1st Edition
Conducting Contextual Research How to Find Out About Yourself and Other People
This innovative book proposes an entirely new approach to social research, presenting practical ways to discover people’s life contexts in order to understand why they do what they do, which is essential for any forms of research that need to understand people.
Taking a novel approach that goes beyond traditional categorisations of qualitative and quantitative research, the book starts by discussing the real basis of all research methods in social relationships, before detailing the methods for finding out about a person’s life contexts in very practical terms, accompanied by suggested questions, advice, and research tricks to help you progress. The various life contexts are then worked through chapter by chapter. Drawing on the rich and varied research experiences of all the authors, examples are given throughout, with later chapters focusing on specific research areas.
Conducting Contextual Research is essential reading for postgraduate students and professionals in the fields of counselling, psychology and social work, and will be useful to anyone conducting research or inquiries to understand human behaviour, including academic researchers, detectives, intelligence operators, social workers, government service researchers, social policy analysts, and biographers.
Part 1: Researching and research practices in context 1. What is research and what is context? 2. The basics of contextual analyses and their advantages 3. Best practices and methods for gathering contextual material 4. What do we do with our contextual data? Analysis, answers, and actions 5. Putting current research methodologies into context Part 2: Researching context in practice 6. Some general questions to understand someone’s contexts: Resource-Social Relationship Exchanges 7. Finding out about the contexts for secrecy and monitoring 8. Finding out about societal contexts which shape behaviour, talk and experience 9. Finding out about group and cultural practices 10. Finding out about social relationships 11. Finding out about language histories and communities 12. Finding out about the contexts for thinking 13. Finding out about the contexts for emotion Part 3: Examples of researching contexts 14. Exploring the outcomes of bad life contexts 15. Analysing ‘strange’ or ‘odd-looking’ behaviours 16. Researching biographies and autobiographies: What do you need to know about your own context? 17. Social policy and context 18. Contextual research for detective and intelligence operations 19. Contextual research in sensitive and difficult situations
Biography
Bernard Guerin is Professor of psychology at the University of South Australia. His research and writing try to integrate what we know from the social sciences to provide a contextual view of all human behaviour, talking and thinking.
Eden Thain is a research fellow at the Australian Centre for Child Protection, University of South Australia, and a member of the Social Contextual Analysis of Human Behaviour Research Group.
Kristen Stevens is a social contextual researcher and has a PhD in social policy and human behaviour from the University of South Australia.
Adan C. Richards is a PhD candidate conducting contextual research with people labelled as ‘psychosis’, at the University of South Australia.
Guilherme Bergo Leugi is Professor of psychology at the Federal University of Triângulo Mineiro, Brazil. His research investigates mental health, public policies, and contemporary challenges in clinical practice in themes mainly related to diversity, inclusion, marginalisation, and social justice.
