The Method is the Message: How Qualitative Research Has Advanced Constructivist Values in Psychology

In this paper, we consider how methods not only guide how research should be conducted, but also act as a vehicle that advances sets of values within a field. To provide context, we review the historical forces that led an early psychology to privilege post-positivist experimental methods, resulting in a narrowing of acceptable subjects and research tools for inquiry. Psychology then shifted toward a resurgence of qualitative methods that were rooted in human science traditions and centered meaning, context, and lived experience. Because the field of psychology is often defined by its methods, the rise of constructivist qualitative traditions has fostered major shifts in the field, challenging prior perspectives and broadening the questions that were studied. In the form of methods, constructivist practices have been institutionalized, so it has become routine that qualitative researchers engage in epistemological reflection, researcher reflexivity, and critical and contextualized meaning-making. Looking toward the future, two trends within qualitative methods can further promote constructivist ideas within psychological science: (1) the methodization of the feminist concept of epistemic privilege; and (2) greater recognition of embodied, empathic forms of knowing, including felt sense. Together, these developments suggest that as qualitative methods evolve, they will continue to redefine how psychologists study experience, leading the discipline toward an increasingly constructivist science.