Ethical considerations when conducting qualitative research in mental health in low- and middle-income countries
Dr. Anne Krayer & Dr. Rebecca McPhillips

There is a need for qualitative research that is culturally sensitive and focuses on the perspectives of people within their local contexts. Religious, social, and cultural norms as well as differences in wealth may affect the interpretation of ethical principles. For example, Asian countries have religious and cultural traditions that emphasise the family and public interest rather than the Western focus on individual rights.
The aim of this workshop it to explore ethical considerations when conducting qualitative research in low- and middle income countries on topics that may be taboo or stigmatised, such as self harm and mental health. As part of the workshop, we will be sharing experiences and learning from our project, the South Asia Self Harm Initiative (SASHI). This will cover a range of challenges such as gaining meaningful consent, sensitive interviewing and issues around power. We will explore some of the topics in more detail in the second part of the workshop through various activities and discussions. Participants’ questions and experiences will be important elements feeding into the second interactive part of the workshop. We will jointly formulate suggestions for good practice.

Readings
1. Banks, S. & Brydon-Miller, M. (2019) Ethics in participatory research for health and social well-being. Cases and commentaries. Routledge.
2. Lahman, M.K.E. (2017) Ethics in Social Science Research: Becoming Culturally Responsive. Sage.
3. Liamputtong, P. (2006) Researching the vulnerable. Sage

Conversation analysis in the study of therapeutic encounters: therapy of a grieving couple as a hands-on exercise
Dr. Bernadetta Janusz & Prof. Dr. Anssi Peräkylä

The workshop will introduce the participants to conversation analytical method of analyzing therapeutic interaction. We will use video recordings of a couple therapy on a grieving process as data in the analytic exercises. The first half of the workshop involves a lecture on conversation analysis (CA) as a method of investigating the moment-by-moment dynamics in social interaction. Through examples drawn from CA studies on psychotherapy in the past decade, the lecture will show how sequential relations between utterances enable a process of transformation of experience. The process of transformation pertains to referents that are attended to in the therapeutic dialogue, to emotions that are expressed in it, and to momentary relations that emerge between the therapist and the client. The utterance-by-utterance transformation also contributes to process of change in a more macroscopic time, spanning over the continuum of psychotherapeutic sessions. At the end of the lecture, a brief technical account on CA transcription and analytic strategy will be given.

In its second part, the workshop will engage in the analysis of video recorded couple therapy sessions dealing with grieving process after the death of the couple’s child. Taking up the concepts introduced in the lecture, the joint data analysis focusses on the ways in which the participants’ ways of referring to the deceased child, as well as their expressions of grief, get transformed. We will examine this transformation both in the sequential time (in adjacent utterances of the spouses and the therapist) and in the therapy-processual time (spanning across the therapy sessions).

Readings
1. Merran Toerien (2014) Conversations and Conversation Analysis. In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis, ed. by Uwe Flick. London: Sage, pp. 327-340. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446282243 
2. Anssi Peräkylä (2019) Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy: Identifying Transformative Sequences. Research on Language and Social Interaction. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2019.1631044
3. Samuel L.Y., Ho and Ide S F Chan (2018) Externalized and Internalized Continuing Bonds in Understanding Grief. In Continuing Bonds in Bereavemnt. ed. by Klass D., Steffen E, M. Routledge New York, pp.129-139.

Post-structuralist discourse analysis in psychotherapy research
Prof. Dr. Evrinomy Avdi & Prof. Dr. Eugenie Georgaca

The workshop offers an introduction and familiarization with the use of post-structuralist discourse analysis in studying psychotherapeutic process. Discursive approaches in general and post-structuralist discourse analysis in particular will be introduced, including instructions on their application in analysing texts, followed by a presentation of the ways in which discourse analysis has been utilized in psychotherapy research. Participants will have the opportunity to attend and then to practice analysis of extracts of psychotherapy sessions.

What makes qualitative research 'research'?
Prof. Dr. Carla Willig

This workshop reflects on the extent to which qualitative research can be said to contribute to the accumulation of knowledge. It addresses the question of how qualitative research can be differentiated from other forms of knowing that are concerned with human experience, its meaning and significance. This workshop addresses the question of what makes qualitative research ‘research’, rather than something else such as journalism, art or philosophy, and how we may decide whether something is qualitative research as opposed to another kind of meaning-making activity. 

The workshop aims to formulate criteria with will allow us to identify the key characteristics of  qualitative research and to evaluate its contribution to knowledge.

Single case study methodology and metasynthesis in psychotherapy research
Juri Krivzov & Prof. Dr. Reitske Meganck

After decades of neglect, single case study experiences a comeback in the area of psychotherapy research. Unique insights into the particular dynamics of the patient combined with novel instruments for quality control allow the single case study to become again a respected instrument for theory building and for bringing the science-practice gap.
The participants of the workshop will learn about types of case studies (clinical, systematic, and experimental) and common misunderstandings about case study research.
Next, the participants will learn how to use the Single Case Archive (singlecasearchive.com) – a novel database with over 3200 case studies published in leading journals. Each case study has been coded for descriptive information and we will learn how to systematically retrieve cases based on diagnosis, therapy type, outcome etc.
In the second part of the workshop, we will speak about synthesizing evidence from case studies and the recent developments in the metasyntheses methodology. We will discuss the emerging guidelines such as PRISMA and ENTREQ. Finally, we will illustrate our ideas with worked examples of metasyntheses of case studies of psychosomatic patients, discuss the pitfalls of the publication process, as well as the best practice examples from the literature.
Overall, this workshop describes a novel research agenda that might bear an answer to some shortcomings of quantitative psychotherapy research and provides the field with powerful tools for theory development.