Qualitative methods research scenario

Please read the following scenario and then answer the questions associated with it.

The following passage is taken from a 2021 (updated 2022) UK government Department of Health and Social Care paper titled: Policy paper: People at the Heart of Care: adult social care reform. (You do not need to access the full version of the document for the purposes of the assignment.)

Questions 

Imagine you are a researcher who has been asked to explore the topic of unpaid caring for friends and family in the UK, using a phenomenological methodology and a Critical Discursive Psychology methodology.

For the purposes of this assignment, you must address the following questions:

Question 1: Briefly describe the approach a phenomenological researcher might take when researching this topic and state a suitable research question for a phenomenological inquiry into the topic. To answer this, describe some key aspects of the methodology that would be needed to research this topic (for example, the data source, the method of capturing this data and the analysis that would need to be used to address the research question you have stated). 500 words.

Question 2: A discursive psychologist researching this topic would be looking at the interpretative repertoires, subject positions and ideological dilemmas in the data. State and justify a suitable data collection method and research question for this project, and briefly discuss the strengths and limitations of using the discursive approach to research this topic. 500 words.

Word limit: 1000 words in total (500 for each question, excluding the title and any references). Please include the word count at the end of the assignment.

The two questions are equally weighted.

Notes

This assignment involves two questions on qualitative methods: the first one assesses your understanding of the phenomenological approach and method, and the second assesses your understanding of the discursive approach and method.

In Question 1 you are asked to consider the topic of unpaid caring for friends and family in the UK in terms of how a phenomenological researcher might approach it methodologically. To do this, you should review Chapters 7 and 8 and associated VLE material. You have been asked to come up with a suitable research question compatible with the phenomenological approach. This does not mean the actual questions an interviewer might ask but the wider question for which the method is trying to find an answer. So, consider what the aim of a phenomenological research question might be. What do phenomenological psychologists look for when they do research? Chapter 8 will help you to consider this. It might be useful to remember that qualitative research questions (of which this would be one) are not expressed in terms of quantities or direct comparisons of groups (e.g. does one person have/display more of something than another person?).

The question also asks you to describe some of the key aspects of phenomenological methodology which would be relevant to this research. It might be helpful to imagine you are going to conduct a small-scale phenomenological project to answer your research question. Who would your participants be in terms of their age, gender, etc.? How would you collect the data and analyse it? What would you look out for, and why?

You do not need to include a great deal of detail or explanation of your hypothetical study, but make sure you justify your choice (e.g. why you might consider a particular aspect of the lifeworld in your analysis).

Question 2 asks you to come up with a suitable research question (as you did for Question 1) but for a discursive psychological project on the topic of unpaid caring for friends and family in the UK. You should also indicate what data you would collect for this study: interviews, focus groups or media texts. Next, you need to discuss the strengths and limitations of using a discursive approach to research this topic. Again, the research question you create needs to be a broad question appropriate to a discursive project. Remember, you are not asked to come up with individual questions of the type you might ask in a focus group or interview but with the overall guiding research question that guides the data collection. Note that when you consider the various data collection options, there is no right or wrong answer: you just need to make sure that your chosen method aligns with your proposed research question and is properly justified.

The discursive approach is discussed Chapters 7 and 9 and the associated VLE material. Chapter 9 should be particularly useful. It considers identity as the focus of discursive psychological studies and introduces some research on the discursive construction of identities. So, how could this be expressed as a research question on the given topic? You are only required to state the research question; you do not need to explain it. Instead, the majority of this answer should be devoted to providing a brief discussion of the strengths and limitations of using discursive psychology to research this topic.

In addition to Chapters 7 and 9, for the discussion on strengths and limitations, you may find the materials in Chapter 1 useful. When considering strengths or limitations, do make sure that you keep the discussion relevant to the topic at hand. For example, if you chose to make the point that discursive psychology helps us to examine how ideas are negotiated in real-life conversations, make sure you give an example relevant to unpaid caring for friends and family in the UK. Please remember to briefly refer to the limitations as well as the strengths of a discursive approach to this topic.

Write both answers as prose paragraphs (i.e. as full sentences and not lists or bullet points). Include source citations in your text as you would for an essay and provide a reference list at the end of the assignment. You are not expected to source material from outside the module to answer these questions, and you don’t need to access the website from which the information in the scenario was taken. Remember that although Cite Them Right is now the Open University’s preferred referencing style, you can still use OU Harvard if you prefer. The important thing is that you choose a style and use it consistently throughout the assignment.

Pease state the word count at the end of the assignment. You have only 500 words (+ up to 10% more) for each answer, so concise and clear writing will be important.

Marking Criteria 

In the assignment, it should be shown: 

• The ability to communicate knowledge and/or findings in an appropriate way for particular audiences.
• Knowledge and understanding of qualitative research methods used in psychology.
• The ability to design a research project using qualitative methods.
• Demonstration of independent and creative thinking about psychological research design.
• Demonstration of a critical appreciation of the types of research methods used in psychology.
• The ability to apply psychological research methods to understand ‘real-life’ issues and contexts.