Foreword (InDepth Issue 24)

Welcome to the Spring issue of In Depth. It's a thought-provoking one. Although we have moved away from set 'themes' for each issue, it's still interesting to note the connections between our contributors' articles. In this issue, the overall theme is challenge and our ability as researchers to keep challenging what we do.

We constantly question the nature of our work, and the impact it has on our clients, our research participants, and society as a whole. We’re willing to call it when we think we’re wrong, or change if there is a better way of doing things. All three articles end with a clarion call for continued innovation.

Fiona Jack highlights the neglected question of the role of music in creative development research. Given what we now know about our System 1 response to communications, why isn’t this getting more attention?

Charlotte Harris raises the issue of ‘deficitbased narratives’ in social research inadvertently contributing to the problems they’re trying to address. She points out that we have a moral responsibility to report the good as well as the bad, even when our clients haven’t asked for it.

And Rhiannon Price tackles the issue of objectivity in the millennial age and challenges us to #GetSubjective.

Blue Martin
This article was first published in InDepth magazine, May 2016
Copyright © Association for Qualitative Research, 2016