Is Evidence-Based Practice a Threat to the Progress of the Qualitative Community? Arguments From the Bottom of the Pyramid

Abstract

Although scholars have gone to great lengths to illustrate the value of qualitative research and ensure that it is well represented in all areas of academic life, there remains a gap of equality when compared with quantitative research, which is still viewed by many as superior, specifically in applied fields such as health. This has become particularly true as the evidence-based movement has continued to find its way into discussions around the legitimacy of qualitative research. In this article, we argue that the evidence-based movement, particularly in medicine and health, continues to pose challenges for us as a qualitative community—challenges that we will need to grapple with in the coming years.

Discourse/Conversation Analysis and Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…There are some shared features of the different types of DA, which include a focus on language, a focus on the broad ways in which accounts are constructed, and an acknowledgement of the variable ways people account for things. However, there are some broad differences, as some types of DA focus primarily on the content of the language used or issues discussed in any single interaction, whereas others attend to the structure of language and how that functions to create particular perspectives or understandings (see Lester and O'Reilly 2015;Wooffitt 1992 for an overview). Notably, the different approaches to DA are underpinned by different theoretical assumptions and thus serve to answer different types of research questions.…”

Discursive psychology as a method of analysis for the study of couple and family therapy

“…Evidence generated from discursive studies has important benefits for those working in practice, as these studies present useful and translatable messages for therapists in terms of how they might use language in practice and how their clients interact with them (Kiyimba & O'Reilly, ). While the randomized controlled trial is still considered by many to be the best type of evidence to inform practice, qualitative evidence also plays an important role (Lester & O'Reilly, ). When engaging with evidence generated through a DP study, therapists can be guided toward looking beyond the conversation to see evidence of change, as well as how their dialogical actions are shaped by the ways in which clients respond to them during the interaction (Strong et al., ).…”

Introduction: The Social Construction of Normality and Pathology

“…By confining acceptable evidence to quantitative measures, there is a risk of missing important elements of the mental illness experience and potentially ignoring the influence of movements such as anti-psychiatry and critical psychiatry. More specifically, by relegating qualitative evidence to the bottom of the hierarchy, it risks excluding the very voices that earlier movements have set out to include (Lester & O'Reilly, 2015). Qualitative enquiry is considered a poor fit within the hierarchy of evidence, as it cannot evaluate the efficacy of pharmacological treatments and it has thus been dismissed as 'mere opinion' (Morse, 2006).…”