Dr Rachel Shaw, Lecturer in Psychology, has been at the centre of developments to create an innovative national resource to support teaching qualitative research methods to undergraduate psychology students. The work, sponsored by the HEA Psychology Network, was conducted by a group of expert qualitative psychologists across the UK. Rachel is one of the leading figures in research and training in Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA); she regularly facilitates CPD workshops on IPA here at Aston.
Qualitative methods have been a requirement on BPS accredited programmes since 2001 but many lecturers didn’t receive formal training in qualitative methods themselves or have never used qualitative methods in their own research. This means they often need support writing lectures and providing data for practicals. The resources include an extensive User Guide providing background to the dataset made available and information regarding ethics, transcription and interviewing.
The dataset is made up a set of interviews with students on the topic of friendship. Interviews were digitally recorded and are uploaded in audiovisual format. Two versions of transcripts are made available enabling their use in a range of qualitative methods including conversation analysis, discourse analysis, grounded theory and IPA, to name a few.
The resources have obvious benefits for lecturers which in turn will improve the quality of students’ learning experience. Needless to say, Rachel will be using this resource for her own qualitative methods practicals at Aston.
Rachel and the team have also written a book, Doing Qualitative Research in Psychology: A Practical Guide, to accompany the resources to be published shortly by Sage, edited by Michael Forrestor.
Access the resource.
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