Full Description
This groundbreaking text makes an intervention on behalf of disability studies into the broad field of qualitative inquiry. Ronald Berger and Laura Lorenz introduce readers to a range of issues involved in doing qualitative research on disabilities by bringing together a collection of scholarly work that supplements their own contributions and covers a variety of qualitative methods: participant observation, interviewing and interview coding, focus groups, autoethnography, life history, narrative analysis, content analysis, and participatory visual methods. The chapters are framed in terms of the relevant methodological issues involved in the research, bringing in substantive findings to illustrate the fruits of the methods. In doing so, the book covers a range of physical, sensory, and cognitive impairments. This work resonates with themes in disability studies such as emancipatory research, which views research as a collaborative effort with research subjects whose lives are enhanced by the process and results of the work. It is a methodological approach that requires researchers to be on guard against exploiting informants for the purpose of professional aggrandizement and to engage in a process of ongoing self-reflection to clear themselves of personal and professional biases that may interfere with their ability to hear and empathize with others.
Contents
Preface, Ronald J. Berger and Laura S. Lorenz; Disability and qualitative research, Ronald J. Berger and Laura S. Lorenz. Part 1 Observational Methods: A bricolage of urban sidewalks: observing locations of inequality, Valerie Leiter; Observations of a disability summer camp: the method of phenomenological seeing, Ronald J. Berger; Ethnographies of blindness: the method of sensory knowledge, Gili Hammer. Part 2 Interviews and Focus Groups: Staying true to their stories: interviews with parents of children with disabilities, Sara E. Green; Negotiating deafness and identity: methodological implications of interviewing with hearing loss, Melissa Jane Welch; Talking about sex: focus group research with people with disabilities, Sarah Smith Rainey. Part 3 Autoethnography and Life History Methods: Institutional resistance to accessible architecture and design: a collaborative autoethnography, Carla Corroto and Lucinda Kaukas Havenhand; 'It's not like you're going to college anyway': a performative autoethnography, Anjali J. Forber-Pratt; Recovery from spinal cord injury: a theorized life history, Ronald J. Berger. Part 4 Content Analysis and Visual Methods: Disability and humor in film and television: a content analysis, Ronald J. Berger; Living with brain injury: participatory visual methods and narrative analysis, Laura S. Lorenz; Sharing the results of visual methods research: participation, voice, and empowerment, Laura S. Lorenz and Maria Paiewonsky. References; Index.
