atry research (Brown & Lloyd, 2001; Whitley & Crawford,. 2005). The lack of a template for conducting research, the flexibility, and hence uncertainties, inherent ...
GUEST EDITORIAL Time to catch up...Qualitative research in child and adolescent psychiatry As a research tool, qualitative research has been of little interest to researchers in psychiatry. A few recent editorials and articles in Canadian psychiatry journals have attempted to nudge researchers towards qualitative methodologies. Considered anecdotal, abstruse, and failing to meet familiar (i.e. quantitative) criteria of reliability, validity and generalizability, qualitative methodologies have been spurned rather than welcomed in psychiatry research (Brown & Lloyd, 2001; Whitley & Crawford, 2005). The lack of a template for conducting research, the flexibility, and hence uncertainties, inherent in the method and the variety of methodologies from which to choose have quite simply deterred its uptake. Qualitative research is an especially relevant method to the subject matter of the Journal. In the past, research generally has been conducted on children and youth. More recently there has been a move towards research with children, engaging them as active participants, recognizing their rights, respecting their autonomy, and giving them voice (Grover, 2004). This requires recognising and reflecting on the inequalities of power and authority between researchers and child/adolescent participants. Qualitative research, with its focus on shared construction of meaning with participants, and flexibility in design, methods and process can partially disrupt these imbalances and give participants voice. Other challenges, too, remain: in recruitment, consent, access, confidentiality, interview space, and language skills, to name but a few (Bassett et al, 2007). The papers published in this qualitative issue have explicitly sought to address these challenges in often novel ways. Didkowsky, Ungar, & Liebenberg use video and photographs to breach the researcher-participant hierarchy of authority. Boydell, Volpe & Pignatiello’s use of televideo interviews give children and adolescents the freedom to walk away if they so choose. Both Alaggia and Grover explore participants’ subjective worlds, importantly giving voice, in Alaggia’s study, to adult survivor’s experience of child sexual abuse, and in Grover’s research, to the world views used by litigants and interveners, including mental health professionals, to position their arguments in legal cases. As is evident in Mordoch’s and Didkowsky et al’s papers, data beyond that elicited in interviews provides rich, multiple ways of looking, seeing, and understanding participants’ experiences. In the papers published here,
2
videos, photographs, interviews, and/or drawings were analysed with a variety of methods: Didkowsky et al’s reflexive and visual methods, Grover’s analysis of text recorded in a legal case, Mordoch’s conceptually-dense understanding of children’s experiences using grounded theory, and Alaggia’s, Boydell et al’s and Grover’s phenomenological analysis of the subjective experiences of participants. Alaggia’s analysis included a relatively recent addition to the researcher’s toolbox: qualitative software. ATLAS.ti, NVIVO, HyperRESEARCH, and Transana, to name but a few, offer both advantages and disadvantages (Bassett, 2004). With reflexive use of software, thorough, replicable, trustworthy and credible analyses can be produced. Systematic and rigorous qualitative research has much to offer child and adolescent psychiatry. A wide range of methodologies and the availability of new digital technologies open doors not previously explored. Indeed, the insight to be gained from a variety of data sources and importance of context in understanding children’s lives is evident in all the papers here. The Journal welcomes your reaction to this theme issue and looks forward to future submissions of your qualitative research manuscripts. Raewyn Bassett PhD1,2, Guest Editor References Bassett, R. (2004). Qualitative data analysis software: Addressing the debates. Journal of Management Systems, 16(4), 33-39. Bassett, R., Beagan, B. L., Ristovski-Slijepcevic, S., & Chapman, G. E. (2007). Tough teens: The methodological challenges of interviewing teenagers as research participants. Journal of Adolescent Research, 23(2), 119-131. Brown, C., & Lloyd, K. (2001). Qualitative methods in psychiatric research. Advances in psychiatric Treatment, 7, 350-358. Grover, S. (2004). Why won’t they listen to us? On giving power and voice to children participating in social research. Childhood: A Global Journal of Child Research, 11(1), 81-93. Whitley, R., & Crawford, M. (2005). Qualitative Research in Psychiatry. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 50, 108-114.
1Assistant
Professor, Faculty of Health Professions, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia 2Qualitative Methodologist, Capital Health, Halifax, Nova Scotia
J Can Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 19:1 February 2010
