Emerging Meaning-Making: Combining Qualitative Methods in a Study of Women's Ambivalence Toward Makeup

The present study aims to demonstrate the importance of a method combination in qualitative research to explore meaning-making processes. By analyzing women's ambivalence toward cosmetics, we illustrate how a combination of qualitative methods can make sense when we want to capture the emergence of meaning-making in the most direct possible way. We combined the double-blank method, the qualitative interview and the go-along method. We also present a different form of interview, the interview 'by doing', which involves asking participants to do an activity, during or after which the interviewer asks questions referring to their direct thoughts and emotions they had while doing what they did. We demonstrate how this combination of qualitative methods helped us to get closer to the emerging meaning-making. We also explain why such a combination should be encouraged in qualitative research, what the possible limits are and present some ideas of other methodical combinations for further research in qualitative psychology.