A journey of discovering, using and deepening interpretative pluralism in qualitative research of sensitive, controversial and complex experiences

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1 A journey of discovering, using and deepening interpretative pluralism in qualitative research of sensitive, controversial and complex experiences By Edith Steffen, University of Roehampton. Discovering pluralism in qualitative research My doctoral research during my counselling psychology training focused on sense of presence experiences in bereavement, i.e. when bereaved people have sensory or quasi-sensory felt, veridical experiences of their deceased loved one s presence. Although this is a very common phenomenon with over 50% of the bereaved population reporting to have had at least one such experience it is also controversial in Western societies due to it being in contradiction to some dominant beliefs about reality, life and death (Steffen & Coyle, 2012). Many people with that experience are reluctant to talk about it, even with close friends and family, for fear of being ridiculed, dismissed or having their experience explained away (Steffen & Coyle, 2010). I was keen to find out more about how people experience and make sense of this phenomenon. My first empirical project within this research was an interview study with 12 bereaved participants who reported having had such an experience (Steffen & Coyle, 2011). While my initial analytic focus was mostly phenomenological within the framework of Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), my supervisor Adrian Coyle and I started looking at the data from a discursive perspective, looking at the functions performed by participants talk, as we found they were often framing their accounts in ways that suggested they were justifying their experiences something that seemed understandable, given the controversial status of the experiences they described. This observation led to us wondering whether a purely phenomenological perspective was sufficient to capture what was going on in the data that was of relevance to the research aims. A fellow counselling psychology trainee, Joanna Jackson, had a similar experience when she investigated dual relationships in church-based therapy (Jackson & Coyle, 2009). We found that in both studies we had set out with the intention of adopting a primarily phenomenological analysis, with our initial readings of the data focused on participants meaning-making within the terms of their lifeworld and sometimes in terms of what we saw as relevant theories. However, what became apparent to us when we reflected on our emerging analyses was that there were further questions about how people s meaning-making may have been at least partly shaped by the context in which they offered their accounts, which raised the question What is this account doing for this speaker in this interactional context?. When we considered this through a social constructionist lens, we discerned consistent rhetorical business around the establishment of credibility and the deflection of non-desired versions of events in both data sets (Jackson, Steffen 1

2 & Coyle, 2011). While my analysis then led to the identification of separate phenomenological and discursive themes, Joanna found that she was able to integrate the two readings within the in-depth analysis of each of her themes. Interpretative pluralism and counselling psychology These analytic experiences led to a deeper reflection on the potential of a pluralistic approach to data analysis in a counselling psychology context in the light of the pioneering work of Nollaig Frost and colleagues (Frost et al., 2010; Frost et al., 2011), and Joanna and I presented our methodological explorations with pluralism at the Annual Conference of the Division of Counselling Psychology in Bristol in 2011, in a paper entitled Exploring the value of interpretative pluralism in qualitative psychological studies of controversial and/or sensitive issues: Principles and practicalities (Jackson, Steffen & Coyle, 2011). We concluded that a pluralist stance opens up the possibility of drawing upon different methodological and theoretical resources, potentially maximising understanding and resisting reductionism. We felt that if we had stuck to a more phenomenological analytic approach, we would still have discerned the justificatory work going on in participants accounts but we would probably have missed the breadth and depth of it had we not explicitly looked at the data through more than one interpretative lens. What Joanna and I were particularly keen to stress in our conference paper was the relevance of pluralism in qualitative research to the discipline of counselling psychology. Counselling psychology as a discipline is grounded in philosophical pluralism (McAteer, 2010). Searching for understanding rather than demanding universal truths, and appreciating the complexity of difference in individuals subjective experiences are fundamentally part of our attitudes as counselling psychologists. Our concern to respect individual differences means that counselling psychologists often find themselves engaging with conflicting viewpoints and worldviews and that we are drawn to researching issues that invite a multi-perspectival approach, due to their complexity, sensitivity or controversial nature. We thus felt that interpretative or analytic pluralism, as it is sometimes called, is uniquely suited to our core ideals (Rafalin, 2010). Taking pluralism further: A pluralistic family case study When it came to writing up for publication, I decided to focus on the experiential themes in the first journal article coming out of this research (Steffen & Coyle, 2011), as the main research aim had been to better understand sense of presence from the perspective of those who have experienced it. To do full justice to the subjective meanings of perceivers, I felt I needed to give undivided attention and space to the participants voices as a priority, while considering a separate paper with a focus on the discursive themes. This highlights a particular challenge of pluralistic research, namely that of fitting a multi-perspectival analysis into a journal-length article, 2

3 something I aimed to do with my second empirical project in which I tried to take the pluralistic stance a little bit further. My second inquiry concerned family meaning-making around sense of presence experiences, and I conducted my research in a bereaved family in which at least one member had had such an experience (Steffen & Coyle, in press). I spent over six months regularly visiting the family, conducting two family interviews and a number of individual interviews, and I used participant observation as I joined in with family activities that were of significance with regard to the deceased. The interview data constituted the primary data source, and within a broader thematic analysis framework, I used first a phenomenological perspective to analyse the entire data set, followed by a social constructionist reading of the interview data. The two perspectives could complement each other as well as point to different aspects of the phenomenon. For example, one of the family members, who had had sense of presence experiences, said about one such incident: He said clearly my name, and it was, it s his voice. From a phenomenological perspective, the emphasis on the veridicality of the experience can be noted and how perceptually strong and genuine this must have felt, the sense of recognition, indicating the unmistakable voice of the deceased, and the interpersonal import of this experience when the deceased loved one addresses the grieving person by name. Looking at the same sentence discursively, we may note a curious shift from the past tense to the present tense ( it was, it s his voice ), not just suggesting an ongoing reality of the voice but emphasising its facticity, which serves to enhance the credibility of the account. Furthermore, the reality of the voice in the present furnishes evidence for the ongoing existence of the deceased more globally, and considering that this sentence was stated within the context of a family interview, the presence of the deceased is also constructed as potentially available to all members of the family, including those members of the family who are doubtful about this reported experience. Another example of how the two perspectives could be employed in both complementary and conflictual ways is highlighted in two excerpts from another family member, who expressed feeling sceptical about the possibility of sensing the presence of the deceased: It doesn t work in my mind [ ] cause I sort of like to think of things as very clear and it follows some sort of rule. Phenomenologically, we gain some insight into the person s psychological reasons for struggling with sense of presence, suggesting a need for clarity that does not provide room for the in-betweenness or liminality of this phenomenon. Interestingly, this family member consistently drew on scientific discourses in the interviews: 3

4 I don t know if it is possible or isn t possible but I m tending towards thinking it probably isn t. By acknowledging the possibility of sense of presence experience and constructing it as a hypothesis that could be either true or false, the speaker becomes positioned within a scientific discourse, strengthening the position from which the meaning that the experiencing family member had ascribed to the experiences can be dismissed, not on account of personal belief or disposition (such as a need for clarity and rules) but on account of what is rendered as objectively-considered probabilities. This can be seen to give weight to the speaker s position as it aligns the speaker with a societally privileged discourse. Trying to integrate these diverse findings, we could, for example, construct an overarching motivational account, suggesting there is a psychological need for clarity (as in the first quotation) which then gives rise to the dismissing behaviour at a discursive level (in the second quotation). However, we could also arrive at yet another different reading. Reversing the perspectives applied above, we could also view the first quotation from a discursive perspective, employing a hermeneutic of suspicion, and view it in terms of being an utterance made to the interviewer, known to the family as a psychologist, thus possibly constituting an attempt to gain the researcher s sympathies. Similarly, if we look at the second quotation from a hermeneutic of empathy, we can view this as an open-minded consideration of different possibilities and a genuine statement of personal belief. It might be more difficult to construct an overarching account of these interpretations, thus contradictions and tensions remain. Balancing or prioritising interpretative stances Depending on our position, we can see the different interpretative perspectives as complementing each other, as being in conflict with each other or as disconnected and unrelated. It seems that trying to construct an account of complementarity may sometimes require an additional overarching theoretical framework within which both phenomenological and discursive interpretations can be made sense of (as in the motivational explanation above). Synthesising the findings in this way may, however, backfire, as it can eliminate what was pluralistic in the first place. Rather than appealing to a third theoretical meta-level, it may be more relevant to foreground one of the two interpretative or theoretical stances and then merely bring in a second stance to add nuance, depth and complexity to the analysis (Dewe & Coyle, 2014). In our family case study, however, we attempted not to prioritise one perspective over another but to allow for a both/and epistemological and analytic stance (Coyle, 2010, p. 81). We felt that a balance was important in order to do justice to the different perspectives; in particular, we did not want to allow for a social constructionist reading to overshadow the phenomenological 4

5 understanding. This would be a particularly important concern in studies of sensitive and/or controversial experiences (see Coyle, 2010). As Frost (2011) has suggested, pluralism is especially useful when inquiring into topics where reality is not universally agreed (p. 148). Although prioritising either a phenomenological or a discursive stance would not have meant that the researchers therefore lean towards one specific version of reality, taking a balanced both-and approach seemed to suggest a form of ontological pluralism rather than the life-or-death, reality-or-fantasy binaries so often invoked in both practice and research around such controversial phenomena. We thus found that the pluralistic stance we took enabled us to attend to contextual factors at the level of individual meaning-making and also at a more interactional level in terms of how family members established credible accounts within the interviews. Although some tensions remained, meaningfulness within this pluralistic approach was not defined as needing to be generated through interpretations that are located within a unitary theoretical framework in which tensions and contradictions are smoothed over but, in line with a postmodern outlook, as allowing ambiguities, contradictions, disruptions and tensions of the lived experience (Frost, 2011, p. 123). In this case pluralism enabled a multi-perspectival view of the family s situation that was potentially more faithful to the family s diversity than a narrower lens of investigation could have been. Outlook Having once taken a pluralistic approach to qualitative analysis, it now seems difficult not to look at data from more than one interpretative perspective. As Nollaig Frost (2015) said in a recent workshop on pluralism in qualitative research: Rather than asking why look at things from many different perspectives, we can ask why would we not look at our data from as many different perspectives as we can? Some exciting studies have been conducted and published in recent years. Of particular interest to counselling psychologists is Daphne Josselin s pluralistic investigation of self-injury (2013; Josselin & Willig, 2015). For me, pluralism is also expanding into the clinical field, as I enjoy and encourage pluralistic case formulation in the context of counselling psychology training (see also my blog on this topic: Clinical case formulation and qualitative analysis of clients accounts are overlapping in many ways, and I would love to see more pluralistic explorations of clinical issues added to the ever-growing corpus of pluralistic research. Acknowledgement: With thanks to Adrian Coyle, Professor of Psychology, Kingston University 5

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7 References Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, Coyle, A. (2010). Qualitative research and anomalous experience: A call for interpretative pluralism. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 7, Dewe, M., & Coyle, A. (2014). Reflections on a study of responses to research on smoking: A pragmatic, pluralist variation on a qualitative psychological theme. Review of Social Studies, 1, 21-36, Frost, N. (Ed.) (2011). Qualitative research methods in psychology: Combining core approaches. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Frost, N. (2015). Pluralism in qualitative research. A Workshop held at the British Psychological Society London Office; October 6. Frost, N., Holt, A., Shinebourne, P., Esin, C., Nolas, S., Mehdizadeh, L., & Brooks- Gordon, B. (2011). Collective findings, individual interpretations: An illustration of a pluralistic approach to qualitative data analysis. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 8(1), Frost, N., Nolas, S., Esin, C., Holt, A., Mehdizadeh, L., & Shinebourne, P. (2010). Pluralism in qualitative research: The impact of different researchers and qualitative approaches on the analysis of qualitative data. Qualitative Research 10(4), Jackson, J. & Coyle, A. (2009). The ethical challenge of working with spiritual difference: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of practitioners' accounts. Counselling Psychology Review, 24(3&4), Jackson, J., Steffen, E., & Coyle, A. (2011). Exploring the value of interpretative pluralism in qualitative psychological studies of controversial and/or sensitive issues: Principles and practicalities. A paper presented at the Division of Counselling Psychology Annual Conference; Bristol; July Josselin, D. (2013). Wording the pain: An exploration of meaning-makings around emotions and self-injury. Unpublished Doctoral thesis, City University London. Josselin, D. & Willig, C. (2015). Making sense of self-injury: A pluralistic case study. Counselling Psychology Review, 30(4), McAteer, D. (2010). Philosophical pluralism: Navigating the sea of diversity in psychotherapeutic and counselling psychology practice. In M. Milton (Ed.), Therapy and beyond: Counselling psychology contributions to therapeutic and social issues (pp.5 19). Chichester: Wiley. Rafalin, D. (2010). Counselling psychology and research: Revisiting the relationship in the light of our mission. In M. Milton (Ed.), Therapy and beyond: Counselling psychology contributions to therapeutic and social issues (pp ). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Steffen, E. & Coyle, A. (2010). Can " sense of presence " experiences in bereavement be conceptualised as spiritual phenomena? Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 13(3), Steffen, E. & Coyle, A. (2011). Sense of presence experiences and meaning-making in bereavement : a qualitative analysis. Death Studies, 35(7),

8 Steffen, E. & Coyle, A. (2012). ' Sense of presence ' experiences in bereavement and their relationship to mental health : A critical examination of a continuing controversy. In C. Murray (Ed.), Mental health and anomalous experience (pp ). Hauppauge, U.S.: Nova Science Publishers. Steffen, E. & Coyle, A. (In press). 'I thought they should know...that daddy is not completely gone' : a case study of sense-of-presence experiences in bereavement and family meaning-making. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying. 8