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Editorial
A case for methodological diversity and contextualisation
Bryan S Turner
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Elizabeth Eckermann
Arts Faculty, Deakin University, VIC
Derek Colquhoun
Centre for the Body and Society Faculty of Arts, Deakin University, VIC
Pat Crotty
Centre for the Body and Society Faculty of Arts, Deakin University, VIC
Article Text
Volume Three of the Annual Review of Health Social Sciences continues the theme of promoting a diversity of methodologies in health research that was evident in Volumes One and Two. The articles in this volume came from two sources. The first 'recruitment' came from the papers presented at a national conference on qualitative methods in health research held at Deakin University, Geelong in December 1992. The conference was jointly organised by the La Trobe Health Research Group and the Deakin University Research in Health Group. It thus provided the perfect forum for handing on the baton of editorship for the current journal. The second recruitment phase involved soliciting papers from key health researchers with expertise in methodological traditions which would complement those covered at the national conference. These two sources have produced a comprehensive and exciting collection of articles representing state of the art social health research.
As the title of this editorial suggests, two key themes run through the current collection. Firstly, the theme of the deconstruction of the qualitative/quantitative divide in health research is highlighted in the opening article by Fran Baum and flows through many of the other papers. Secondly, the contextualisation of the research process is a key feature of Alan Kellehear's paper on unobtrusive methods in health research and this theme is reflected in Derek Colquhoun's paper on health education, Pat Crotty's analysis of the social construction of nutrition and Robin McTaggart's deliberations on action research. These papers, together with Glenda Koutroulis' paper, place the methodological framework they are promoting within a discursive field. Bev Taylor and Alan Petersen emphasise the construction of knowledge through narrative.
Fran Baum's call for a healing of the presumed hiatus between qualitative and quantitative methodologies suggests that in public health and community health research, an eclectic and integrative approach to research enhances the democratisation of access to information. These issues are taken up by Robin McTaggart in calling for participation of the 'researched' at all stages of the research agenda. Allan Kellehear provides a convincing argument for revitalising unobtrusive research which lost momentum in the 1970s. Not only does such an approach provide a useful way of examining the context of human activity (both of the researcher and the researched), it may also be a way of avoiding ethics committees!
Derek Colquhoun provides a personalised account of the research process which emphasises the political, social and economic context within which the research takes place. Glenda Koutroulis' article on memory work emphasises the role of language in constructing reality. She outlines a technique for deconstructing and reconstructing memories through group interaction as a means of tapping subjective experience. The narrative theme is reinforced in Bev Taylor's article on storytelling as a liberating methodology in health research. Language is also central to Pat Crotty's analysis of the social construction of nutrition on the site of the body. The cultural context around post and pre-swallowing she argues is so central to an understanding of nutrition that anthropological and ethnographic research should be integrated into nutrition education.
Alan Petersen's elaboration of Foucault's contribution to health research examines the implications of adopting a multiply constituted conception of the self for research methods. A unitary concept of the self has been a cornerstone assumption of both survey and interview techniques in the modern tradition and the implications of undermining this assumption make Alan's paper obligatory reading for health researchers.
The articles in this issue thus cover a variety of levels of analysis from theoretical considerations about the constitution of the self to technical issues associated with particular methodologies, from ontology and epistemology to technique and context. These issues will provide a focal theme in the next volume of the journal.
The 1994 issue will also emanate from Deakin and the theme will be based on the relationship between the self and the body. We would welcome the contributions of health researchers who are currently engaged in debate in this area. The 1994 issue will also contain an update of the Health Social Scientists Register so we urge all of those who wish to be included, or who need to update their details, to complete the registration form at the back of this issue and forward it to the 1994 editors.
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