Women with Breast Cancer Talking Causes: Comparing Content, Biographical and Discursive Analyses

This article compares three different approaches - content analytic, biographical and discursive - to analysing the same data set (women with breast cancer talking about causes, and Blaxter’s classic work on ‘lay aetiology’) and concludes that a discursive approach offers better solutions to these problems than do the other two approaches.

Abstract

This article explores three different approaches - content analytic, biographical and discursive - to analysing the same data set (women with breast cancer talking about causes, and Blaxter’s classic work on ‘lay aetiology’). It compares these three approaches in relation to the key epistemological problems of ‘context’, ‘footing’ and ‘multiple versions’ - and concludes that a discursive approach offers better solutions to these problems than do the other two approaches. Finally, it suggests that both feminist psychology and health psychology would benefit from increased use of discursive approaches, particularly in relation to theorizing ‘experience’.