Use of a critical constructivist, community-engaged approach to understand commercial determinants of breast cancer using online industry documents: The situational scoping method
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In the digital age, online industry documents have become an available and abundant source to inform qualitative health research on the commercial determinants of health. I offer the situational scoping method as an approach that applies rigorous and transparent methods to conduct an overview of large databases of industry documents by focusing on specific empirical “situations” as the object of study. It is conducted by a collective of transdisciplinary researchers and community members who shape knowledge production based on their unique experience and opinions about which situations are deemed essential for emancipatory action. The situational scoping method is rooted in a critical constructivist epistemology and consists of three stages: 1) identification of a broad range of external events over time perceived by industries as a threat or opportunity to business interests; 2) selection of a sample of external events for further analysis; and 3) social worlds/arenas mapping of industry responses to selected external events. I describe the epistemological and methodological influences, development, and procedures of the situational scoping method drawing from my experience conducting a pilot study with a project team engaged in scoping of documents related to environmental exposures and breast cancer in the University of California, San Francisco Industry Documents Library, which houses millions of documents produced by the tobacco, opioids, chemical, drug, food, and fossil fuel industries. This method enhances traditional tobacco documents research by engaging a collective or researchers and community members, offering a systematic approach to assessing a large corpus of industry documents, employing visual tools, and providing facilitation and research training. This study advances the use of qualitative methods in industry documents research.
