This chapter is about the ways that psychology appears in, and is used in, the process of research. More particularly we will be considering the way psychological terms, orientations, constructions and displays are manifest, and practically drawn on, in market research focus groups. This study reflects a broader concern with what psychology is for in the different practices, everyday and institutional, intimate and public, in which it appears. The interest here is to contribute to the literature on method as an interactional and discursive accomplishment and at the same time to contribute to the broader literature of discursive psychology. We will start with some comments on the general approach of discursive psychology and then consider research on the interactional accomplishment of research methods.

Discursive psychology

Discursive psychology (henceforth DP) has been developed in a series of studies, demonstrations and overviews, and been refined through debates with a varied range of cognitive and social psychologists, critical discourse analysts, ethnomethodologists, sociolinguists and ethnographers. Edwards (1997) and Edwards and Potter (1992) are foundational texts; Edwards (2005) and Potter (2003) review and summarise DP; Hepburn and Wiggins (2005b) and the current volume collect together recent DP-inspired studies. DP has a rather different object than most of the different traditions that have characterised psychology. It focuses on psychology as embedded in interaction, and as something that gives interaction sense and coherence. Ultimately the topic of DP is psychology from the participants' perspective.