Epistemological fruit salad: Broadening methodology in positive psychology research to develop contextualised interventions and understandings of well-being

ABSTRACT

The newly developing field of positive psychology has largely ignored the context of the individual in both research design and reporting. Limited knowledge exists about how people in different contexts (as opposed to cultures) experience well-being. Consequently, many positive psychological interventions (PPIs) are de-contextualised and applied universally. We argue that it is critical for the positive psychology field to adopt different research paradigms and methods to generate more contextual knowledge about well-being. We aim to demonstrate that contextual knowledge of well-being will generate more meaningful and useful information that can be used to inform future applied interventional research. The current article showcases combinations of different methodologies and demonstrates how each has led to varying understandings of well-being in different occupational contexts. The authors argue that contextualised knowledge of well-being can benefit the applied nature of positive psychology and increase the effectiveness of PPIs.

KEYWORDS:

• Well-being
• intervention
• positive psychology
• vocation
• mixed methods research
• Grounded Theory
• prototype analysis
• case study methodology
• context-focused positive psychological interventions

Acknowledgments

Jacqui Synard received doctoral research funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Ontario Graduate Scholarships program. The other research outlined in this article received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Managers, labourers, sales, technician/trade, clerical/administration, machinery operator/drivers, professionals, community/personal services: based on Statistics New Zealand categorizations.

2. Police officers, paramedics, fire fighters.

3. Subjective Happiness Scale, Satisfaction with Life Scale, Positive and Negative Affect Scale, Meaning in Life Questionnaire, Brief Resilience Scale, and Patient Health-4 Questionnaire.