised by the small percentage of qualitative articles.A review of the 21 articles indicates that LaRossa' s description of the qualitativeresearch culture of JMF is accurate. On the whole, their locations with respect to latitude, longitude, and altitude conformed to his criteria. They were scientific, presented detailed data excerpts, and engaged in some level of theorizing. When I assembled the titles of the qualitative articles, however, what intrigued me most were the topics' similarities. With some exceptions (n - 7), the qualitative articles fell into two broad categories: (a) topics related to sexuality/gender (n - 8) and (b) research about third world countries (n -2). Four articles focused on sexuality /gender issues in third world countries. In the Appendix, I list the 21 articles using these headings.Given the wide range of topics represented in JMF, what accounts for the relatively circumscribed number of topics of these qualitative articles, with over half (12 of 21) focused on sexuality/gender issues? I believe that at least part of the explanation is the affinity between feminist theory and qualitative methods (Allen, 2000). Although Walker (2009) may be discouraged about the lack of influence of feminism on family studies, the number of qualitative articles that focus on sexuality/gender topics indicates that inroads have been made. …