FLaG Work in Progress workshops

From messiness to meaning: how do we make sense of ambivalence and ‘contradiction’ in qualitative interviews?

Emma Hyde

People’s lives, perceptions, and relationships are inherently messy and often characterised by ambivalence and contradiction; how can we capture and generate meaning from this in qualitative data analysis? In this FLaG Work in Progress session, I will discuss this analytical puzzle in relation to my early PhD data analysis from interviews with 32 young adults (age 20-36) and 13 parents who have shared a home for prolonged periods of time. With a focus on family relationships and intergenerational support, I will highlight one or two interview extracts which demonstrate complexity, ambivalence, and contradiction. Without reducing experiences into neat packages, how can we manage messiness when exploring our research questions?

Sarah Irwin

My presentation fits the same title that Emma has provided. I will also explore complexity within interview data from my study (with Katy Wright and Katy Roelich) into public views and the climate crisis. I will consider examples of participant ambivalences and analytic puzzles and offer some reflections on the intersection of concepts, methods and evidence.