Qualitative Health Psychology: Theories and Methods
About this ebook
This book explains the role of qualitative research within health psychology. Theories and methods from a qualitative perspective are highly varied but, in general, differ from the positivist approach which is concerned with quantifying the individual risk factors presumed to cause health and illness behaviour. This book shows clearly how a qualitative approach offers a better understanding of the experience of illness while locating it in its broader social context.
Providing a detailed examination of these issues, the book is organized into three sections - the first considers some of the main theoretical perspectives underlying qualitative research in health psychology including discourse analysis and narrative as well as the social context and embodiment of health and illness; the second examines some of the practical issues involved in conducting qualitative research with different populations, such as children and the terminally ill; and the final section considers a range of analytic issues and specific analytic approaches such as grounded theory and action research, and the evaluation of qualitative methods.
About the author
Michael Murray is Emeritus Professor of Social and Health Psychology at Keele University.
Kerry Chamberlain is Professor of Social and Health Psychology at Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand. He is coeditor (with Michael Murray) of Qualitative Health Psychology: Theories and Methods (SAGE), coauthor (with Antonia Lyons) of Health Psychology: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge), and series editor (with Antonia Lyons) for Critical Approaches to Health (Routledge). He serves on the editorial boards of several journals and has published widely on health issues and qualitative research. His current research interests are in poverty, health and illness, medicalisation, food, and the mundane, and innovative methods for qualitative research.
