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AimTo develop and test a new adverse drug reaction (ADR) causality assessment tool (CAT).MethodsA comparison between seven assessors of a new CAT, formulated by an expert focus group, compared with the Naranjo CAT in 80 cases from a prospective observational study and 37 published ADR case reports (819 causality assessments in total).Main Outcome Measures Utilisation of causality categories, measure of disagreements, inter-rater reliability (IRR).ResultsThe Liverpool ADR CAT, using 40 cases from an observational study, showed causality categories of 1 unlikely, 62 possible, 92 probable and 125 definite (1, 62, 92, 125) and ‘moderate’ IRR (kappa 0.48), compared to Naranjo (0, 100, 172, 8) with ‘moderate’ IRR (kappa 0.45). In a further 40 cases, the Liverpool tool (0, 66, 81, 133) showed ‘good’ IRR (kappa 0.6) while Naranjo (1, 90, 185, 4) remained ‘moderate’.ConclusionThe Liverpool tool assigns the full range of causality categories and shows good IRR. Further assessment by different investigators in different settings is needed to fully assess the utility of this tool.

This article is set in the context of debates about how far social identity and agency should be seen as individualised or relational concepts. It examines how people in a qualitative study in the North of England constructed personal narratives about their residential histories. These were fundamentally about identity and agency, because they centred upon 'what mattered' more widely to the narrator, and upon what had constrained or enabled action and change in their life. The narratives were characterised by contextuality, contingency and in particular by relationality. Four styles of relational narrative are explored: relational inclusion and co-presence, relational participation, relational constraint and conflict, and relational individualism. Overall, it is argued that both agency and identity need to be understood relationally, and that through their narratives people in the study were constructing relational selves. It is suggested that a misreading of personal narrative as an individualistic discursive form has fuelled the hold of the concept of individualism on popular and sociological imagination, in the face of increasingly compelling empirical evidence about the extent and nature of people's connectivity with others.

This article uses the examples of the `kinship consequences'of assisted conception, the contemporary enthusiasm for tracing family histories, and a more general interest in family resemblances to argue that there is a contemporary fascination with kinship which existing sociological and anthropological theory do not entirely explain. It proposes a conceptual framework for understanding what is both distinctive and fascinating about kinship, based on four dimensions of affinity: fixed affinities, negotiated and creative affinities, ethereal affinities and sensory affinities. These are dimensions where kinship is engaged with, defined, known and expressed. Collectively, these are referred to as`tangible'affinities, not because they are all literally tangible but because of their resonance in lived experience and their vivid and palpable (or almost palpable) character.

A B S T R AC T This article makes an argument for a 'qualitatively driven' approach to mixing methods. It focuses on the value of mixed-methods approaches for researching questions about social experience and lived realities. It suggests that 'qualitative thinking' is a useful starting point for mixing methods, but that it is ultimately more helpful to think in terms of multi-dimensional research strategies that transcend or even subvert the so-called qualitativequantitative divide. Mixing methods helps us to think creatively and 'outside the box', to theorize beyond the micro-macro divide, and to enhance and extend the logic of qualitative explanation. Mixedmethods approaches raise challenges in reconciling different epistemologies and ontologies, and in integrating different forms of data and knowledge. The article argues that we should think more in terms of 'meshing' or 'linking' than 'integrating' data and method. It goes on to argue for the development of 'multi-nodal' dialogic explanations that allow the distinctiveness of different methods and approaches to be held in creative tension. The article concludes with a discussion of qualitatively derived principles for mixing methods. K E Y W O R D S : lived realities, mixed methods, multi-dimensional methods, qualitative methods, social experience A RT I C L E

In light of the recent upsurge in the popularity of sensory, and particularly visual, methods, this article makes a case for a sensory methodology that remains attuned to the complex ways in which the senses are tangled with other forms of experience or ways of knowing. Drawing on a project investigating the social significance of family resemblances, we look at how our methods (a combination of visual methods and creative interviewing) emphasized the interplay between tangible and intangible sensory experience, including elements of the sensory that were visible, audible, touchable, etc., in the present as well as those which people conjured in their sensory imaginations and ethereal or mystical ways of resembling. We suggest that ‘sensory intangibility’ is vital to how we see resemblances and to the practice of sensory methodology.

This article puts the case for a new and evolving research approach or orientation – ‘facet methodology’, developed in collaborative team based working at Realities at the Morgan Centre, a ‘Node’ of the UK National Centre for Research Methods. Research fields are seen as constructed through combinations and constellations of facets as we might see in a cut gemstone, where facets refract and intensify light, taking up the background, and creating flashes of depth and colour as well as patches of shadow. In facet methodology, the gemstone is the overall research question or problematic, and facets are conceived as different methodological-substantive planes and surfaces, which are designed to be capable of casting and refracting light in a variety of ways that help to define the overall object of concern by creating flashes of insight. Facets involve different lines of enquiry, and different ways of seeing. The approach aims to create a strategically illuminating set of facets in relation to specific research concerns and questions. The rigour of the approach comes ultimately from researcher skill, inventiveness, creativity, insight and imagination – in deciding how best to carve the facets so that they catch the light in the best possible way. The paper argues that facet methodology can make a contribution to debates about the ‘politics of method’, especially in relation to its emphasis on the significance of flashes of insight rather than the production of ‘maximum data’ of a descriptive kind.