Individual discourses in health psychology

Women with Breast Cancer Talking Causes: Comparing Content, Biographical and Discursive Analyses

This article explores three different approaches - content analytic, biographical and discursive - to analysing the same data set (women with breast cancer talking about causes, and Blaxter’s classic work on ‘lay aetiology’). It compares these three approaches in relation to the key epistemological problems of ‘context’, ‘footing’ and ‘multiple versions’ - and concludes that a discursive approach offers better solutions to these problems than do the other two approaches. Finally, it suggests that both feminist psychology and health psychology would benefit from increased use of discursive approaches, particularly in relation to theorizing ‘experience’.

Methodolatry and Qualitative Health Research

The increasing turn to qualitative research in health psychology raises a number of issues about the appropriate use and relevance of qualitative methods in this field. In this article I raise concerns about methodolatry: the privileging of methodological concerns over other considerations in qualitative health research. I argue that qualitative researchers are in danger of reifying methods in the same way as their colleagues in quantitative research have done for some time. Reasons for the pre-eminence of methods are discussed briefly and their consequences considered. The latter include: a concern with ‘proper’ or ‘correct’ methods; a focus on description at the expense of interpretation; a concern with issues of validity and generalizability; an avoidance of theory; an avoidance of the critical; and the stance of the researcher. I offer some suggestions for avoiding methodolatry and some opinions on how we might develop and use qualitative research more effectively in health psychology.