Methodological Innovations in Qualitative Longitudinal Research

Liam Berriman, Claude Jousselin, Ester McGeeney, Rachel Thomson, Susie Weller.

Session overview

1) New frontiers in QLR: Cultivating a QLR sensibility

2) Face 2 face: tracing the real and mediated in children's cultural worlds

3) The potential of video telephony in qualitative longitudinal research: a participatory and interactionist approach to assessing remoteness and rapport

New Frontiers in Qualitative Longitudinal Research: cultivating a QLR sensibility

Rachel Thomson, Ester McGeeney, Claude Jousselin

University of Sussex and Goldsmith College, University of London

QLR 2000 – 2015: A generation of methodological development

• 2000 - emergence of a new methodological paradigm bringing together distinct disciplinary traditions

• A new turn to time? Renewed interest in theory and methods of processes, intergenerationality, change and continuity.

• QLR as focus for interdisciplinary collaborations: Timescapes; Real Times; Step Change; Young Lives; Social Life of Methods; Oliver Schreiner; Temporal Belonging

• QLR as barometer of the new: digital time; the value of data; co-production; anonymity; ownership; performativity of methods ‘impact’ and ‘practice’.

• 2015 - New Frontiers in QLR

The New Frontiers in QLR seminar series

Event 1: Interdisciplinary perspectives on continuity and change: what counts as QLR?

Event 2: Research relationships in time

Event 3: (Re)conceptualising the object of QLR: duration and seriality

Event 4: QLR and practice traditions

Event 5: The child in time: animating ideas of development and transition

www.sussex.ac.uk/esw/circy/research/completedresearch/newfrontiers

Future directions:

• Big data/ deep data

• The particular and the general

• Beyond annonymity

• Privileging here and now

• A QLR sensibility

Cultivating a QLR sensibility

‘[We came to understand QLR] as a sensibility, a mindset, an orientation, a foregrounding of

temporality, an inspiration to remain alert to time and temporality in our research.’ (Walker 2013).

A QLR detour during fieldwork• PhD research aimed at following the diagnostic process of adult

ADHD in the UK

• 12 months fieldwork – Specialist clinic– 4 support groups in 4 cities

• Temporality and ADHD– Retrospective diagnosis– Lived experience of time

• New Frontiers in QLR – Time as dynamic and process of change

QLR detour

• Seminar inspirations– Unit of analysis: from individual to group– Extend data: broadening temporal scope

• New questions– How do participants’ concerns change over time? – When did change occur? Are there any turning points?– What would the concept of duration highlight in the social life

of support group? – How different have the support groups become in this last five

years, and what would that say about the place of ADHD in the UK?

QLR detour

• Unexpected outcome– Report for patient organisation http

://aadduk.org/library/articles/

• QLR in the PhD research context– Adaptability– Temporal Orientation

Cultivating a QLR sensibility

How do the following three concepts relate to your current (or most recent) research project?

Research time Analytic time Biographical time

Resources

The New Frontiers in QLR website

www.sussex.ac.uk/esw/circy/research/completedresearch/newfrontiers

Final report: New Frontiers in QLR: definition, design and display

http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/3297/

Working Paper Series: New Frontiers in Qualitative Longitudinal Research: Perspectives of Doctoral and Early Career

Researchers.

http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/3353/.

Thank you!

r.thomson@sussex.ac.uke.mcgeeney@sussex.ac.uk

an802cj@gold.ac.uk

@SussexCIRCY