Qualitative Vignettes Research Articles

The Presentation of Possible Selves in Everyday Life: The Management of Identity Among Transitioning Professional Athletes

In contrast to research, which privileges the notion of an exclusive athletic identity, we argue that the identity management of professional athletes is influenced by the expectations of audiences and the motivational weight of ‘possible selves’ in explaining career transitions from ‘sports work’. Qualitative vignette interviews were conducted with 10 male participants (ages 18–26 years) on three separate occasions (30 interviews). All interviewees had experienced a career transition from Premier League football in the UK. By integrating Goffman’s (1971) dramaturgical analogy and Markus and Nurius’s (1986) concept of possible selves we illustrate the way athletes manage their identities to explain how understandings of career transitions are linked to social audiences and whether they dramatically realize and legitimize future possible selves.

Deliberate Individual Change Framework for Understanding Programming Practices in four Oceanography Groups

Computing affects how scientific knowledge is constructed, verified, and validated. Rapid changes in hardware capability, and software flexibility, are coupled with a volatile tool and skill set, particularly in the interdisciplinary scientific contexts of oceanography. Existing research considers the role of scientists as both users and producers of code. We focus on how an intentional, individually-initiated but socially-situated, process of uptake influences code written by scientists. We present an 18-month interview and observation study of four oceanography teams, with a focus on ethnographic shadowing of individuals undertaking code work. Through qualitative analysis, we developed a framework of deliberate individual change, which builds upon prior work on programming practices in science through the lens of sociotechnical infrastructures. We use qualitative vignettes to illustrate how our theoretical framework helps to understand changing programming practices. Our findings suggest that scientists use and produce software in a way that deliberately mitigates the potential pitfalls of their programming practice. In particular, the object and method of visualization is subject to restraint intended to prevent accidental misuse.

Italian and Nordic social workers’ assessments of families with children at risk

The question of how social workers view child welfare problems and what are seen as appropriate interventions has been subject of debate and research the last decades. The aim of the study is to investigate how different child welfare models influence social workers’ assessment of cases involving children at risk. This is done by identifying differences and similarities between Nordic and Italian social workers’ assessments regarding the levels of intervention, their line of reasoning and the types of intervention proposed. A recent comparative study of social workers’ assessment in four Nordic countries reveals a tendency to apply a common model in social work with children and families. The data for this study, collected through a qualitative vignette study involving 18 Italian social workers, are compared with the results of the Nordic study. The analysis displays certain differences between Italian and Nordic social workers’ assessments, in particular with adolescents, but also indicates similar approaches with babies and children. The similarities in the assessment of Nordic and Italian social workers, especially in the line of reasoning, indicate a common professional base of values and knowledge among social workers working with families. The study also shows that child welfare models, as institutional factors, actually influence social workers’ assessment of cases involving children at risk, when it comes to level of intervention and intervention proposed. Such influence seems to be mediated by meso-level organisational factors related to how social work with children at risk is organised.

Management of care among primary health care patients: Results from a qualitative vignette study

Management of care among primary health care patients: Results from a qualitative vignette study

Using a Qualitative Vignette to Explore a Complex Public Health Issue

This article discusses how qualitative vignettes were combined with interviews to explore a complex public health issue; that is, promoting unhealthy foods and beverages to children and adolescents. It outlines how the technique was applied in practice and the combination of vignette-based interviews with a broader approach involving Gadamerian hermeneutics. Twenty-one participants from the public health community and the marketing and food and beverage industries took part in vignette-based interviews between March and September 2012. Overall, the qualitative vignette method afforded an efficient, generally well-received technique that effectively explored the issue of promoting unhealthy foods and beverages to children and adolescents. The vignette provided structure to interviews but allowed certain responses to be investigated in greater depth. Through this research, we argue that qualitative vignettes allow researchers to explore complex public health issues. This article also provides a valuable resource for researchers seeking to explore this technique.

Intervention vignettes as a qualitative tool to refine complex intervention design

Background In trial design, decisions are made about which intervention components/processes to standardise and which remain flexible to maximise utility and/or effectiveness. The intervention-context-system fit for complex interventions impacts on trial recruitment, delivery and outcomes. Survey vignettes and discrete choice experiments are quantitative researcher led approaches which focus on a few measurable attributes. Our aim was to explore the utility of qualitative vignettes as a methodological tool allowing service users/providers to contribute to intervention design.

II. Genotype‐Environment Interaction in the Schizophrenia Spectrum: Qualitative Observations

Previous reports from the Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia have documented significant interplay between genetics (G) and family rearing (E), leading to adoptee outcomes of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Quantitative evidence for this interplay is significantly enhanced when both high genetic liability and severe environmental dysfunction are present. However, when either genetic liability is low or the rearing environment is healthy, the adoptees appear to be resiliently protected against a pathologic outcome. Nevertheless, exceptions to this pattern do occur. Six qualitative vignettes, together with quantitative measures and categorical diagnoses from the same families, illustrate how multiple methods partially confirm one another and also suggest where further exploration of gene-environment interaction is needed.

“Circumstance and Proper Timing”: Context and the Construction of a Standards Framework for School Principals’ Performance

Professional standards for school principals have been developed in many jurisdictions in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom in recent years. Typically, these standards frameworks describe an ideal performance in a generalized context. This article describes an alternative method of developing a standards framework, combining qualitative vignettes with probabilistic measurement techniques to provide essential or ideal qualities of performance with contextually rich descriptions of variations in performance. The article provides an empirically grounded basis for the (future) development of performance assessments against the framework.