Readings MONDAY 7.8.13

ASSIGNMENT: The reflections should 1) demonstrate that you have critically read the assigned readings; 2) raise questions that you would like us to discuss in class; 3) provide any update on your final paper focus.

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Potter, J. (2012). Discourse analysis and discursive psychology. In Cooper, H. (Editor-in-Chief). APA handbook of research methods in psychology: Vol. 2. Quantitative, qualitative, neuropsychological, and biological (pp. 111-130). Washington: American Psychological Association Press. Potter (2012b).

Edwards, D. (2012). Discursive and scientific psychology. British Journal of Social Psychology 51, 425-435. 

Wiggins, S., Potter, J. & Wildsmith, A. (2001). Eating your words: Discursive psychology and the reconstruction of eating practices. Journal of Health Psychology 6(5), 5- 15.  

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     Today's readings were an introduction to discursive psychology. The authors provided the background of discursive psychology (DP) and examples that illustrated the use of the DP approach to the study of several topics (e.g. crying and eating).

     Potter (2012) writes in detail about DP including how the research came from previous work, the characteristics of discourse, and the seven stages of completing DP research in which he uses one of his own studies as an example. First, he describes how DP, as we know it today, was formed from three strands of interrelated research: interviews and repertoires (Potter & Weatherall- interested in analyzing "interpretive repertoires" from open-ended interviews, Gilbert & Mulkey- examined the repertoires of scientists as they communicated with each other, and Billing- worked with ideological dilemmas using rhetorical psychology, which built on Potter & Weatherall's work), discursive psychology and constructionism (Edward, Potter, & Hepburn- focused on naturalistic interaction and first used DP as the explicit description of their work), and discursive psychology and sequential analysis (combination of the first two strands, uses Jeffersonian transcription, examines categories and how they are sequenced within conversations).

     Potter (2012) then defines the four characteristics of discourse as action-oriented, situated, both constructed and constructive, produced as psychological. Actions are the words that are used and how they are used in the context. These actions are situated in the present, are relevant to the identities of the participants, and make use of rhetoric. Discourse is not only the way that sentences are put together or how words are said, but also how talk and text are used to convey broader meanings. Discourse is psychological in that it can be objective or subjective in its context.

     Lastly, Potter (2012) walks through seven stages of DP research. I found this piece of the article to be the most intriguing, because I was able to compare the procedure outlined by Potter to the procedure I recently learned in a Case Study Research class. Before this point in the reading, I was feeling a little lost in the world of psychology- like I didn't quite have all the background knowledge I needed to read fully understand some of the principles (I had to pull out the dictionary quite a bit!) The following is a table that compares DP with Case Study. 

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Discursive Psychology	Case Study
1. Obtain access and consent ·      uses key institutional member ·      gets consent from participants	·      Use of a gatekeeper ·      consent forms, IRB, etc.
2. Data collection ·      records real life situations ·      participants are collectors	·      Uses multiples sources of evidence- interviews, observations, documents ·      Researchers are the instrument
3. Data management ·      organizes data for ease of access and searching ·      easy to share with others	·      Use of database to house extensive data from interviews and observations ·      Can be shared with others
4. Transcription ·      first pass by transcription services ·      in-depth Jeffersonian transcription of key parts of recordings ·      continually reference transcriptions and recordings	·      First interview is transcribed by researcher and service, all others transcribed by service ·      Do not typically use recordings after transcription
5. Develop research questions ·      Happens continuously throughout process ·      Typically gather data before creating RQs	·      RQs can by modified, but general idea before collection
6. Analysis ·      Use literature to guide analysis ·      Start from broad and go to specific	·      Can use a variety of methods for analysis ·      Usually have a theoretical or conceptual framework for beginning analysis ·      Use coding: Start from broad and go to specific ·      Use literature to guide analysis
7. Validation ·      Participants orientations ·      Deviant cases ·      Coherence (with previous literature) ·      Readers’ evaluation	·      External and internal validity concerns ·      Triangulation of methods ·      Collect multiple types of evidence ·      Rich, thick description ·      Reader generalizability

     Edwards (2012) wrote about the difference between DP and experimental psychology. He begins with an overview of the research origin and what exactly DP is (This is mostly a repeat of the Potter article). Of particular note to me was the common sense approach to DP research as Edwards discusses in the interpretive gap section. Using real-world situations and looking at what was said and how it was said by the participants seems like what is missing in some qualitative work. Specifically, in case study, researchers provide rich, thick description of the participants and their contexts rather than letting the participants speak for themselves. The researcher is also the instrument in case study research, and data collection and analysis must be validated in several ways because of the bias of the researcher and his/her direct influence on the data. Because DP lets the participants record conversations and the researchers use the actual recordings, the interpretive gap is more narrow. (The article compares DP to experimental designs which have a larger interpretive gap.)

      I enjoyed the Wiggins, Potter, & Wildsmith (2001) article because the authors applied the DP approach to the subject of family eating practices. It was helpful to read a research article that first went through the research on eating, then described the methodology, and finally analyzed the transcriptions. Although, I am unfamiliar with a lot of the psychological terms that the authors used, I understood the process of DP and could follow the steps due to the clear and concise writing.

     I enjoy the common sense approach of DP to data collection and am interested in how this process could be used outside of the field of psychology. Here are a few questions that came up as I read.

• How would a theoretical framework be used in DP? Is it appropriate?
• Are there examples of using DP along with other data collection methods, like also using interviews or observations?
• What is the difference between discursive psychology and conversation analysis?