Ruthellen Josselson

The Promises of Qualitative Inquiry

We address the significance and implications of the formal entry of qualitative inquiry into the American Psychological Association. In our view, the discipline is enriched in new and important ways. Most prominently, the qualitative movement brings with it a pluralist orientation to knowledge and to practices of inquiry. Adding to the traditional view of knowledge as empirically supported theory are research practices congenial with varying accounts of knowledge, including, for example, knowledge as hermeneutic understanding, social construction, and practice-based experience. Added to the goal of prediction are investments in increasing cultural understanding, challenging cultural conventions, and directly fostering social change. The qualitative movement also enriches the discipline as a whole through the special ways in which it inspires new ranges of theory, fosters minority inclusion, and invites interdisciplinary collaboration. Finally, the movement holds promise in terms of the disciplines contribution to society at large. Here we focus on the advantages of knowing with others in addition to about them, and on ways in which qualitative work enhances communication with the society and the world. Realizing these potentials will depend on developments in responsible research and reporting, academic and journal policies, along with the disciplines capacities for appreciating a more comprehensive orientation to inquiry.

The Present of the Past: Dialogues With Memory Over Time

This study analyzes the self-constructing meanings of an autobiographical episode in the life of one woman told at repeated intervals over 35 years. It demonstrates the ways in which the present constructs the past and shows how autobiographical memory may be used dialogically to create and contrast with current self-constructions, to disavow intolerable aspects of self, and to preserve disused but valued self-representations. Memories, in this sense, operate as texts whose meaning changes as the dialogue within self changes. The meanings of past memories, rather than their contents, are reshaped to hold aspects of a layered, multiple self.

Journal article reporting standards for qualitative primary, qualitative meta-analytic, and mixed methods research in psychology: The APA Publications and Communications Board task force report.

The American Psychological Association Publications and Communications Board Working Group on Journal Article Reporting Standards for Qualitative Research (JARS-Qual Working Group) was charged with examining the state of journal article reporting standards as they applied to qualitative research and with generating recommendations for standards that would be appropriate for a wide range of methods within the discipline of psychology. These standards describe what should be included in a research report to enable and facilitate the review process. This publication marks a historical moment-the first inclusion of qualitative research in APA Style, which is the basis of both the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA, 2010) and APA Style CENTRAL, an online program to support APA Style. In addition to the general JARS-Qual guidelines, the Working Group has developed standards for both qualitative meta-analysis and mixed methods research. The reporting standards were developed for psychological qualitative research but may hold utility for a broad range of social sciences. They honor a range of qualitative traditions, methods, and reporting styles. The Working Group was composed of a group of researchers with backgrounds in varying methods, research topics, and approaches to inquiry. In this article, they present these standards and their rationale, and they detail the ways that the standards differ from the quantitative research reporting standards. They describe how the standards can be used by authors in the process of writing qualitative research for submission as well as by reviewers and editors in the process of reviewing research. (PsycINFO Database Record

The Space Between in Group Psychotherapy: Application of a Multidimensional Model of Relationship

An 8-dimensional model of interpersonal relatedness, derived from existing theories of relationship as well as a phenomenological study, is applied to understanding the “space between” people in group therapy. Relational development is conceptualized as parallel streams of growth along separate dimensions, which may involve stronger relational capacities on some dimensions and weaker and more problematic behavior on others. This model is used to reflect on the group therapy situation in terms of how people are trying to connect with one another. Examples are offered and suggestions made for how the group therapist might be alert to the manifestations of each dimension. The goal is for both patients and therapist to have an enlarged view of what people need from one another and how to go about receiving it.

Carolyn Ellis, The Ethnographic I : A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography Walnut Creek, California: Altamira Press, 2004, 384 pages. ISBN 0759100500.

This unusual novel is in the form of a performance, a performance of a class in autoethnography with both real and imagined students, the purpose of which is to demonstrate both the principles of autoethnography and a means of teaching it. It seemed, then, most fitting and interesting to respond with a ‘performance’ of our own – an edited conversation. R: This being both a novel and a textbook seems to mark the unclear boundaries around autoethnography and narrative research in general.What sort of genre is it – art, science, performance? A: In academics, this is exactly where we have the burden of proof to show that what we do is a serious academic work and I think this is what she’s struggling with. R: And I think by using the format of an unfolding class, where we get to know the students and their various points of view, she’s able to introduce a Socratic style where she has students raise questions that she can then respond to. Although there are many mini-lectures in the text, they are delivered as conversation, as dialogue, so that she anticipates the kind of objections that people will raise, or the kind of confusion people might have, and the answers are in a conversational style. A: I like the conversational style. I think that it shows that there is an interaction here between several people who create something together. It’s not just one expert with authority that brings out all the clever things, but someone who created an interaction, and I think that by doing this she teaches a major lesson about this whole method or this whole approach to research.