Encompassing experience: Meanings and methods in health psychology

Abstract

Health psychology is limited by its almost exclusive use of a positivist quantitative research paradigm, and the adoption and use of qualitative methods by health psychologists will provide increased understandings of health and illness. Qualitative methods provide a means to incorporate the social world into our research, and furnish ways to investigate the meanings of health and illness experience. We present a brief consideration of the qualitative paradigm and some important underlying issues related to its use. We describe three qualitative approaches - grounded theory, narrative analysis, and discourse analysis - chosen for their relevance and diversity. We provide illustrations of the use of each in health research, and suggest how these approaches could be utilised by health psychologists to enrich understanding in the health field. We conclude that health psychologists have a great deal to gain from joining other social science health researchers in adopting qualitative approaches in their research.     

‘Please don’t put the whole dang thing out there!’: A discursive analysis of internet discussions around infant feeding

The promotion of breastfeeding is an important focus of intervention for professionals working to improve infant health outcomes. Literature in this area focuses largely on ‘choices’ and ‘barriers to breastfeeding’. It is our argument, however, that women's cultural context plays a key role in infant feeding ‘choices’. In this article, we explore contested representations of infant feeding and infant feeding choices in public debates conducted on a large British parenting website. To sample dominant representations of infant feeding circulating in UK culture, two threads were chosen from the debating board of a busy online parenting community (105 and 99 individual posts, respectively). Participants on the threads were largely women. A feminist informed Foucauldian discourse analysis was used to deconstruct the intersecting constructions of gender, childhood and motherhood implicit in public discussions about infant feeding choices. We identify dominant constructions of women who breastfeed or bottle feed, social representations of both forms of infant feeding, and explore the relationship between constructions of infant feeding choices and constructions of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ motherhood. This analysis functions to trouble the individualist assumptions underpinning the notion of infant feeding ‘choices’, considering the cultural context within which British mothers ‘choose’ how to feed their babies.     

‘I Can't Go Back Because If I Go Back I Would Die’: How Asylum Seekers Manage Talk about Returning Home by Highlighting the Importance of Safety

Asylum seekers living in the UK have been shown to have fled danger in their countries of origin, only to face hardship and the threat of deportation once there. This paper draws on the discursive psychological approach to address the way in which asylum seekers in the UK manage questions about returning to their country of origin. Interviews were conducted with nine asylum seekers in a refugee support centre in the Midlands. The interviews were transcribed and analysed using discourse analysis. The analysis showed that participants drew on the notion of safety to counter suggestions that they should return to their country of origin and to manage their identity as legitimate asylum seekers in need of support. The use of this strategy and the use of interviews for discursive analysis are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Power of Invitation: The Moral Discourse of Kairos Palestine

Abstract: In this article I analyze the moral discourse of the Palestinian kairos document A Moment of Truth (2009) using the distinctions between prophetic, ethical, narrative, policy, and participatory discourse offered by James M. Gustafson and Lisa S. Cahill. I conclude that the document articulates a sixth variety: invitational discourse. This is a kind of moral discourse that invites a wide range of groups and individuals into a normative discussion on a given issue.     

‘I'm not a war monger but…’: Discourse Analysis and Social Psychological Peace Research

The present paper argues for a discourse analytic approach to social psychological peace research and demonstrates the potential of such an approach through a re‐specification of the concept of attitudes to war. This is illustrated through an analysis of a series of televised debates broadcast in the UK in February–March 2003 in the build‐up to the formal outbreak of the Iraq War. Analysis draws attention to the importance of rhetorical context and function, the inseparability of attitude object and evaluation and the formulation of evaluations as specific or general. Findings are discussed in the context of recent calls for methodological pluralism in social psychological peace research with a suggestion that matters of epistemology stand prior to methodology. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

心理学中话语分析的立场与方法

研究区分了两种不同的“话语”定义,它们各自引申出一类“话语分析”。最为常见的是话语的描述性定义——“话语是建构某个对象的意义、表征或陈述系统”;另一种是功能性定义——“话语即做事”;“话语即行动”;“话语即实践”。话语分析在心理学中首先是一种研究立场,其次是一类研究方法。作为研究立场,话语分析悬置了心理、人格等传统心理学构念;解构了实证研究的客观性原则;重新调整了心理学的研究目标。作为研究方法,心理学中的话语分析有修辞研究、隐喻研究、叙事研究等多种形式     

EVERYONE AT THE TABLE: Religious Activism and Health Care Reform in Massachusetts

Using interviews with activists and Lisa Sowle Cahill's concept of participatory discourse, this article examines how the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO) built solidarity for the 2006 Massachusetts health care reform law. The analysis explores the morally formative connections between GBIO's activist strategies and its public liturgy for reform. The solidarity generated through this interfaith coalition's activities and religious arguments contrasts with two standard types of policy discourse, economics and liberalism. Arguments for health care reform based on economic efficiency or positive rights are hampered by the lack of solidarity in U.S. political culture. GBIO's congregation‐based organizing offers a performative model of public argumentation for religious groups committed to achieving affordable, quality health care for all Americans.     

Culture,morality, and the effect of prosocial behavior motivation on positive affect

We investigated the effect of culture, moral discourse, and motivation to engage in prosocial behavior on benefactors’ positive affect. Participants from three cultures (Japan, Romania, and the United States) responded to scenarios in which they could perform small acts of kindness for different targets. A stronger relationship between agentic and obligated motivation to perform acts of kindness, as well as between obligated motivation and positive affect, was observed for participants from Japan, and for individuals with higher endorsement of the Community Ethic. Agentic motivation to engage in prosocial behavior was related to benefactors’ positive affect, regardless of relationship type.     

‘Would it not be better to get someone out workin?’: ‘Safe prejudice’ against Polish workers

One recurring criticism of immigrant groups is their alleged failure to be employed and contribute to the host society. Here we examine how speakers mobilise a criticism that has attracted less research attention: that through their economic activity immigrant groups usurp others’ employment entitlements. Discourse analysis of data from seven focus group discussions about pre-Brexit Polish immigration into the UK, involving 31 UK nationals, shows that participants accomplish exclusionary outcomes in two divergent ways. The first attributes qualities to Polish workers but also makes explicit the consequences of these attributions for UK nationals, rendering speakers’ investment in such claims visible. The second relies on the production of category pairs, within which claims can be made for the category that excludes Polish workers. This use of categories comprises ‘safe prejudice’, a form of prejudice not previously identified but which is less open to challenge than other forms of prejudiced talk.     

The Normative Underpinnings of Democracy and the Balance between Morality and Legitimacy

ABSTRACT

Jürgen Habermas’s political philosophy incorporates the view that legitimacy is immanent to law, even though it makes morality a central component of democratic legitimacy. Taking this as a starting point, the article examines one criticism that applies to Habermas’s political theory, insofar as he puts morality at the centre of his reconstruction of the concept of legitimacy. Habermas claims that the moral point of view justifies only those norms that embody universalizable interests and rules out those that embody particular interests. Therefore, the objection is that particular citizens will have no reason to endorse these norms and act according to them because these norms do not incorporate their interests. The article goes on to show that Habermas can successfully answer this objection by means of the principle of discourse. The principle performs this function, inasmuch as it has a post-Kantian nature. On the one hand, it incorporates Kantian autonomy. And on the other, the Hegelian insight that autonomy has to be actualized through modern institutions and practices.