What is Qualitative Longitudinal Research?

What is Qualitative Longitudinal

Research?

Bren NealeSchool of Sociology & Social Policy

University of Leeds

Qualitative Longitudinal Research is:

• Qualitative enquiry

– conducted through or in relation to time

– exploring the temporal dimension of experience i.e. notions of biography, history, continuity, change, causality and so on.

Rationales for QLL Research• Awareness of rapid social change in contemporary society

– Can shed light on micro processes and the causes and consequences of change or continuity in the social world; Illuminates how change is created, lived and experienced

• Concern to understand the relationship between agency and structure, the personal and social, the micro and macro dimensions of experience

– Can shed light on the dynamic interplay between agency and structure: designed to explore the intersection of biography and history in real lives

Qualitative Enquiry… • Generates rich, detailed, textured data about individuals and linked

lives, using an array of interview and ethnographic methods

• Discerns human agency, social practices, subjective experience, identities, beliefs, emotions, values and so on

• addresses how and why questions

• Derives meanings from context and complexity

• Produces finely grained understandings

• Has significant explanatory power

Conducted through or in relation to Time

• ‘Longitudinal data …offers a movie rather than a snapshot’ (Berthoud 2000: 15)

Quantitative longitudinal (QNL) enquiry links time to trend data: generates the long shot, birds eye view, the epic movie, the broad vista

QLL research links time to textures: generates close ups of individuals and groups, the twists and turns in the story lines – the intricacies of human lives – the personal movie

Conceptualising Time • QNL (quantitative longitudinal) research: time as linear,

duration and sequence. Focus on measuring the spells of time that individuals spend in particular states (eg. unemployment or cohabitation (Leisering and Walker 2000)

• QLL research: time as fluid, multi-dimensional and infinitely varied. e.g. may encompass biographical time (individual turning points, critical moments); generational time, historical time, industrial time, cyclical time: time as a social construct (Adam, Haraven)

Research Design

• Prospective longitudinal panel studies, tracking individuals or groups: intensive walking alongside people as their lives unfold: or extensive tracking over decades (seven up series), discerning ‘change in the making’ Flexibility and innovation used through the research process.

• Repeat cross sectional studies, eg revisiting or continuous research in a community or organisation, that may or may not involve the same individuals

• Retrospective studies (e.g life history research that charts changes in a life up to the present).

‘Mixed Research designs:

• Linking questions and data in either QLL or QNL led research

• Collaborations across two or more longitudinal data sets

Research design: Building in time

• How long does a study have to be to qualify as a QL study?

• What are the best time intervals for follow up?

• There is no one right length of time or time interval for data collection - the longitudinal reach of a study, and how it is conducted through time depends on the nature of the research questions

• Intensive tracking through an organisational process (eg hospital admission); tracking through a life course transition, eg marrying, giving birth, extensive tracking over decades to discern changing life styles, practices, attitudes and values.

Holland, Henderson, ThomsonInventing Adulthoods

• Prospective, intensive tracking of a sample of young people from five different communities in the UK, focus on their values, identities, and transitions to adulthood. In depth interviews and ethnographic methods (day in the life tracking memory books) to uncover the process of growing up. Conducted over a nine year period.

Anya Peterson Royce’s study of a Mexican Indian community

• A thirty year social anthropological study, involving repeat intensive periods of fieldwork within a Zapotec Community.

• Changing focus over time, e.g. studies on popular culture, local economies and death and dying

• Production of an ongoing chronicle of changing community life.

• Royce as honorary Zapotec and member of Zapotec family.

Pollard and Filer’s Identity and learning programme

• School based ethnography, following the educational careers of 17 children from the age of 4 to the age of 16.

• Insights into the complex processes through which learning takes place, the interplay of personal factors and educational policies/practice

• Unique document of the impact of educational reform over a 12 year period.

Farrall et al’s study of probationers.

• Tracking 200 individuals subject to probation orders, including interviews with probation officers.

• 3 round of interviews over 20 months, plus four to five year follow up

• Exploring impact of probation on lives of sample and how and why they desist or persist in offending behaviour

Challenges: Data generation • Challenges of maintaining a sample over time; relies on

sustaining relationships, and developing strategies for sample boosting

• Data collection tends to be eclectic at outset because it is impossible to know what data might be significant over time. Funnel approach needed.

• QLLR generates very large data sets, viewed longitudinally.

• Data may always have a provisonal feel, as data collection may go indefinitely

• The value of a QLL data set may take years to accrue, particularly its historical value

Challenges: Data Analysis• Data analysis is complex and time consuming

• Proceeds in two dimensions simultaneously– Analysis of cross sectional data: each point in time – Analysis of longitudinal data within each case

(production of case profiles) and across cases: where lives converge or diverge.

Challenges: ethical considerations

• Ethical challenges of qualitative enquiry enhanced where long term relationships exist between researcher and researched – Confidentiality– Informed consent as ongoing process– Researcher/researched relationship affects both over

time – Selective approach to archiving QLL data leading to

mixed economy of archiving

References• Holland, J. and Thomson, R. (2004) Feasibility Study for a QL

Initiative. ESRC • Neale, B. and Flowerdew, J. 2003) Time, Texture and Childhood:

The Contours of Longitudinal Qualitative Research International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 6 (3): 189-199

• Saldana, J. (2003) Longitudinal Qualitative Research: Analyzing Change Through Time Altamira Press

• Thomson, R., Plumridge, L. and Holland, J. (2003)(eds.) Longitudinal Qualitative Research: a Developing Methodology: International Journal of Social Research Methodology. 6 (3). Special Issue.