Pioneers of Qualitative Research - Mildred Blaxter
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Mildred Blaxter was an influential sociologist of health and health inequality who began her research career at the Medical Research Council based at Aberdeen University. Following Aberdeen she was at the University of East Anglia before ending her career as Honorary Professor at the University of Bristol. Her research throughout this time focused on narratives and inequalities in health, 'social capital' theory, disability and chronic illness, and consumers of the NHS.
Blaxter made many key contributions to medical sociology including demonstrating the use of qualitative methods in health research. Her first major study was The Meaning of Disability: A Sociological Study of Impairment (1976) which used longitudinal qualitative techniques to look at the interaction of clients and professionals in relation to disability and chronic illness. This was followed by one of her most important and influential studies, Mothers and Daughters (1982), which examined beliefs and attitudes to health and medical care among three generations of women.
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In 1985 she joined the Health and Lifestyle Survey at Cambridge University and worked on a number of the surveys carried out as part of the project. This allowed her to further innovate in the use of qualitative methods. Her findings were published as Health and Lifestyles (1990).
Establishing and encouraging the validity of qualitative research in medical sociology was a major achievement of Blaxter. This played a crucial part in her major work as co-ordinator of the ESRC Programme on Aids and HIV Research.
In later life, Mildred edited respected journals such as Social Science and Medicine and Sociology of Health and Illness, whilst continuing to embrace her love of gardening and climbing.
Major studies
SN 4943: Mothers and Daughters: Accounts of Health in the Grandmother Generation, 1945-1978
This research examined beliefs and attitudes to health and medical care, inter-generational relationships, and the social history of members of a grandmother generation. The original study also included interviews with daughters, although the archived collection contains only the grandmother interviews.
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SN 2218: Health and Lifestyle Survey, 1984-1985
This study is one of a number of archived collections representing data from a national survey of 9,000 individuals carried out by an interdisciplinary team including Mildred Blaxter. It investigated issues such as measured fitness, declared health, psychological status and attitudes and beliefs regarding health.
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The Pioneers project
Following its creation in 1994, ESDS Qualidata was concerned to learn that some classic social research datasets, most less than fifty years old, had been lost forever.
As a consequence, ESDS Qualidata set itself the goal of seeking out surviving data from pioneering examples of social research. It has been able to rescue a number of datasets from classic studies, such as Mildred Blaxter's Mothers and Daughters. These are now safely deposited in the UK Data Archive and other UK research archives.
Among other such classic pioneering studies are Dennis Marsden's Mothers Alone and Peter Townsend's The Last Refuge.
- SN 5072: Mothers Alone: Poverty and the Fatherless Family, 1955-1966
- SN 4750: Last Refuge, 1958-1959
ESDS Qualidata continues its rescue project and is always on the lookout for data from other pioneering examples of social research to archive, and thus preserve.
In addition to the original goal of locating, archiving and digitising data from these classic studies, a series of interviews has also been conducted with the researchers themselves.
The oral historian Paul Thompson, himself a pioneer, is in the process of interviewing over thirty pioneering social researchers.
The interviews conducted so far, such as the one with Mildred Blaxter, provide insight into the lives, intellectual development, major influences and research projects of a set of innovative and influential social researchers. Particularly interesting is the interviewees' discussion of how their methodological approaches developed over the course of their academic lives.
In the summer of 2009, ESDS Qualidata launched its 'Pioneers of Qualitative Research' web pages: .
These web pages provide, for each pioneer:
- online access to extracts and audio clips from the pioneer interviews
- a list of the datasets available from the UK Data Archive
- background information on the pioneers
- a list of their key publications
For those interested in the full interview transcripts and audio files, these are also available for download. Mildred Blaxter’s fascinating interview, the latest to be uploaded, will be available imminently.
www.esds.ac.uk/qualidata qualidata@esds.ac.uk
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