This is the second part of a three part lecture on the foundations of qualitative research. This lecture is followed part the Foundations of Qualitative Research 2 (also in three parts).

1. Foundations of Qualitative
Research 1
Part 2: Meaning and meaning-making
Presentation by
Victoria
Clarke
Associate Professor of
Qualitative and Critical
Psychology, UWE
May 2019

2. PowerPoint slides from the Braun, Clarke &
Hayfield Qualitative Methods Online Teaching &
Learning Resources Collaboration (QMOTLRC)
• Narration by Victoria Clarke

3. Topic overview
o This is the first of two lectures exploring the values, characteristics and
theoretical foundations of qualitative research.
o The aim of this first lecture is to provide an accessible introduction to
qualitative research, for those with some research training. We try to
use minimal specialist terminology (this will come in the second
lecture!).
o This lecture explores different understandings of qualitative research –
as providing researchers with tools and techniques and as providing
both tools and techniques, and research values.
o We then explore the central importance of meaning and meaning-
making to qualitative enquiry and some different orientations to
meaning.
o There are some opportunities to pause the recording and reflect on
your knowledge and understanding of qualitative research.

4. Topic overview
o Part 1: What is qualitative research?
o Part 2: Meaning and meaning-making
o Part 3: Orientations to meaning

5. What is the defining feature
of Big Q qualitative?
• Many will say ‘experience’ – that qualitative research gives us
access to and makes sense of people’s experiences of
themselves, of others and the world.
• Although this is a common answer – it’s only part of the story,
not the fully story.
• Not all qualitative research is concerned with how participants
make-sense of their worlds and experiences, their
understandings, perspectives, values, practices and
behaviours.
• Qualitative research can also be concerned with social
processes that expand beyond individual experience, and with
the norms and ‘rules’ governing human action.
• However, all these types of qualitative research are sometimes
dubbed ‘experiential’ because they understand participants’
words as reflective of underlying experience, thoughts,
feelings, motivations and so on – a reflective view of language.

6. What is the defining feature
of Big Q qualitative?
• For some qualitative researchers, words don’t simply reflect an
(experiential) reality of perspective; they ‘do things’, they are
active – like:
• the contracting words of a civil marriage ceremony (“I call upon these
persons here present, to witness that I Rob do take thee Jon to be my
lawful wedded husband”)
• an instruction (“hold the door”)
• or the making of a knight (“arise…”)
• This means the research focus shifts from individual sense-
making to meaning as a social process and product and a
performative view of language.
• If we have to choose one word or concept to define qualitative
research – we think ‘meaning’ is a better choice than
experience.
• An important question is then…

7. What type of meaning am I
interested in?
• Psychological meaning – people’s inner life, their subjective
experience of the world, how they make sense of this
experience, their understandings, views, beliefs and
motivations, their actions and behaviours.
• How are the psychological and subjective related to the
wider social context?
• Individual meaning located in a social context – retaining a
focus on individual experience but recognising this as
thoroughly socially and situated within a wider social
context.
• Social meaning – a focus on meaning as a social process
and product that expands beyond the individual.

8. Psychological meanings
• Let’s consider an example – psychologists Jonathan Smith and Mike
Osborn’s (2007) study of chronic pain
• Interviews with 6 people who experience chronic benign lower back
pain
• Reported 5 themes exploring experience of the self in chronic pain:
• Negative impact of pain on the self
• Continuum and trajectory: the negative impact of pain is
potentially a developmental process: positive original self –>
negative pain self
• Public arena makes it worse: participants worried about the impact
of pain on their relationships and families and how they were
viewed by others
• Directing negativity at others: the pain self contaminates
relationships with significant others
• Sting in the tail: pain –> negative thoughts –> self-loathing –>
negative behaviour towards others –> punishment

9. Locating individual experience in a social
context
• Sociologists Jenny Hislop and Sara Arber’s
(2003) research on the gendered nature of
sleep disruption
• Sleep diaries (audio recorded each morning for
a week) from 12, and 6 focus groups with a
total of 48, mid-life women, most married or
partnered with children
• The nature of mid-life women’s sleep
• The social context of mid-life women’s sleep
• Children and mid-life women’s sleep
• Partners and mid-life women’s sleep
• Women’s responses to sleep disruption –
behavioural strategies, relocation – staying in
the double bed, permanent relocation,
contingency relocation

10. Social meanings
• Social psychologists Victoria and Virginia’s (Clarke & Braun,
2019) research on sense-making around male body hair
depilation
• Story completions from 98 young people – those at the sharp
edge of depilation pressures
• Story stem: David has decided to start removing his body hair…
• Analysed how stories brought David into normality
• David depicted as excessively hairy – animalistic, monstrous, a
primitive and brutish masculinity
• Excess hair evoked disgust; David bullied
• Depilation = an active and rational response
• Diminished sexual capital; depilation = a demonstration of
masculinity
• David masculinises the feminised practice of hair removal
• Story resolutions – David is punished for his vanity and failure
of individuality and autonomy vs. David increases his sexual
capital, the bullying stops, he gets the girl

11. Pause for reflection
• Psychologically and/or socially located meaning?
• Read these examples and decide
• Example 1: Anorexia
• Example 2: Student responses to a university lecturer wearing a t-shirt with
the slogan ‘Some people are gay. Get over it!” when teaching
• Example 3: Bisexual women’s visual identities

12. Solitude
This theme encapsulates the deeply isolating and isolated nature of the AN experience. A key element of this
seemed to stem from the sense of ‘otherness’ the women experienced as a result of the differences between their
own and others’ behaviours. Sophie, for example, spoke of the way in which she had realised that her dieting
differed from that of her friends:
Everyone would always be like ‘Oh yeah I’m on a diet’ or something, and I’d sit there and be like ‘I’m not saying
anything’, because I knew that something about the way I was doing things was completely different to them. Katie
spoke of the way in which her first experiences of bingeing and purging had left her feeling not just different but
‘alien’: ‘Oh my gosh what am I doing?’. . . ‘This is crazy why can’t I stop?’ and I thought I was really unusual and kind
of, an alien.
At the same time as feeling isolated as a result of their behaviours, it also appeared that the women felt alone as a
result of the lack of understanding of AN they perceived in society. Both Sam and Sophie spoke of the ‘stereotypical’
views of the illness (e.g. that it is driven by a desire to look like a skinny pop star or supermodel) that they believed
led others to make ‘some crass joke’ (Sam) or tell you to just ‘get over it’ (Sophie). In contrast, Hayley offered an
alternative explanation for this lack of understanding when she suggested that people actually try to empathise by
extrapolating from their own experiences, something she felt led them to inaccurately believe they knew what AN is
about:
You can see the obsession that the average person has and how that looks like an eating disorder, like how their
assumption is ‘I weigh myself every morning and it’s a bit obsessive’. . . their assumption that that’s what an eating
disorder is just an extreme version of it.
Rance et al.’s (2016) research on anorexia

13. “Everything’s equal now”
A few participants did not frame the T-shirt as an accusation: “She appeared to be making a statement to
people that I didn’t feel applied to me” (P98). However, echoing my colleague’s discussion with the
student representatives, most did: “I felt like it was directly at me because it is so in-your-face” (P38).
Unsurprisingly, many framed this (felt) accusation as unwarranted. The most common way of doing this
was by claiming that “everything’s equal now” (Brickell, 2001):
I thought it was unnecessary and quite in our faces as society is very accepting to homosexuals & lesbians.
(P68)
I just wondered why she was wearing it, I don’t think being gay is a big issue in today’s society and so I
found it in my face and offensive. (P41)
Denials of societal heterosexism work to close down accusations of homophobia and to frame them (or
the “accuser”) as irrational (Nadal et al., 2010). Indeed, what is offensive here is not societal homophobia
(because it does not exist) but Victoria’s misplaced—and thus irrational—accusation of prejudice. The
reference to “today’s society” invokes the liberal imperative of historical progress (Billig, 1988) and locates
homophobia firmly elsewhere—in this instance, in the unenlightened past. As well as denials of societal
homophobia, there were also denials of individual and group homophobia and a defense, and positive
presentation, of the “in-group” (Van Dijk, 1992a, 1992b).
Clarke’s (2019) research exploring student responses to a gay-themed t-shirt she wore in a lecture

14. Invisible bisexuals
Whereas lesbian visual identity was positioned as an integral part of a wider lesbian identity, by contrast
these bisexual women could not describe a distinct bisexual visual identity. Even when asked directly,
participants struggled to talk about bisexual looks, and all of them stated that bisexual women are not
recognisable from their appearance. This suggests that a bisexual look cannot be talked about because it
does not exist:
I don't know many people who are bisexual so … I can’t build up an image in my head of bisexuality. […]
there’s very few people who are out there as bisexual (Roxy).
I've never even thought about “oh bisexual look” because the way I've always done it is “gay going out on
the scene, straight going out with David” (laughs) as opposed to “bisexual” (Elizabeth).
Roxy attributed the lack of visual image of bisexuality to a wider bisexual invisibility and Elizabeth
indicated that neither a bisexual look nor a meaningful bisexual identity exists. These quotations arguably
reflect binary and monosexist models of sexuality (Clarke & Peel, 2007; Hemmings, 2002), which
demarcate heterosexuality and homosexuality as the only valid identity positions (Bowes-Catton, 2007;
Fahs, 2009; McLean, 2008). When asked about the possibility of recognising other bisexual women and
bisexual looks, many of the women responded by speaking about lesbian appearance. This emphasised
the existence of lesbian looks and indicated the significance of visual identity in marking out sexuality,
because these women acknowledged that they did evaluate other women's sexuality based on their
appearance (Woolery, 2007)… Hayfield et al.’s (2013) study of bisexual women’s visual identities

15. References
• Clarke, V. (2019). “Some university lecturers wear gay pride t-shirts. Get over it!”: Denials of
homophobia and the reproduction of heteronormativity in response to a gay themed t-shirt.
Journal of Homosexuality, 66(5), 690-714.
• Clarke, V. & Braun, V. (2019). How can a heterosexual man remove his body hair and retain his
masculinity? Mapping stories of male body hair depilation. Qualitative Research in Psychology,
16(1), 96-114.
• Hayfield, N., Clarke, V., Halliwell, E. & Malson, H. (2013). Visible lesbians and invisible bisexuals:
Appearance and visual identities among bisexual women. Women’s Studies International Forum,
40, 172-182.
• Hislop, J., & Arber, S. (2003). Sleepers Wake! The gendered nature of sleep disruption among mid-
life women. Sociology, 37(4), 695-711.
• Rance, N., Clarke, V. & Moller, N. (2017). The anorexia nervosa experience: Shame, solitude and
salvation. Counselling & Psychotherapy Research Journal, 17(2), 127-136.
• Smith, J. A., & Osborn, M. (2007). Pain as an assault on the self: An interpretative
phenomenological analysis of the psychological impact of chronic benign low back pain.
Psychology & Health, 22(5), 517-534.