Conference Agenda

Qualitative reviews play a crucial role in synthesizing research, offering nuanced insights, and advancing theoretical understanding. However, concerns about their rigor often arise due to subjective interpretations, varied methodologies, and potential biases in synthesis. By examining best practices in qualitative literature synthesis, including transparent methodology, systematic data extraction, and critical appraisal, we argue that rigor is achievable when reviews are conducted with methodological reflexivity and coherence. We discuss strategies such as thematic synthesis, meta-ethnography, and framework analysis to enhance the credibility, dependability, and confirmability of qualitative reviews. Additionally, the role of researcher positionality and reflexivity in maintaining analytical depth is considered. This discussion aims to provide scholars with a clearer understanding of how to balance flexibility with systematic rigor, ensuring that qualitative reviews contribute meaningfully to academic discourse while maintaining methodological integrity.

The research explores the experiences of pedestrians who are reliant on some form of device during their strolls or commutes. What challenges do people with reduced or modified mobility using devices like wheelchairs, pushchairs or crutches face with? What aspects of the space, of their own movement, of other passers-by are in focus for them? What are the differences and similarities of experiences in relying on various devices?

To observe the interviewees' movements and to consider the accompanying verbal accounts, go-along interview was chosen as data collecting method. On-site observations and the experiences of our informants and the interviewers were recorded in field notes.

After analyzing and coding the field notes inductively, the main topics that emerged were infrastructure deficiencies, positive and negative examples of assistance, and spatial and temporal constellations that require outstanding awareness. Walking is both a locomotion and an interactional achievement in our understanding, so we interpreted our data deductively through Goffman's concept of interactional order, considering both the physical requirements and the ritual constraints of locomotion with devices.

The study documents both differences and similarities of the problems our interviewees faced regarding their spatial mobility and their well-being, interpreted within the conceptual framework of interaction order.

It is widely understood that supportive social relationships play a significant role in mental health. Despite this, more people in developed nations now live alone or with impoverished social environments than ever before, and psychological research continues to rely on traditional research methods that emphasise individualist, didactic therapeutic modalities. In a counselling psychology doctoral thesis that uses a novel focused-ethnography design, we aim to better understand community groups that have deliberately built housing environments that bring people together, referred to as “cohousing." Using observations, interviews and field notes from living in a cohousing community we ask: how do co-housing communities and their members experience and address mental health disorder and distress? Key findings address 1) the methods by which communities protect their members from common mental health difficulties, 2) the importance of homogeneity and intentionality in community design, 3) the impact of deconstructing "defensible" private spaces, and 4) conflict and resolution. The presenter of this talk hopes to engage conference delegates in a discussion about how novel qualitative research methods in counselling and psychotherapy such as ethnography can understand the social causes of psychological distress.

Most qualitative studies focus on either cross-sectional or narrative data. However, there is a growing trend towards longitudinal designs also using a qualitative approach. This presentation will review the methodological choices related to such a study where we examine the experience of change over a period of approximately four years for people with a complex dissociative disorder (CDD). We follow six individuals at three interview points: before, 6 months, and 2 years after a psychoeducative skills training group.

We chose LIPA because it is suitable for exploring a range of temporal experiences, such as health interventions. In LIPA, it is crucial to have an analytical perspective that shifts between focusing on the case, theme, and time. We became concerned with how their longings for the future in the first interview interacted with the changes that actually occurred. Their aspirations for life guided our analysis and presentation of the results. Restoring the sense of 'next' (Bohart, 1993) seems to hold significant influence on the participants. The approach ensured a unique focus on each participant's changes while also identifying shared prospective categories across the 6 participants. Theoretical, conceptual, methodological and ethical questions are discussed.