David Rennie, York University, Toronto

Qualitative research has become a generic term pertaining to analysis of text and textual representation of the analysis. It is attractive for researchers wishing to escape the constraint of the positivistic methods normative in the social and health sciences. Unlike users of positivist methods, however, users of qualitative research vary in terms of the epistemology, or theory of knowledge, to which they subscribe, whether implicitly or explicitly. Some identify with a relativist epistemology, others with a realist one, and still others with a critical realist position that accommodates both realism and relativism. The epistemology adopted crosses with views on method, with relativists generally being reluctant to be bound by procedure, and the realists insisting on it. In this paper it is argued that this state of affairs in the qualitative research community mitigates the impact of qualitative research. It is proposed that there is a need for the development of a meta-methodology that is as coherent as the objectivistic one prescribed by positivism. A tentative methodology the author has developed for the grounded theory method, termed methodical hermeneutics, is outlined and presented as a candidate for such a meta-methodology. The possible range of this tentative meta-methodology is discussed

Up to this point, Rennie had used the natural scientistic methods normative for psychology. However, in turning to the study of psychotherapy, he decided to interview clients about their experience of therapy. This decision led to an adaptation of Norman Kagan’s technique of Interpersonal Process Recall, which Kagan developed for counsellor training, to the study of therapy. As adapted, in the use of the technique, clients brought to the researcher either a video or audiotape of a therapy session they had just completed. The researcher and client listened to a replay of the tape, where the client was invited to stop it at any point of recalled interest or significance. At these points, the researcher conducted an exploratory interview of the recalled experience. This research interview in turn was tape-recorded. Both the therapy tape and the IPR interview tape were transcribed. The focus was on the IPR transcript, where the transcription of the therapy interview provided context. Eventually, 16 IPR interviews were gathered.

In order to address the transcriptions, Rennie turned to qualitative research as an approach, settling on the grounded theory method developed by Glaser and Strauss. Several years were devoted to this study. As it drew to a close, he turned his attention to the methodology of the grounded theory method, particularly in terms of its underlying epistemology. He has interpreted this epistemology to be critical realist, or a mix of realism and relativism, and the method to be a form of hermeneutics, or interpretation of text. Currently he is exploring the possibility that this methodical hermeneutics is a fitting methodology of other approaches to qualitative research.

He is author of Client-centred Counselling: An Experiential Approach (Sage, 1998), and co-editor (with Shake Toukmanian) of Psychotherapy Research: Narrative and Paradigmatic Approaches (Sage, 1992), and (with Joerg Frommer) of Qualitative Psychotherapy Research: Methods and Methodology (2^nd Ed.; Pabst, 2006). His most recent publication (with Karen Fergus), is "Embodied categorizing in the grounded theory method: Methodical hermeneutics in action" (Theory & Psychology, 2006, No. 4).