Rebecca Lawthom

Recent moves from qualitative to post-qualitative inquiry can be traced back to various developments and methodological quandaries. Posthuman philosophy and methodology is one origin story of the move to post-qualitative inquiry. This broad approach contests the humanist impulse at the heart of qualitative inquiry and demands imaginative forms of post-qualitative inquiry, theory and research that engage with the more-than-human realities and nuances of everyday life. What might it mean to hold post-qualitative sympathies and tackle a foundational methodology of qualitative inquiry (ethnography) from a quintessentially posthuman position (disability)? With reference to an ongoing ESRC funded project – Humanising Healthcare – we provide two writings about the possibilities and challenges of failing ethnography. Through reference to critical posthumanities and critical disability studies theory, we attend to broken, patchwork, kintsugi and crip ethnographies that, we argue, allow us to sit in the liminal space between qualitative/post-qualitative research and human/posthuman theory.

It has been argued that the university needs depathologising, a radical rethink and reorientation of the university’s relationship with disability. This paper offers an original affirmative proposition: that the university is already depathologising. Inspired by disabled people’s activism and scholarship, we explore the ways in which academics, researchers and research professional colleagues are depathologising the disablist and ableist university. We reflect on our practices as principal investigators and research leaders of three funded research projects using novel composite conversations (a unique methodological form of experimental writing) and explore (i) pushing back at university bureaucracy towards co-production; (ii) critically appropriating the performative university and (iii) enabling access as colleagues. Depathologisation invites us to pause, to meditate and to significantly reimagine the university. And those of us who work in the university are the university, and we all have work to do.

Background: We are a research team of clinical, academic and advocacy‐based researchers with and without learning disabilities, working on the Humanising Healthcare (for people with learning disabilities) project. The project is dedicated to finding and sharing healthcare practices that enhance the lives of people with learning disabilities. As part of our ethics applications to access National Health Service study sites for fieldwork, we worked together to write guiding principles for co‐producing research ethics with researchers with learning disabilities. In this paper, we introduce these Participatory Ethics Good Practice Guidelines and reflect on our collaboration.Methods: We reflect on developing the Participatory Ethics Good Practice Guidelines. These guidelines were developed during online co‐production meetings with our full research team, including advocacy‐based organisation researchers, clinical researchers and university researchers. We considered consent, understanding research, and understanding research methods during the development of these Guidelines.Findings: We present ten guidelines for co‐producing research with people with learning disabilities.Conclusions: Our findings may be helpful to researchers with learning disabilities, university and clinical researchers, funders, and those who work in research governance (e.g., ethics committees and university research departments).

We examine a focus group with eight Portuguese psychologists (four career counsellors) on two quantitative studies' results focused on the psychosocial consequences of unemployment/precarity/uncertainty, exploring how do they: give meaning to the results, perceive their professional role, and think that socio-political issues influence their practice. Data were analysed through thematic social-constructionist and critical discourse analyses. Two themes (the construction of the “employable individual” and the limits of psychology), and two discourses (the hegemonic psychological discourse reflecting neoliberal discourses and adaptation to the labour market and “the social context is an aggressor” highlighting socio-political/economic roots of psychological ailments) were identified. We aim to foster a reflection on socially-just practices within career counselling, and to promote people’s agency/conscientisation/emancipation and career development.

The pandemic has heightened anxieties, impacted mental health and threatened to create an overwhelming sense of existential dread. We recognise the material ways in which disabled people have been differentially impacted by Covid‐19 and make a case for understanding the affective dimensions of the pandemic. We develop a theoretical approach ‐ cutting across medical sociology and critical disability studies ‐ that understands affect as a social, cultural, relational and psychopolitical phenomenon. We introduce a public engagement project that took place in March and April of 2020 that garnered blogspots from around the world to capture the pandemic's impact on the lives of disabled people. Our data analysis reveals three key affective themes: fragility, anxiety and affirmation. To understand the emotional impacts of Covid‐19 upon the lives of disabled people we embed critical analyses of affect in the dual processes of disablism and ableism: the dis/ability complex. We conclude by considering how we might conceive of a post‐pandemic recovery that places the health and well‐being of disabled people at the centre of proceedings.

This study presents the development of the Psychosocial Uncertainty Scale (PS-US), which articulates the perception of uncertainty in the social context and its psychological experience. It was validated with a sample of 1596 students and active professionals (employed and unemployed). By randomly dividing this sample in three sub-samples, the following analyses were performed: exploratory factor analysis (sample one:N= 827); preliminary confirmatory factor analysis identifying the final version of the scale (sample two:N= 382); confirmatory factor analysis (sample three:N= 387). Multi-group analysis was used to assess measurement invariance, gender, sociocultural level, and group of origin invariance, by using samples two and three. Group differences were explored with the complete sample through Multiple Indicators and Multiple Causes (MIMIC) Models. Associations between this scale and the Uncertainty response Scale were explored through Structural Equation Modelling. Exploratory and confirmatory analyses’ results showed good internal consistency and overall good psychometric qualities. The scale reached full metric invariance across groups, gender, SCL level and group of origin. Results highlight the sensitivity of the scale towards social vulnerability, proving the existence of sociocultural levels’ effects on experiences of psychosocial uncertainty within working contexts, relationships and community living and self-defeating beliefs; and gender and students versus professionals’ effects on psychosocial uncertainty. Furthermore, the scale associated significantly with Uncertainty Response Scale’s dimensions, specifically with emotional uncertainty, which can be considered a self-defeating strategy. Results suggest that emotional coping strategies, are explained by psychosocial uncertainty by 57%, and so, may have social origins.

Over the last twenty‐five years, there has been an increase in the availability of published checklists and schedules which allow practitioners to identify the strengths of children and young people, including those with special educational needs. While helpful, these assessments are unable to tell us about the nature of contextual factors which support the expression of particular strengths. In this study, we took a situative perspective to explore how specific classroom practices facilitated strengths. A multiple case study design was used to analyse practices nominated by three children/young people with special educational needs. Qualitative analysis revealed how aspects of practice afforded the opportunity for each child to participate in ways which they equated with their strengths. This style of strength‐based assessment led to a more sustained examination of supportive practice features than would have been achieved through interview alone.