Dear Marianne,

Have you considered merely using a narrative approach? Stories can be seen as one medium though which actors construct their realities (or re-tell their experiences), and some scholars would claim that these stories are mutually constitutive in regards to the reality they describe. You could check out my article (attached) if you want to orient yourself in some theory and methodology of a narrative approach.

Article 'Playing back-spin balls': Narrating organizational change i...

An interesting approach is ethnomethodology, although it has a certain relation to the phenomenology, it is a different approach.

Also the systems approach and network analysis provide conceptual references, and useful operational references in qualitative research.

Finally, narrative approaches (discourse analysis, semiotic analysis and others) offer interesting references.

Braun and Clarke's (2006) thematic analysis may suit your needs. See:

http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/11735/2/thematic_analysis_revised_-_final.pdf

Ultimately, a great way to think about what approach you want to use is to go back to your research question(s). Are you looking to understand what the overall phenomenon of the participants are, a general concept of the total experience (i.e., phenomenology)? or are you looking to understand and learn more in-depth about the individual experiences?

It all depends on how you formulate your research problems. Methods should be selected according to that. You may have a look at IPA (see attachment) and see how that relates to your problem.

I agree with the suggestions our colleagues made already. Another important point is that after having formulated your RQs and developped your theoretical frame work, you could procede as follows:

1. Note the topics for your interviews

2. Conduct the interviews, tape them and make transcriptions

3. Use these transcriptions for open ccding, axial coding and selective coding to make sense of your data.

Thank you all very much. This is a small masters project looking into informal caregiver experiences while caring for adults living with dementia. As it is exploratory I suppose the key research problem is that being a caregiver is stressful, and so I wish to explore experiences that have been un/helpful to that situation. I only have resources for a small scale study most likely using interview as the only data collection method. Perhaps I am overcomplicating things and phenomenology is the right way to go - IPA in particular does seem a good fit.

On a slight side note - I very much like the idea of narrative approach for future studies, how does this differ from case study?

When looking up 'systems approach' I came across interactive qualitative analysis. There isn't much information on this, is it widely recognised?

For the narrative approach in an porganisational context, see the work of

David Boje

Barbara Czarniawska

and Narrative Analysis by Catherine Kohler Riessman (Qualitative Research Methods series, Sage).

Unfortunately the current methodological orthodoxy lays much more emphasis than is practical on, often, minor difference. I would say, as in Igor's paper, find a way for your caregivers to tell you an authentic tale of their experience.

There is history in ethnography of researchers ‘walking alongside’ participants in order to observe, experience, and make sense of everyday practices. More recently there has been an increasing interest in the use of ‘walking and talking’ methods. Walking interviews are interviews conducted on the move. This method was developed as a way of understanding senses of place and neighbourhood attachment, and the extent to which social networks are contextualised and reproduced spatially.

Dear Marianne,

I realise I'm entering my contribution a tad late, but I suggest looking at Max van Manen's phenomenological approach, it stays close to the experience, and, in contrast to other approaches, is really drawing on the expressive power of anecdote, example, image, and phenomenological description. I think the difficulty has been in capturing what phenomenology is (for example, Amedeo Giorgi is a strict Husserlian, and therefore wants a rigorous procedure upon which to build a science, whilst van Manen draws on a wealth of phenomenological writers to inform what research is up to).

Mo 

Dear Marianne,

I agree with the previous scholars who have identified that your method depends on your research question and theoretical framework... For instance, as you approach the experience of caregivers who have encountered potentially unhelpful interactions with support systems while attending to the need of relatives living with dementia, are you looking for the 1) essence of the experience (phenomology), 2) the process of seeking support and receiving unhelpful support(grounded theory),  3) looking for paradigmatic cases (Patricia Benner's approach to phenomenology is based on paradigmatic cases), or 4) stories of helpful and unhelpful experiences as a caregiver  to a person living with dementia... to identify the multiple internal and external forces that may influence what is told in the story and/or how the story is told... There are many many ways to approach narrative analysis and you would have to do a lot of background work to determine which narrative approach would best suit your ontology, epistemology and research question. 

I just did a quick search of Patricia Benner's latest work in our library and I believe that you will find her work very useful to guide you... here is the title of her approach to phenomenology Interpretive phenomenology : embodiment, caring, and ethics in health and illness / Patricia Benner, editor (1994). She even has very recently published some phenomenological work about the experience of spousal caregiving to a partner affected with frontotemporal degeneration.  

Another method used by many of our Masters' students is Interpretative Description... a method developed by Sally Thorne.. Here is the citation: Thorne, Sally E. (2008), Interpretive Description.  Walnut Creek, CA : Left Coast Press. Her book provides step-by-step information about the research process and many of our students find this very helpful for a first research project undertaken independently.

In the end... whichever method you choose based on your question... you want to remain congruent all the way through the research process (from the question, epistemology/ontology, data generation, analysis, interpretation and reporting of findings). For a Masters degree, you also want to keep your research project manageable and you are wise to identify this as one of your priority. 

I hope this helps. 

Thank you all very much, the answers and links/references provided here have been immensely helpful, not only in answering my question but actually helping me to develop more, better informed ones!

Another approach you might want to consider is a data analytic approach. Using tools such as Leximancer or SAS Text analytics, you can analyze the interview transcripts for common themes or concepts. Then you can develop a theoretical explanation for these concepts.

Marianne,

My opinion is that you can use a qualitative content analysis with focus on the participants experience. The analysis in itself is not phenomenological but can be placed within phenomenology as the theoretical framework for your study. 

One example of qualitative content analysis could be Elo & Kyngäs, see attached file.

Good luck!

Hello Marianne,

A number of interesting qualitative methodologies can be recommended but your choice will depend on how you formulate your research question. Actually, the approach you utilize will also affect the way you gather data - what you will concentrate on during interviews (if this is your primary source), how you will formulate questions and explore the material. For example, in narrative psychology you would give more "space" to your participants and less intervene in their story telling but if you explored lived experiences with IPA, you might ask additional question to clarify what participants meant by using certain words (you would try to discover how people make meaning of phenomena, how they feel, think, interpret things). On the other hand, if you used the grounded theory approach, you might concentrate on discussing exceptions to the rule, odd cases, anything that helped you identify factors affecting behaviors, choices, etc. 

What are your research questions? How did you recruit your participants?

Please, find enclosed a text on IPA.

All the best,

Igor

Article A practical guide to using Interpretative Phenomenological A...

Your research design is determined by your research question(s) and research objective(s). I feel that we do not have a choice of research design once we have decided our RQs and ROs.