The Narratives Which Connect…

Development of Categories and their Relationship

Pidgeon and Henwood (1996) note that Grounded Theory is more useful in helping the researcher into the maze of a fractured and multiseamed reality. It offers less in helping to find ways out of it. Categories emerged slowly from my material. However, categories emerged almost at all stages of the research process. The main body of categories came forward towards the end of the analysing process. “The first step in a grounded theory analysis is to begin to identify descriptive categories in the transcribed research interview as soon as

data collection has begun” (Burck, 2005, p. 246). Appendix 7 gives an illustration on how one category connected to “Dynamics that show how that personal and moral values influence or not influence their therapeutic work” started to emerge.

An example of how the category called “Therapists that participate in parallel connections and that have to deal with the links between their own personal life and the client’s problems” emerged is illustrated in this diagram:

Table 7. The diagram illustrate how different research categories from the transcribed interviews form a category.

The relationship between categories emerged as the analytic work developed. Some paradigm cases could only be told and understood as a meeting point between different categories. Relationship between categories and between categories and sub categories are also documented in diagrams.

Patterns between Narratives, Videos and Literature

I have been looking for patterns that connect on three different levels. The first level represents patterns between narratives and stories participants could tell in interviews. The second level emerged in my comparison of the first interview and the video of a first therapy session. The third level represents a triangulation (see below) where narratives and videos encounter supervision literature, psychotherapy research and family therapy education.

The findings in this research project are viewed in a context of three main legs of a triangulation process. The first leg is the analysis of the transcribed interviews. The second leg is based on observation. The observations are videos and the analysis of the videos. The third leg is the literature review. With these three legs a triangulation strategy is formed.

Validation strategies

Use of a Second Rater of Coding Transcripts: Independent Audit

An assistant professor, working at a Teachers College at the University College of Oslo has reviewed one of the initial transcripts. General codes were identified and these were compared to the codes and categories developed by me. This was done to check the credibility of my own analysing work and to compare what comes forward when it is done by two different persons.

Triangulation

The most common definition of triangulation is that it is using different methods or sources of information in the study of the same phenomenon (Jick, 1979; Richardson, 1996; Robertson, 2002). There are different types of triangulation. We have data triangulation, observer triangulation and methodological triangulation. In this thesis I will, however, use theory triangulation (Robertson, 2002). The idea is to compare and contrast findings in this research project with similar and parallel topics in the literature review. In theory triangulation or theoretical triangulation (Jick, 1979) I will use different perspectives and theories from psychotherapy research and supervision literature in analysing my material and extracting new theory from it. Triangulation can help me to be more confident of the results (Jick, 1979).

The way of triangulation used here can help “to counter all of the threats to validity” (Robertson, 2002, p. 175). If not all, to hopefully be an important step in that direction. My triangulation model looks like this:

Table 8. The Triangulation Model
This model offers a context and an analytic view that gives possibilities for theorizing that also is related to established psychotherapy research and to some of the topics that are of special relevance for this research project.

Validity is closely linked to trustworthiness. Triangulation is a strategy for achieving trustworthiness and credibility in qualitative research. Credibility means that the theoretical framework generated is understood and that it is based on the data from this research. Validity is also connected to trustworthiness when it comes to the reader’s assessment of a research text.

The Road to Saturation

This research process has been like entering into an unknown and exciting landscape. I had the feeling there was much to find there but I did not know if I would find anything in the track that I had planned to go. Would the therapists tell me their private and personal stories? Would they try to make links between their personal and private life and their clinical practice? Would I be able to find links between personal and private life and their clinical practice when I compared my interviews with the videos of their practice? Would my “findings” give meaning to their understanding of their clinical practice?

After the first interview, I found myself in a very optimistic mood. I felt I had received rich material with important stories that connected personal and private life with clinical practice. However, could this interview add any meaning to the video of her therapy session? In the following, connections of this kind were not that easy to discover or create, because they were hidden or blurred and they would not give meaning to my research before they were recognised or commented on by the participants.

In the second interview, I presented my understanding of possible links between the first interview and the video of their first therapy session with a family or a couple. In these interviews, we released new stories that gave meaning to an understanding of connections between personal and private life and their clinical practice.

The areas and topics that are relevant and interesting in this research field are close to endless (see Appendix 9). In this research project saturation also represents a situation where the project is able to document a varied and rich demonstration of meaningful stories about how we can understand the connections between family therapists personal and private life and their clinical practice (more about saturation, see p. 170).

The whole research process, with theoretical sampling, has partly been an analyzing process. After the comprehensive analyzing of the complete material to extract categories at the end of the research process ended with a realisation that my material was drained.