What watching others watching can tell us: using video vignettes alongside narrative interviews to access multiple positions and embodied information in cross-cultural mother-infant research

ABSTRACT

Culturally-embedded and embodied understandings of interaction, transmitted intergenerationally, and often non-consciously through sensory and affective memory, are notoriously difficult to access. Such information is often contained in implicit memory and is not readily available for narrative explanation. Alternative methodologies that can access these models of meaning are required. While videos of mother-infant interaction have long been used for both assessment and clinical intervention, in this paper, the use of participant commentary during observation of interactional videos as a qualitative research method, alongside narrative interviews, is proposed. The utility of this dual method is demonstrated through its use in a study aimed at understanding local understandings of maternal sensitive responsiveness in a South African township setting. By analysing participant responses to video material alongside their answers to interview questions, this paper suggests that participant reflection on video material utilised alongside narrative interviewing allows for analysis and interpretation of shifting participant identifications and positions, capturing greater complexity in understandings of culturally-embedded parent-infant interaction.

KEWORDS:

• parenting research
• cross-cultural research
• participant identification and positionality
• psychosocial research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The participant’s name has been changed to protect her anonymity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nicola Dawson

Katherine Bain is a clinical psychologist, researcher, and Associate Professor in the School of Human and Community Development at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her research interests lie in the cultural interfacing of developmental theories.

Katherine Bain

Nicola Dawson is a counseling psychologist, who trained clinically and completed her doctorate at the University of the Witwatersrand. Presently she works at the Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust, providing infant mental health services to a culturally diverse Southern African population. Nicola's doctoral studies focused on investigating optimal responsive infant care in adverse and culturally diverse contexts.