Abstract
Temporality is increasingly being recognised as an important dimension of tourist experience. Qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) is a methodology for investigating temporality and change that is rarely used in tourism studies. The approach moves away from reliance on data collected at one point in time and retrospective narratives. Instead, data are generated at multiple points in time, thus capturing experience in the present moment. I situate QLR alongside lifecourse and biographical research in order to show how it can extend existing qualitative enquiry into tourists’ subjective temporal experiences and biographical narratives. ‘Intensive’ and ‘extensive’ QLR designs are delineated and connected to potential applications in qualitative tourism research. Additionally, conceptual clarification is provided regarding use of the terms ‘longitudinal’ and ‘temporal’, which have frequently been a source of confusion. I conclude that QLR has significant potential to advance our understanding of tourist experience, motivation and transformation.
Highlights
Qualitative research is developing an increasingly nuanced appreciation of how time and subjective temporal experience constitute tourism
The purpose of this paper is to introduce qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) as a complementary methodology, which further elucidates tourists’ subjective temporal experience and provides a powerful mechanism for investigating personal transformation through tourism
Qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) is a term that encapsulates methodologies seeking to comprehend processes and experiences of change that occur through time (Saldaña 2003)
Summary
Qualitative research is developing an increasingly nuanced appreciation of how time and subjective temporal experience constitute tourism. I present some of the most prominent themes in sociological and social psychological theorisations of time, subjective temporal experience and narrative This discussion draws attention to the plurality of time and temporality as social scientific concepts and provides important theoretical grounding for my subsequent discussion of QLR. Neale et al (2012: 5) explain that these are the ‘micro, meso and macro dimensions of enquiry through which it becomes possible to understand the dynamic relationship between individual and collective lives, and broader patterns of social change’ Framed in this way, we can begin to see the potential explanatory power of longitudinal research in relation to a variety of contested theoretical dualities at the heart of social science enquiry, such as individual/society, agency/structure or psychological/sociological. Having surveyed the theoretical landscape of time, temporality and narrative, I turn to QLR as a means of operationalising time as both a vehicle and topic of study, which has great promise for tourism studies
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