Newsgroups: bit.listserv.qualrs-l
Date:         Thu, 24 Dec 1992 07:59:50 PST
From:         David Morgan <HJDM@PSUORVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Psychology Journals

  In response to some earlier exchanges about where Todd Jennings might
publish his qualitative work, I did a little spadework in the library, and
I can now report that psycholgists indeed have it tougher than those of
us in many other disciplines. I mostly looked at Social Psychology, both
because that is my own field, and because it seemed reasonably close to
Todd's interests. It also should have been the place where connections to
more qualitatively oriented disciplines would have created the most options.
  I did find two useful outlets. One is the _Eurpoean Journal of Social
Psychology_ which is largely experimental, but does include a variety of
different things (plus Todd's subject matter on human rights advocates
would fit in well). The other is _Social Psychology Quarterly_ which is
published by the American Sociological Association, which means it isn't
exactly an APA journal, but it is focused on the broad topic of social
psychology from a number of different points of view.
  Some major disappointments were the _British Journal of Social Psychology_,
_Basic and Applied Social Psychology_, and _Journal of Applied Social
Psychology_. I had noticed in citations that the later two had published
some work with focus groups, but this turned out to involve using the
focus group as an attitude-change manipulation that was measured using
pre-post questionnaires (seems to me Kurt Lewin might have been on to
something similar about 50 years ago, maybe he forget to make it trendy by
calling it a focus group!).
  One ray of hope was an article in the _British Journal of Psychology_
by Henwood and Pigeon, 83:97-111 (1992) that called attention to the lack
of qualitative research in psychology and provided some discussion on the
uses of grounded theory as one way to resolve this. They also cite several
recent and forthcoming articles that all make similar points in a variety of
journals, so maybe there is a bit of a groundswell. At least there are
folks to cite who say you should be doing what you are doing.
  What all of this points to is a tendency for dsiciplinary journals to
emphasize the dominant methods within their disciplines. Even the two
journals that I did find accepting qualitative research were really at
"crossroads," either by bridging different countries in Europe or different
disciplines within social psychology. All of which suggests to me that a
topic-focused or inter-disciplinary journal is going to be more accepting
than a "pure" psychology journal. One obvious reason is that more inter-
disciplinary journals get submissions from people who work in a variety of
traditions and thus use a variety of methods.
  As a final suggestion for Todd, he might consider _Journal of Social and
Personal Relationships_ which is an interdisciplinary social psychology
journal that has published qualitative work (including some of my own). They
take a very broad notion of what constitutes a relationship, and there is
a good chance that if you have material on Amnesty-International style
approaches where an advocate acts in behalf of a specific other, this would
probably be an interesting form of relationship from their point of view.
  All of this may well leave you back at the point of trying to strategize
about how to write up qualitative material in a way that will increase its
chance of getting published in a journal that usually publishes quantitative
material. I have to admit that even though I have several thoughts on that
subject, I am hesitant to open the discussion, given the likelihood that I
will be charged with pandering or soliciting prostitution. What do others
think?
==>David Morgan hjdm@PSUORVM
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