By Ally Grant
Professional doctorate research often asks us to inhabit two identities at once, that of a skilled practitioner and that of a methodologically rigorous researcher. For those working in practice-based fields such as social work, this can surface subtle but important tensions, particularly in moments of data collection where professional instincts and research commitments meet. This reflective piece by ProfDoc PGR Ally Grant explores one such tension, the pull between motivational interviewing skills and the demands of interpretative phenomenological analysis, and considers what it means to navigate this space with reflexivity, integrity and a developing sense of practitioner–scholar identity.
Alastair, or Ally, is an experienced child protection social worker who has been involved in social work education since 2021. Having previously undertaken research into social worker’s perception of parental substance use, his professional doctorate research aims to explore how statutory children and family social workers make sense of expressions of masculinity.
Introduction
As a social worker undertaking research, I became aware of a tension I was feeling during interviews, needing to stay underpinned by the methodology I’d chosen, while recognising my instinct to utilise my skills from social work practice. On one hand my skills and experience from social work pushed me to demonstrate understanding and active listening using complex reflections grounded in motivational interviewing (MI). On the other, the methodological guidance of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) cautioned against interpreting participants experiences too early. How could I manage this tension? How could I stay true to my identity as a practitioner researcher, while maintaining methodological rigour?
As a practitioner researcher with an interest in how children and families’ social workers make sense of masculinity, I’ve had to engage in reflexivity regarding my own ‘self-location’ and decisions in the research process. I have had to be mindful of what being a ‘double insider.’ As a social worker, and a man, I have had to examine my assumed insider status and the influence my own identity may have (De Andrade 2000).
I developed the research question “How do Statutory Children and Families Social Workers make sense of expressions of masculinity?” through a scoping review. When making methodological decisions, I felt that interpretative phenomenological analysis was the best fit. This was because research using IPA aims to focus on how people make sense of a phenomenon, with an emphasis on their lived experience and how this is understood in the context of their personal and social worlds (Smith, Flowers and Larkin 2022). As I was interested in how social workers themselves understand expressions of masculinity, IPA felt like a good match.
Data collection in IPA and skills from social work
Having now undertaken the ten interviews I conducted in my data collection stage, I want to reflect on the alignment of the skills required for IPA orientated research interviews, and social work conversations and the tension I felt.
In IPA research, the most common method for data collection is phenomenological interviews using a semi-structured interview guide (Smith 2011). This is because they encourage participants to share rich, first person accounts of their experiences. The guide provides structure while still allowing for the researcher to be responsive, moving between clustered questions and prompts and reflections. When done well, participants should be able to respond reflectively to open and expansive questions with minimal input from the researcher.
Vicary and Ferguson (2024, p. 40) state that in IPA “any method used must allow participants the opportunity to tell their story by talking without constraint in a reflective way”. Questions should be open and expansive, allowing participants to talk at length and in depth, with minimal input from the researcher and not making assumptions about the participants experiences.
Considering the crossover between qualitative research skills, and those key to good social work, Vicary and Ferguson (2024) feel that both require effective communication, skilful questioning, and remaining person-centred. Considering IPA and social work, they reflect on the overlap of information being gathered about the lived experience of the individual, with this being recognised as unique to the person in context. Again, fitting IPA and social work, the information is then interpreted utilising reflexivity and critical analysis.
So where did the tension I felt in interviews come from? It bubbled up in recognising my instincts from my practice skills, (particularly those drawn from motivational interviewing), and the methodological commitments of IPA.
The parallel that felt natural to me, which Vicary and Ferguson (2024) draw out, is between the skills used in motivational interviewing, and those used in IPA research interviews. They emphasise the use of active listening, careful paraphrasing and developing depth in understanding by drawing out the persons own interpretation of their experiences. In terms of what motivational interviewing is, we can consider MI as an approach to ‘helping’ which draws on two key focuses – minimising resistance to change through listening in a non-judgemental way and aiming to address ambivalence about change by developing ways of understanding and resolving this ambivalence (Forrester et al 2021).
Within MI, the mnemonic device of OARS refers collectively to core skills within MI used to demonstrate active listening; Open questions, Affirmations, Reflections and Summaries. Key to the connection to my interviews is that within MI, the purpose of using these tools is not just to understand how someone thinks or feels, but to also be able to show through active listening that we have understood or are trying to understand their perspective.
This was at the heart of the tension I felt in my early interviews. I felt stuck between the instinctual response I would have in practice using these tools, versus, how I felt I should be responding in a research interview context underpinned by IPA. This particularly stood out through my use of reflections. In MI, simple reflections are utilised to show we understand a persons point of view. This can be extended into complex reflections, where I am reflecting back the ‘unsaid’ by offering a statement to convey that I am understanding, or tying to understand their perspective. This is done by offering back not just what they’ve said, but by offering a statement or hypotheses of what they may be thinking or feeling to clarify their perspective.
Attempting to resolve the tension
Smith, Flowers, and Larkin (2022) describe using the process of transcription of early interviews as an opportunity to review the guide and interviewing strategies. In responding in the moment in my early interviews, and transcribing afterwards, I noticed an emerging pattern. I felt that while my use of reflections was aligned with MI in that I was attempting to demonstrate active listening and a desire to understand, that I was at risk of being at odds with the methodology.
My concern was that in attempting to understand more about how participants may be thinking and feeling, and therefore how they’ve made sense of their experience, I was using complex reflections. In doing so, I was worried that I could be starting to interpret in real time falling into the trap of starting to analyse within the interview what I was being told in real time. Smith, Flowers and Larkin (2022) offer reassurance that checking that the participant has been understood is reasonable but caution that anything beyond this is analysis and should be avoided until later stages of the research.
In an attempt to address this before undertaking further interviews, I pulled out extracts to discuss in supervision with a particular focus on segments where I felt I had tipped too far into starting to interpret. I wanted to get some guidance around what side of the line I was falling on – whether I was reflecting to check my understanding, or whether I was falling too quickly into analysis. Within supervision, the guidance I received was reassuring – with a separate caution that in reflecting on my interviewing technique and looking at the transcripts, that this itself could draw me far into diving straight into the transcripts, leaping ahead and missing the chance to dwell with the data and get immersed in favour of superficial analysis and ‘tidying up’ (Vicary and Ferguson 2024).
In this process, and through discussing the extracts I had brought to supervision, it was ultimately useful to think about how I could spend more time emphasising at the start of the interview that it was the participants’ own experiences I was interested in. This offered me an actionable outcome I could carry forwards into the rest of the interviews, that as it was their sense making I was trying to hear, that there was no ‘wrong’ answer and ensuring that my reflections in this direction were to try and understand more of the participants experience and sense making, essential for IPA and useful to reflect on the process, and on self.
So what was my key takeaway? Reflecting on this process individually and in supervision reminded me of the balance and negotiation between professional instincts drawn from experience, and methodological rigour. Crucially, what I take away is the need to reflect on the process as a whole, and between individual interviews – a mini double hermeneutic of its own, and to be able to reflexively justify decision making.
References
De Andrade, L.L. (2000) ‘Negotiating from the inside: Constructing racial and ethnic identity in qualitative research’, Journal of contemporary ethnography, 29(3), pp. 268–290.
Forrester, D., Wilkins, D. and Whittaker, C. (2021) Motivational Interviewing for Working with Children and Families : A Practical Guide for Early Intervention and Child Protection. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Smith, J.A. (2011) ‘Evaluating the contribution of interpretative phenomenological analysis’, Health psychology review, 5(1), pp. 9–27. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2010.510659.
Smith, J.A., Flowers, P. and Larkin, M. (2022) Interpretative phenomenological analysis : theory, method and research. 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Vicary, S. and Ferguson, G. (2024) Social work using interpretative phenomenological analysis : a methodological approach for practice and research. Maidenhead: Open University Press.