25 June 2024

University of Brescia, Italy

Engaging Qualitatively with Healthcare Communication

Course Leader
Professor Srikant Sarangi, Aalborg University (Denmark) and Cardiff University (UK)

Language/communication-based healthcare studies – concerned with talk, text and other modalities (discourse, more generally) – have been carried out over the past five decades, both within quantitative and qualitative research paradigms. Within the qualitative tradition, in addressing a range of themes, researchers adopt different methodological and analytical perspectives when engaging with talk data (e.g., clinical encounters, telephone helplines, research interviews) and text data (e.g., websites, emails, text messages, media representations, illness narratives). One of the challenges in healthcare communication research is to optimize synergy between areas of thematic interest and available analytical frameworks mediated by datasets.

Within what can be broadly captured as theme-oriented discourse analysis, this masterclass will be primarily devoted to ‘activity analysis’ which is distinctive in at least three ways: mapping of structural, interactional and thematic trajectories; relationality concerning focal themes and analytic themes; and role performance vis-à-vis participant structure. Additionally, attention will be given to ‘account analysis’ which orients to the rhetorical properties of language/communication data.

There are four parts to the Masterclass: two lectures comprising (i) an overview of themes and concepts in healthcare communication research and (ii) the trajectories of engaging with healthcare data from multiple perspectives; (iii) an exercise in sample data analysis; and (iv) a discussion of concerns arising from participants’ own research experiences.

The Masterclass is targeted at both early career and experienced researchers across disciplinary boundaries with an interest in qualitative inquiry.

Provisional Programme:

The Pre-Comet Masterclass will be held in Room B3 (Santa Chiara).

08.30-09.00            Registration / Welcome
09.00-09.30            Introduction
09.30-11.00            Health communication research: An overview of concepts and themes
11.00-11.30            Tea/Coffee break
11.30-13.00            Engaging with health communication data from multiple perspectives
13.00-14.00            Lunch
14.00-15.30            Data session: group work
15.30-15.45            Tea/Coffee break
15.45-16.30            Forum discussion on themes raised by participants