Jane F. Gilgun

Qualitative methods in family research

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION The Fit Between Qualitative Research and Characteristics of Families - Kerry Daly The Qualitative Tradition in Family Research - Gerald Handel Definitions, Methodologies, and Methods in Qualitative Family Research - Jane F Gilgun PART TWO: INTERVIEWS Interviews with Individuals Interviewing College Students About Their Constructions of Love - Susan U Snyder Case Study Interviews - Linda K Matocha Caring for Persons with AIDS Life Histories - Daniel F Detzner Conflict in Southeast Asian Refugee Families Conjoint Interviews Parenthood as Problematic - Kerry Daly Insider Interviews with Couples Seeking to Adopt An In-Depth Interview with the Parents of Missing Children - Deborah Lewis Fravel and Pauline G Boss Interviews with Multiple Family Members Using Multiple Forms of Family Data - Susan O Murphy Identifying Pattern and Meaning in Sibling-Infant Relationships A Family Case Study - Robin L Jarrett An Examination of the Underclass Debate A Feminist Analysis of Interviews with Elderly Mothers and Their Daughters - Katherine R Allen and Alexis J Walker PART THREE: OBSERVATION Participant Observation in Special Needs Adoptive Families - Anita Lightburn The Mediation of Chronic Illness and Handicap Observations in a Clinical Setting - Jane F Gilgun Team Decision-Making in Family Incest Treatment PART FOUR: DOCUMENT ANALYSIS Analyzing Popular Literature - Ellen M Harbert, Barbara H Vinick and David J Ekerdt Emergent Themes on Marriage and Retirement PART FIVE: COMBINED QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE APPROACHES The Blending of Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Understanding Childbearing Among Welfare Recipients - Mark R Rank Using Qualitative and Quantitative Methods - Margarete Sandelowski, Diane Holditch-Davis and Betty Glenn Harris The Transition to Parenthood of Infertile Couples

The Four Cornerstones of Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work

The purpose of this article is to place evidence-based practice within its wider scholarly contexts and draw lessons from the experiences of other professions that are engaged in implementing it. The analysis is based primarily on evidence-based medicine, the parent discipline of evidence-based practice, but the author also draws on evidence-based nursing and evidence-based social work in the United Kingdom. It was found that the experiences of other practice professions have a great deal to offer social work practice. Similar to medicine, nursing, and our British colleagues, U.S. social work practice will benefit from increased research activity, more widespread availability of reviews of research, on-line resources, and many more training opportunities. Similar to nursing administrators, social work administrators have the responsibility to allow social work practitioners the time and training to become familiar with research relevant to their practice.

Qualitative research and family psychology.

Qualitative approaches have much to offer family psychology. Among the uses for qualitative methods are theory building, model and hypothesis testing, descriptions of lived experiences, typologies, items for surveys and measurement tools, and case examples that answer questions that surveys cannot. Despite the usefulness of these products, issues related to generalizability, subjectivity, and language, among others, block some researchers from appreciating the contributions that qualitative methods can make. This article provides descriptions of procedures that lead to these useful products and discusses alternative ways of understanding aspects of qualitative approaches that some researchers view as problematic.

Human Development and Adversity In Ecological Perspective, Part 1: A Conceptual Framework

This article is part one of a two-part series on human development and adversity. The author presents a conceptual framework combining developmental psychopathology and its associated concepts of resilience, protective factors, and risk factors with social works ecological, phenomenological, and strengths-based approach. Separately, each framework has its strengths and weaknesses. Together, these frameworks provide a comprehensive and detailed view of human development that has major implications for practice, programs, and policy. Part two presents the results of research demonstrating how the integrated framework elucidates developmental processes under adverse conditions. This research identified three models of human development under adverse conditions: the model of the wounded well, the social-deficits model, and the social-assets model.

The Nature and Usefulness of Qualitative Social Work Research Some Thoughts and an Invitation to Dialogue

In this commentary, the authors respond to challenges that Denzin’s article poses. (See Denzin, this issue.) We draw upon our own experiences as qualitative social work researchers to reflect upon several issues, such as personal connections with research participants; the match between qualitative approaches and the complexities of practice; the roles of values such as social justice and empowerment; the centrality of theories; and the benefits of methodological pluralism. We agree with Denzin that social work has applied feminist, emancipatory, and culturally-based pluralistic values and frames of reference and that qualitative research can implement these values. To fully realize what qualitative approaches offer, however, members of the discipline must contend with obstacles related to opportunities for graduate training and for funding of qualitative research. We invite social workers and friends of social work to engage in dialogue about the nature and usefulness of qualitative research to social work.

“Grab” and Good Science: Writing Up the Results of Qualitative Research

Qualitative researchers have an array of choices in how to write up their research. Yet many write in distanced, third-person voices and give short shrift to the voices of informants, as if neither they nor their informants were part of the research. In doing so, they might believe that their writing style is scientific. Unfortunately, such styles of writing not only silence their informants and themselves, but many times they also contradict the philosophies of science on which many forms of qualitative research are based. If our philosophies of science are science, then how we write up our research, when it is consistent with our science, must logically be scientific. “Grab,” or writing that is both interesting and memorable, goes hand in hand with good science.

Completing the circle: American Indian medicine wheels and the promotion of resilience of children and youth in care

Abstract The four themes of the Circle of Courage, a Native American medicine wheel that focuses on child socialization, connect with and add to key ideas from Western theories of human development. These themes are belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity. The purpose of this paper is to present a framework developed from the integration of the Circle of Courage with theories of human development. A key feature of the framework is the role of adults in providing guidance, modeling, and affirmation. Assessment guidelines to promote the resilience of children and youth in out-of-home care are developed from the framework. The long term goal of the framework is to “complete the circle”; that is to foster the resilience of young people in care so that they can in turn provide to guidance, modeling, and affirmation.

Methodological Pluralism and Qualitative Family Research

Methodological pluralism is the hallmark of contemporary research on families Such pluralism is not likely to go away because it is firmly embedded in tradition and in the methodological transformations current in the social and human sciences. Practicing in a wide array of disciplines, family scholars are being swept up in—and helping to create—the exciting possibilities these transformations present. Such possibilities are so recent that the words of LaRossa and Reitzes (1993), written not long ago, although compelling, soon will be outdated. They wrote, “family research is for the most part dominated by relatively static models and methodologies” (p. 158), an observation other family scholars have articulated (e.g., Osmond, 1987; Thomas & Wilcox, 1987). The exploration of methodological stasis in family research will provide a context in which to interpret the state of contemporary qualitative family research methods. As I will show, methodological stasis is a relatively recent phenomenon. Research on families stands on a tradition of methodological pluralism.

The Four Cornerstones of Qualitative Research

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is more than the application of best research evidence to practice. Advocates for evidence-based medicine (EBM), the parent discipline of EBP, state that EBP has three, and possibly four, components: best research evidence, clinical expertise, and patient preferences and wants. Person-centered physicians also advocate for the person of the practitioner as a fourth component. In this article, the author shows the centrality of qualitative research to this fuller version of EBP. She also shows how qualitative research has four cornerstones that parallel the four components of EBP.

The Development of Sexual Identity among Men Sexually Abused as Children

Men who were sexually abused in childhood often struggle with their sexual identity. Through in-depth life-history interviews, the authors present the thoughts, feelings, and misgivings of three men who were sexually abused as children and who tried to come to terms with their sexual identity. The abuse probably did not affect the sexual orientation of two of the subjects, but a third has been unsure of his sexual identity since his abuse experience.