Behavioural research in health: individual subject vs person in context

The question of taking individuals as isolated subjects versus taking them as persons in contexts has obvious methodological implications in terms of what researchers, and ultimately practitioners, will attend to concerning their participants or clients. This has ethical importance inasmuch as anything taken to be beneficial to another human being under, say, the isolated-subject approach, may be seen as less than beneficial when considered from the person-in-context approach Psychologists in the positivist tradition are very much oriented to assessing features of individuals as isolated possessors of attributes varying in value (personality traits, IQ); inadequate attention has been paid to the historical, sociopolitical and microsocial contexts within which individual functioning is intelligible, an argument that taken various forms (Bevan and Kessel, 1994; Danziger, 1980; John, 1994).

This chapter uses the particular case of research directed to the delivery of aural rehabilitation services to illustrate the force of taking an individualist rather than a contextualist approach. Doubtless, some features of what is discussed will be peculiar to that arena; the general issues surely apply to other forms of research work associated with health and well-being.