Using conversation analysis as part of multi-method qualitative research into organisations: an inductive approach

Event details

It has been widely reported that grassroots community organisations played a crucial role in meeting needs in local communities during lockdowns in the UK and around the world. This multi-method qualitative study examined the work of these organisations during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in England and Wales. Dr Rose Rickford will present methodological insights gained from this study, which included use of conversation analysis (CA), along with comparative analysis of semi-structured interviews, to develop inductive theory. She conducted 35 interviews with people involved in 35 community organisations, and recorded 11 hours of meetings from three community organisations. She used CA to identify matters that were made relevant by participants during decision-making interactions in organising meetings of three organisations. She identified that participants oriented to purpose when deciding what the organisation should do. Two different purposes – meeting community need and generating income for the organisation – were oriented to, with the purpose of generating income treated as at times in conflict with the purpose of meeting need. She used these insights to inform a comparative case analysis based on interview data. Through this analysis she was able to theorise the impact that different funding models have on organisations’ abilities to meet need in their communities.

This study is an example of integration of CA into a multimethod qualitative study, in which CA is used to identify matters of relevance to participants, which are in turn used to inform the focus of other forms of qualitative analysis. CA of naturally occurring interactions allows researchers to identify matters that are relevant to participants in a given social context. These matters can then be used to inform categories, concepts, and codes when conducting other forms of qualitative analysis of that social context. The benefit of this approach is that it combines the inductive power of CA with the contextual and phenomenological richness provided by other forms of qualitative analysis and data.

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About the speaker

Dr Rose Rickford

Rose is a feminist qualitative social scientist with methodological interest and experience in qualitative interviewing, conversation analysis, reflexive thematic analysis, and using comparative methods to develop explanatory theory. Her overall research interest is in how public and voluntary sector organisations can work better to meet diverse and changing needs. Her work to date has focused on British contexts. Rose completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of York in 2023, supervised by Dr Clare Jackson and Professor Merran Toerien. Her thesis explored how grassroots community organisations met people’s needs during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in England and Wales. Following her PhD, she had a one-year post as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Faculty of History at University of Oxford, where she researched women’s experiences of education and training in manual trades in 20 th century Britain. She is currently a Research Fellow in Qualitative Methods on the NIHR funded PAPER study, University of Surrey, where she investigating ethnic inequalities in primary mental health care in England.