Navigating the messy swamp of qualitative research: Are generic reporting standards the answer?

Clarke, Victoria

Abstract

I remember feeling both surprised and excited when I heard that US qualitative psychologists were forming a grouping within the American Psychological Association (APA) – surprised, because at the time, from the outside, US psychology seemed irretrievably hostile to qualitative research, and especially to non-positivist qualitative research, and excited because this had to mean good things for the standing and visibility of qualitative research in psychology here in the UK. The Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology (SQIP) was established within Division 5 of the APA in 2011. In 2013, SQIP established a task force – led by clinical psychologist, LGBT and psychotherapy researcher, Heidi Levitt – to develop recommendations for the design and review of qualitative research – the task force report was published in the Society’s journal Qualitative Psychology in 2017 (see Levitt et al. 2017). Around the same time an APA working group Journal Article Reporting Standards for Qualitative Research (JARS–Qual), also led by Levitt, was tasked with developing reporting standards for qualitative research in psychology (see Levitt et al. 2018). This working group was formed in response to increasing use of qualitative methods in US psychology, and the challenges facing journal reviewers unfamiliar with qualitative methods, or a particular qualitative research tradition, to evaluate manuscripts submitted for publication. The resulting Reporting Standards were published in the American Psychologist in 2018 (Levitt et al. 2018). These have also been influential in UK psychology (see Shaw et al. 2019). Levitt has subsequently co-authored reporting standards for critical qualitative research (Levitt et al., 2021) and design and reporting standards for counselling and psychotherapy research (Levitt et al., 2021). Levitt’s new book Reporting Qualitative Research in Psychology: How to Meet APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards is intended to supplement and expand on the existing APA journal article reporting standards.

• Journal Article Type: Book Review
• Acceptance Date: Sep 1, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Nov 18, 2021
• Publication Date: Oct 2, 2022
• Deposit Date: Aug 30, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 19, 2022
• Journal: Qualitative Research in Psychology
• Print ISSN: 1478-0887
• Electronic ISSN: 1478-0895
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 19
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 1004-1012
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2021.1995555
• Keywords: General Psychology, Psychology, Qualitative Research
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9776665
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14780887.2021.1995555