Qualitative Longitudinal Research Articles

‘Doing’ research relationships: reflections on a qualitative longitudinal project with young people leaving secure care

ABSTRACT In this article I reflect on research relationships in a qualitative longitudinal (QL) project from a relational perspective, understanding agency as interdependent and evolving. My reflections are based on a study involving repeated interviews over eight years with young people who have experienced secure care, which is the most intrusive form of intervention for troubled youths in the Swedish child welfare. Research using a QL methodology requires a delicate balance in maintaining professional boundaries in relationships between the researchers and participants and emphasizes how time and place are embedded in relations. I explore the complexities of research relationships over time and the effect of repeated research encounters on understandings of time. My reflections are grouped into three themes: emotional footing, intersections of time and place, and evolving research agencies. While emotions from early encounters became a resource for my reflections as a researcher, return interviews turned me into an embodiment of time, producing linear-time narratives of progress, and the agencies of both me and young people evolved within and beyond the research project. I offer some conclusions for qualitative social work research regarding the effects of emotional, temporal and spatial dimensions on researcher vulnerability and research relationships over time.

Fluid Enquiry, Complex Causality, Policy Processes: Making a Difference with Qualitative Longitudinal Research

In this article, qualitative longitudinal (QL) research is presented as a powerful form of fluid enquiry. The combination of its real-world and real-time features enables this methodology to ‘follow reality in all its windings’, and, thereby, to produce useful knowledge for policy and professional practice. The main focus is on the power of QL methodology to illuminate complex causal processes by teasing out their multiple, fluid and relational elements. The article goes on to consider new ways to broker the interface between research endeavours and policy processes, based on collaborative modes of knowledge co-production that unfold in real-time. QL enquiry emerges here as more than an added option, a ‘niche’ approach. It has potential as a valuable ‘impact’ tool for discerning causality in new ways and reformulating insights into ‘what works?’, with scope to play a pivotal role in shaping and facilitating change in policy and practice settings.

“I Had No Hope, I Had No Help at All”: Insights from a First Study of Fathers and Recurrent Care Proceedings

This article presents data from the first large-scale study of fathers involved in repeat (or recurrent) care proceedings in England. The project complements important research on mothers and recurrence. It consisted of three elements: an analysis of population-level administrative data from the Child and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS), a survey of fathers in pre-proceedings and care proceedings, and a qualitative longitudinal (QL) study of recurrent fathers. Here we report findings from the survey and the QL study, offering an expanded definition and description of fathers and recurrence. Elsewhere, we reported that a significant number of fathers appear in recurrent care proceedings and that the majority return with the same partner. Alongside this, there is also a notable pattern of “missing” fathers demonstrated by the proportion of lone mothers reappearing before the court. Our survey indicates a certain profile of recurrent fathers, but also that recurrent fathers are not straightforwardly a homogenous group. We report on the significance of recurrent fathers’ early lives, on the phenomenon of enduring couple relationships and on the prevalence of issues affecting parenting, such as poor mental health, substance use and domestic abuse. Insights from the QL study in particular reveal legacies of harm, loss, and a lack of emotional and relational resources in childhood, which have debilitating and far-reaching consequences. We argue the importance of understanding the vulnerabilities of recurrent fathers and of challenging certain assumptions in child welfare and family justice practices. There is much to be learnt from existing services for recurrent mothers, but also a need for bespoke or adapted services that may be more responsive to particular circumstances of recurrent fathers and couples.

Getting out of the swamp? Methodological reflections on using qualitative secondary analysis to develop research design

In recent years, the possibilities and pitfalls of qualitative secondary analysis have been the subject of on-going academic debate, contextualised by the growing availability of qualitative data in digital archives and the increasing interest of funding councils in the value of data re-use. This article contributes to, and extends these methodological discussions, through a critical consideration of how the secondary analysis of thematically related qualitative longitudinal (QL) datasets might be utilised productively in qualitative research design. It outlines the re-use of two datasets available in the Timescapes Archive, that were analysed to develop a primary empirical project exploring processes of continuity and change in the context of men’s care responsibilities in low-income families. As well as outlining the process as an exemplar, key affordances and challenges of the approach are considered. Particular emphasis is placed on how a structured exploration of existing QL datasets can enhance research design in studies where there is limited published evidence.

Asking about the future: methodological insights from energy biographies

Temporality is fundamental to qualitative longitudinal (QLL) research, inherent in the design of returning to participants over time, often to explore moments of change. Previous research has indicated that talking about the future can be difficult, yet there has been insufficient discussion of methodological developments to address these challenges. This paper presents insights from the Energy Biographies project, which has taken a QLL and multimodal approach to investigating how everyday energy use can be understood in relation to biographical pasts and imagined futures. In particular, we detail innovative techniques developed within the project (e.g. SMS photograph activities) to elicit data on anticipated futures, in ways that engender thinking about participants’ own biographical futures and wider societal changes. We conclude by considering some of the significant benefits and challenges such techniques present. These methodological insights have a wider relevance beyond the substantive topic for those interested in eliciting data about futures in qualitative research.

Beyond anonymity: temporality and the production of knowledge in a qualitative longitudinal study

Anonymisation processes are an embedded, if contested, element of ethical research practice. Current debates, highlighting various challenges to anonymity, suggest the importance of situated ethics and negotiated solutions. However, the strategies adopted are necessarily mediated by the researcher’s epistemological positions. Longitudinal studies with their extended timeframes and intensive research relationships tend to amplify ethical dilemmas and highlight the contingency and fluidity of ethical processes. Here we explore how temporality intersects with epistemology in a qualitative longitudinal (QL) study of organisations located in a contemporary policy context. We reflect on the confidentiality and anonymity dilemmas that develop and change over time, the strategies adopted and the implications of these for the type of knowledge produced. We suggest that QL studies entail flexibility within epistemological frameworks. These issues have particular resonance and consequences for researchers in light of contemporary pressures around public scrutiny of academic performance and wider debates around public sociology.

Mediamorphosis and Beyond: Mass Media on Social Networks between Use and Abuse: A SWOT Analysis

Changes in contemporary media landscape are going rapidly more than the ability of scholars to study and theorise. The growth of media presence on web generates many questions. These dramatic changes raise fundamental questions about where new media come from and what their impact will be on existing media. Mediamorphosis is a theory that tries to understand these kinds of changes in media. The core idea of this theory is that media are ‘complex, adaptive systems’ which respond to the changes in media landscape. But after years of this theory, it should be reevaluated and searched to discover what are implications beyond this theory. Depending on mass media practices especially on the sphere of social networks, this study will try to evaluate these practices and clarify the most prominent issues which are brought to the scene. The study depends on qualitative longitudinal (QLL) observation as a research tool; 36 mass media Facebook pages were tracked and observed for 24 months starting at 1st October 2011 till 30th September 2013. The sample was selected according to the most ranked Facebook pages in Egypt; some of them were included after the start of study according to their rapid popularity. The results show there is a good chance for mass media to build and develop Facebook pages on their brand names and gain popularity for their traditional media format. But on the other hand, these practices represent a great threat to the essence of SNS itself and always lead them to lose its role as collaborative knowledge building tool and as social place. Some theoretical models were highlighted and discussed; some other models were developed; cultural contexts were considered.

Adding Time into the Mix: Stakeholder Ethics in Qualitative Longitudinal Research

This paper explores the ethical considerations that arise in the conduct of Qualitative Longitudinal (QL) research, drawing on work undertaken as part of the ESRC Timescapes initiative. Adding time...

Storying qualitative longitudinal research: sequence, voice and motif

We suggest here that the analysis, interpretation and representation of qualitative longitudinal (QL) data requires methodological innovation leading to new forms of representation that elude the usual temporality of writing research. To illustrate this argument, we outline a case history method-in-process developed to condense intensive volumes of biographical data generated over 12 years, and deal with the intersection of different timescapes through which individuals move (biographical, generational, historical). We describe changing strategies for managing, analysing and representing data employed by the Inventing Adulthoods team, examining our practice in the light of key methodological issues raised by qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) and making that reflexive and collective research practice explicit.

The Timescapes Archive: a stakeholder approach to archiving qualitative longitudinal data

ESRC funding for the Timescapes initiative included provision for the creation of a specialist resource of Qualitative Longitudinal (QL) data for sharing and re-use. In this article we document the development of this resource, focusing on the strategic and practical dimensions of its growth. In the process we explore the importance of effective communication and negotiation in the development of stakeholder collaborations between researchers and archivists. We reveal the potential of the archive to operate at the intersection of primary and secondary research, acting as a useful repository for the data of primary researchers to aid temporal QL analysis, and bringing related datasets together for enhanced analysis by both primary and secondary users.

On paternal subjectivity: a qualitative longitudinal and psychosocial case analysis of men’s classed positions and transitions to first-time fatherhood

Using Timescapes ‘Men as Fathers’ (MAF) project data, qualitative longitudinal (QL) and psychosocial case study approaches are showcased for studying the making of paternal subjectivity in and through time. The accounts of two men from self-defined ‘working’ and ‘middle-class’ backgrounds are explored, focusing on how their lines of flight as paternal subjects are shaped by tensions between a push towards new subjectivities and the pull of old discourses. The men’s vexed intergenerational inheritance of classed versions of masculinity is shown to be an energizing force which, in dynamic relationship to other social and discursive forces, produces shifting investments in motherly and affectionate models of fathering. Adopting QL and psychosocial lenses, and foregrounding the importance of men’s intergenerational experiences, positions and transitions as paternal subjects, provides insights into the broad sociocultural transformations in masculinity and fatherhood threading through the dynamics of individual lives.

Fathers and financial risk-taking during the economic downturn: insights from a QLL study of men's identities-in-the-making

Coverage of the economic downturn has focused on its immediate impact, yet change often takes time to emerge. Based on a qualitative longitudinal (QLL) study, this paper explores the ways in which people experience, understand, make adaptations to, and live out their daily lives. It presents three men's accounts of how they have been affected by the economic downturn over the first year of fatherhood; a time when the demands of economic provision are often amplified. The case studies illustrate how changing economic circumstances have made previously routine expectations increasingly risky. These men aimed to provide the ‘best start’ for their children as a non-negotiable aspect of good fatherhood. However, the recession meant that providing this involved financial risk-taking. Presenting the data in a case study format enables us to illustrate the subjective experience of change over time, and consider how larger processes of social change are played out through individual trajectories. The benefits of longitudinal data collection in a period of social and economic change are highlighted.

Making the Long View: Perspectives on Context from a Qualitative Longitudinal (QL) Study

Questions of context and reflexivity have been central to recent debates about the archiving and re-use of qualitative data but these questions have been understood in different ways. In this paper, we suggest that our experiences of attempting to analyse, interpret, write-up and, more recently, archive the (prospective and retrospective) biographical data we have collected over the decade 1996–2006, can shed useful light on these questions. First, we consider the lack of analytical closure involved in QL research, the habit of constant re-contextualisation and the complex understandings of time we formed as a consequence, arguing that, whilst qualitative data may be historically embedded and subjective, it can never be understood as being ‘out of time’ or ‘beyond the reach’ of the same or other researchers. In the QL context, the researcher becomes a subject of the research and, as such, a form of researcher's reflexivity is required that recognises movement and contingency in all aspects of analysis, interpretation and representation. Then we outline how the understanding of time that emerged over the period of our research: - biographical, historical and research time – provided us with a useful conceptual framework for re-contextualising our study in the form of an archive.