The importance of the conditions and relations of project design for the construction of qualitative data: Some experiences from collaborative team working

Abstract

The pressures of funding and publishing requirements often make it difficult for researchers to pay close, detailed and reflexive attention to methods as an integral part of their research work. This paper reports on a project about women's perceptions of health, health risks and osteoporosis which was designed explicitly to explore methodological and epistemological issues as they arose and were renegotiated during the research. Three experienced qualitative researchers carried out equal parts of this small piece of research, and reflected on how faced with the same topic and conditions they each did their interviewing and analysis. Through reflexive attention to their feelings of dissatisfaction with the quality of this qualitative work the authors highlight the importance of effects of project design and collaborative working on both the social and material relations of the interview itself and the experiential and contextual depth of the data. The paper concludes with a consideration of its implications for teamworking in qualitative projects.