Transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) people can experience an incongruence between their gender identity and the sex assigned at birth, which for many results in gender dysphoria. International guidelines highlight the importance of gender-affirming interventions (GAIs), whether psychosocial or medical, in supporting mental health and fostering positive emotional change over time. In 2024, the publication of the Cass Review examining evidence on affirming medical treatments for TGD individuals, particularly hormonal interventions, sparked significant public debate. While both the report and subsequent critiques relied heavily on quantitative evidence, such approaches overlook the nuanced and deeply personal ways GAIs influence TGD people's lives, relationships, and aspirations. This qualitative meta-analysis synthesized findings from 15 qualitative studies exploring the consequences of medical and psychosocial GAIs for TGD individuals with an age mean of 33.6 years for adult participants and 15.4 years for under 18 participants. We systematically searched PubMed, APA PsycInfo, Web of Science, and SCOPUS for studies in English, Spanish, or Portuguese, supplemented by reference list searches. Methodological quality was appraised using a 10-item Critical Appraisal Skills Programe Checklist. Data extraction covered methodological features and findings, which were analyzed through a thematic synthesis combining deductive and inductive approaches. This process yielded four domains of investigation: determinants of GAIs, constituents of GAIs, experiences of nonaffirming actions, and consequences of GAIs. Findings underscore the multilevel nature of GAIs, spanning individual, relational, clinical, and structural dimensions, and highlight both affirming practices and ongoing barriers. The results suggest the need to expand qualitative research in diverse contexts and regions to capture cultural differences and commonalities and to integrate qualitative insights into both mixed method research designs and the practice of GAIs.
Research in discursive psychology examines naturally occurring interactions to see how people deal with psychological matters, such as emotions. In the current article, we use examples from a study conducted in a helpline setting to illustrate how discursive psychology provides insights into the moral dimensions of anxiety. Although individuals may use expressions of worry to emphasize the seriousness of a problem in their lives, they also counter a hearing of their problem as existing solely in their mind-that is, as anxiety. Our findings show that callers work to maintain credibility while presenting themselves as anxious and that call takers can support them by acknowledging anxiety as an external force that can overpower individuals, even when they are aware of its nature. By demonstrating how the morality of attributing a problem to the subject can be negotiated through interactional practices that distribute responsibility, this study highlights the value of analyzing emotion in naturally occurring interactions.
Ethnic-racial identity (ERI) is a well-established protective factor for minoritized youths' psychological and academic well-being, yet evidence regarding school-based supports remains fragmented across disciplines and methodologies. This study employs an integrative mixed-method meta-analysis to synthesize evidence and clarify which supports are effective, for whom, and under what conditions they operate. The analysis includes 27 empirical studies published between 2005 and 2025 focusing on minoritized K-12 students in the United States and Canada. Quantitative data from three pre-post studies were pooled using random-effects models, and qualitative findings were synthesized thematically. The quantitative meta-analysis revealed a moderate effect (Hedges's g = 0.49, 95% CI [0.35, 0.64], I-2 = 0%, k = 3). Additional quantitative studies across diverse quasiexperimental and longitudinal designs demonstrated variable but generally positive effects (effect sizes from 0.24 to 0.69). The strongest evidence emerged for structured, curriculum-based interventions and for cascading developmental pathways linking identity exploration, resolution, and cohesion. The qualitative synthesis identified a multilayered ecosystem of support, including culturally sustaining curriculum, culturally responsive pedagogy, culturally matched relationships, and institutionalized equity structures, that fostered ERI affirmation, self-esteem, and sociopolitical agency. Variation in quantitative effects was illuminated by qualitative findings on contextual challenges, including schools as sites of contestation and inequitable implementation across student groups. Findings indicate effective ERI support depends not on isolated programs but on coherent, schoolwide ecosystems characterized by cultural responsiveness, relational safety, and structural equity. Educators, clinicians, and policymakers must align curriculum, pedagogy, and institutional structures to support minoritized youths' identity development.
This study explores whether Nepalese and Fijian nationals serving in the U.K. Armed Forces experienced discrimination and, if so, what impact it had on their careers, well-being, and mental health. A community-engaged research approach was adopted to recruit 25 Gurkha and 14 Fijian veterans from different generations and across a range of ranks and military roles. Data were collected within 10 months using semistructured interviews (in person, on the telephone, and video calls). A reflexive thematic analysis of the transcripts was informed by discussions between the research team, participants, a patient and public involvement and engagement group, and stakeholders. While participants acknowledged improvements to their terms of employment and immigration processes, Gurkha and Fijian veterans of all ages and ranks experienced financial and employment disadvantages during and after their military careers. These impacted on their family relationships and mental health. Their narratives suggest that the roots of discrimination were laid in an Imperial past, which continues to sanction a culture of differential treatment and racism in service. Participants also expressed a strong military identity and took pride from their achievements in the armed forces. The findings show the importance of addressing racism and discrimination in service and improving access to welfare and health support. Despite progressive reforms, immigration and pension remain a source of concern.
Qualitative research in psychology offers few examples of how translation might become part of the research process, both in relation to practical guidance for working with translators and in relation to the analysis and interpretation of translated narratives. In my research with displaced and (im)mobile communities, I regularly rely on translators. In this article, I explain how to build working relationships with translators, which are foundational both for building trust with the communities and to interpreting their stories. The research project presented as a case study is based on interviews with Syrian people who were resettled in an Arab minority-majority city in Southeast Michigan between 2015 and 2019. Through these encounters, I developed kindred narrative inquiry, an approach that involves (a) decentering the researcher in knowledge production by rethinking the visibility of the translators, (b) reconsidering accountability and prioritizing building relationships and relationality over data in the research encounter, and (c) theorizing interdependencies within the context of colonial, capitalist, and patriarchal world order. Drawing on my experiences interviewing forcibly displaced communities, I critique post-positivist assumptions in qualitative research involving translation and offer practical guidance, for researchers and practitioners who rely on interpreters and/or work with migrant communities. In doing so, I highlight how trust can be built and interdependence is cultivated across multiple and layered relational contexts through an anticolonial feminist imagination.
Mentalization is considered one of the key mechanisms of change in psychotherapy of various conditions, such as personality disorders, trauma, somatic symptom disorders, and others. Yet the exact process of change in mentalizing over the course of psychotherapy is still not fully understood beyond the theoretical models and has scarcely been studied systematically in real-life psychotherapy settings. In this study, an in-depth investigation of mentalization processes is attempted based on qualitative material of psychotherapeutic case studies, where mentalization played a central role. We conducted a metasynthesis of 20 published psychotherapy case studies examining mentalization across diverse patient populations and therapeutic orientations, all of which provided rich qualitative data. Therefore, we applied an intensive case-by-case analysis and a theory-building metasynthesis methodology. We particularly paid attention to timing and phase-related phenomena. We developed a psychotherapeutic phase model of change in mentalization with three subsequent phases: (a) "experiencing self in a secure relationship," (b) "mentalizing self," and (c) "mentalizing others." The phases of the model are embedded within the overarching themes of "therapeutic zone of proximal development" and "trustworthy therapeutic alliance." This represents the first empirically grounded process theory of psychotherapeutic change in mentalizing, based on case study data. For each phase, phase-related phenomena are discussed and a possible focus in therapy as well as recommendations for specific interventions.
Psychotherapeutic work with minority clients requires the acquisition of a set of competences that allow therapists to be responsive to specific client needs in this population. Although supervision is widely recognized as an important context for professional development, existing qualitative studies have examined its role in fragmented ways, and no review has systematically explored how therapists benefit from supervision in the work with minority clients. This qualitative meta-synthesis examined the perceived impact of supervision on therapeutic competence in psychotherapists working with minority clients. The term "minorities" encompasses any individual belonging to a category that faces difficulty or insecurity resulting from sociocultural, ethnic, monetary, religious, gender, or sexual orientation aspects. A systematic review of the literature led to the identification of eight published qualitative research studies. The findings from individual studies were subjected to grounded theory meta-analysis. Three clusters were identified: (a) Supervision fosters therapists' self-awareness toward minority clients, (b) supervision deepens the understanding of minority clients, and (c) supervision stimulates a minority-adapted therapeutic approach. Discussion addresses how supervision enhances therapists' competence specifically with minority clients by fostering self-awareness, deepening understanding of clients' unique minority experiences, and supporting the adaptation of therapeutic approaches to better meet their needs. It highlights the importance of recognizing power dynamics within therapy and supervision, as well as addressing therapists' personal reactions and societal contexts to promote more attuned therapeutic work with minority clients.
Drawing on Karen Barad's agential-realist perspective, this article provides conceptual tools for conducting a meta-analysis-synthesis (MAS) that accounts not only for the empirical data and interpretations of primary studies but also for their entangled contextual, procedural, reflexive, and ethical dimensions. Recognizing that scientific networks and methodological procedures are inseparable from the analysis of knowledge production, MAS centers on how published studies come to matter as a body of knowledge. Accordingly, both primary and meta-studies function as active participants in the becoming of knowledge about-and with-the phenomenon within an ongoing intra-activity. This article proposes four iterative stages for developing a MAS framework: (a) mapping the relational intra-actions that configure a specific research field; (b) analyzing the intra-action of agents involved in individual studies to identify patterns of diffraction and entanglement; (c) critically scrutinizing MAS as an apparatus, reflecting on its ethical-onto-epistemological assumptions and possibilities; and (d) exploring the performative effects that the diffractive futures enabled by MAS may have on research and public policy. This process is illustrated through a critical reading of a published meta-synthesis.
Over the past three decades, the discursive turn in psychology has illustrated the social, political, and contextually sensitive nature of race and racism. In distinction to "mainstream" psychological approaches, which might treat race and racism as cognitive or sociostructural phenomena that influence our social lives, discursive psychological work is distinctive in that it has treated race and racism as embedded in our social life, with a concerted focus on how race and racism are oriented to and managed in our social interactions. In this article, we identify the significant contributions of discursive research on race and racism in contrast to mainstream psychological approaches. We then outline ways of advancing the discursive psychology of race and racism through a focus on anti-Black racism to argue that discursive psychological studies can provide a situated investigation of race and racism through (a) prioritizing experiences and responses of Black people to racial encounters and policies, (b) demonstrating how anti-Black racism engages with the routinization of Whiteness, and (c) showing how aspects of sociohistorical context inform the production and negotiation of race and racism. These will propel discursive psychological studies on race and racism to provoke impactful avenues for future research.
Brutal honesty is commonly invoked in everyday discourse, yet psychological research has shed relatively little light on it. While existing research has explored how practicing honesty can be complicated-sometimes even harmful-less attention has been given to what people mean when they describe honesty as "brutal." To develop a framework of people's experiences of brutal honesty, we conducted a constructivist thematic content analysis of accounts from 881 participants (n(actor) = 430, n(receiver) = 251, n(observer) = 200) across 11 anglophone countries (India, Ireland, Kenya, Malta, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, United Kingdom, United States, and Zambia). By combining open-ended qualitative surveys with sampling across 11 countries and an embedded role-based design, this study illustrates the conceptualization of psychological constructs across geographically and culturally varied populations. The resulting framework maps (a) four aspects interpreted as "brutal" (content, delivery, context, and consistency) and three key characteristics of how brutal honesty was described (discomfort, dissonance, and disruption); (b) the construction of brutal honesty in opposition with other concerns and values such as kindness or professionalism; and (c) ten narrative types illustrating diverse experiences and meanings interpreted across roles and situations (e.g., the breaking point, depicting brutal honesty as a result of bottled-up feelings or the commitment, where it is depicted as a moral commitment). Overall, this investigation provides a framework for psychological research directly addressing the idea of brutal honesty.
Interviews offer an important source for capturing subjective descriptions of reasoning under complex real-world conditions. However, existing methods of interview analysis are not designed to systematically trace reasoning processes. Cognitive mapping addresses this gap by providing a structured methodology for identifying and visualizing how individuals reason. Cognitive mapping allows for a new way of coding interviews into the main concepts of reasoning-beliefs, inferences (connections between beliefs), and conclusions or decisions. Substantively, this makes visible the empirically grounded reasoning steps that lead to behavioral outcomes-which can subsequently be compared with the assumptions of existing theories. Methodologically, cognitive maps capture relationships between concepts. This enriches existing qualitative methods by providing systematic approaches to key goals of qualitative analysis-such as understanding how narratives are constructed, identifying links between recurring themes, mapping subjective experiences, examining patterns of conversational turn-taking, and developing theories grounded in data.
Social isolation is a threat to health and well-being in LGBTQ+ communities, particularly with risks of estrangement from families of origin. Given the psychosocial needs for contact with both youth and elders, we endeavored to address this intergenerational gap by developing a protocol for a structured interaction between LGBTQ+ youth and elders. Drawing from narrative frameworks, we developed an intergenerational conversation protocol for sharing personal and cultural-historical stories with the goal of creating opportunities for social connection, identity development, and the expression of generativity. We recruited 20 LGTBQ+ youth (ages 18 – 31), and 20 LGTBQ+ elders (ages 60 – 81) who were placed into dyads for a one-hour conversation over Zoom. Within one week of the conversation, we interviewed each member of the dyad (40 interviews) about their experiences in the conversation. We used reflexive thematic analysis to identify factors that contributed to harmony or tension in the conversation. We identified six themes, some with several subthemes: 1) Establishing Synchronicities, 2) Engaging with Intention, 3) Finding Common Ground, 4) Experiencing Self-expansion, 5) Confronting Stigma, 6) Challenges in Sharing Trauma. Our results speak to the promise of fostering intergenerational connection through a structured storytelling conversation, as well as identifying potential obstacles to such connection.
Recruiting participants is prevalent in psychology and many social sciences. Although qualitative approaches are often positioned as critical alternatives to quantitative methods, underlying assumptions about recruitment are shared across paradigms. These assumptions are that (a) researchers can determine groups of people with relevant identities, (b) recruitment can be accomplished by naming such identities, and (c) participants so recruited will be able to speak to/from these identities. We draw on discursive psychology, ethnomethodology, and conversation analysis to highlight the metatheoretical assumptions of recruiting participants. We show how the categorical logic underpinning recruitment involves problematic power relations. Two case studies illustrate how categories typically characterized as "demographic" (gender and ethnicity) are negotiated by participants in social interaction. We argue that studying naturally occurring data decenters researchers' agendas and offers a powerful way to realize principles like honoring voice or lived experience.
Qualitative methods are sometimes criticized on the grounds that they do not provide "hard" data. However, on inspection, hard data turn out to be produced by unavoidably "soft" human interaction and activities. That means that psychologists must work directly with what people do and say and either transform it into abstractions-with potential distortions along the way-or stay with the raw events to see what questions they may answer. We argue for the latter: using discursive psychology and conversation analysis to ground claims about human sociality in the evidence that it provides, unfiltered, in everyday interaction. However, taking this argument further, we demonstrate how discursive psychological and conversation analytic scrutiny may reveal the "softness" of both quantitative (experiments, standardization) and qualitative (interview and survey questions) research tools, with implications for the production, openness, and validity of psychological knowledge.
For those who wish to learn how to "do" Discursive Psychology (DP), there are book chapters and textbooks that provide detailed explanations. What is missing, however, is a concise hands-on guide to enable novices to quickly become familiar with the analytic stages of DP. This article addresses this need and illustrates the processes of how to conduct a DP analysis using a worked example from our own research. The article differs from other "how to" methods chapters in two ways. First, we combine theoretical considerations and methods in one, clarifying why a specific technique is used alongside how it is used. The epistemological assumptions underpinning DP are thus explicated in reference to each of the analytical steps. The second difference is that the article reveals the behind-the-scenes work of a published piece of analysis. The article is written as an active dialogue with footnoted comments and discussions about decisions made throughout the analytic process. This article thus aims not only to provide a concise guide to DP analysis but also to increase transparency and demystify methodological procedures. Aimed at novice researchers, the article furthermore seeks to advance DP through increasing its accessibility to a wider audience.
