ORIGINAL ARTICLE

"Of the edgelands": broadening the scope of qualitative methodology

F Rapport¹, P Wainwright² and G Elwyn¹

¹ Primary Care Group, Swansea Clinical School, Centre for Health Improvement and Evaluation (CHIRAL), University of Wales Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea, UK
² Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences, Kingston University and St Georges Medical School, Sir Frank Lampl Building, Kingston Hill, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey,UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr Frances Rapport
Julian Tudor Hart Senior Research Fellow, Primary Care Group, Swansea Clinical School, Centre for Health Improvement and Evaluation (CHIRAL), University of Wales Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea, SA2 8PP, UK; f.l.rapport{at}swan.ac.uk

In an editorial in a previous issue of this journal Rapport et al introduced the metaphor of the edgelands, arguing that the area between urban and rural landscapes serves to illustrate some of the difficulties of interdisciplinarity experienced by those who work in the medical humanities. In this paper the authors explore some specific issues of qualitative research methodology in health care research. The paper describes a broadening out of the scope of qualitative inquiry in social scientific research in health and social care. The paper explains why some new methodologies have emerged and how both old and new methodologies are grouped around three interlocking strands: narrative based, arts based, and redefined, methodology. In order to illustrate developments in this field, the authors present three examples of the use of these methodologies in practice: photo elicitation technique; discourse analytic, and interpretive anthropological, method. Finally the authors illustrate how these methodologies can give added value to health services research.

Keywords: broadening qualitative methodology; edgelands; discourse analysis; interpretive anthropology; Photo elicitation techniques; health services research

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