Collective findings, individual interpretations: an illustration of a pluralistic approach to qualitative data analysis

The establishment of qualitative approaches in the mainstream of psychology research facilitates innovation in their use, both singly and in combination. In this article, we describe a pluralistic qualitative analysis of the transcript of a semi-structured interview on the topic of second-time motherhood using Grounded Theory, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Narrative Analysis, and Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. Each approach encapsulates different epistemological assumptions and is employed by a different analyst. We present key collective findings and the different interpretations of these findings by each analyst. We discuss how a pluralistic qualitative approach to data analysis can aid the quest to “know more” about a phenomenon by providing a more holistic, multilayered understanding of data that works across epistemologies