Wehrens Rik
Institute of Health Policy and Management, Erasmus University, Room J8 - 55, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR, Rotterdam, The Netherlands,
Health Care Anal. 2015 Sep;23(3):253-71. doi: 10.1007/s10728-014-0273-8.
This paper explores the potential and relevance of an innovative sociological research method known as the Imitation Game for research in health care. Whilst this method and its potential have until recently only been explored within sociology, there are many interesting and promising facets that may render this approach fruitful within the health care field, most notably to questions about the experiential knowledge or 'expertise' of chronically ill patients (and the extent to which different health care professionals are able to understand this experiential knowledge). The Imitation Game can be especially useful because it provides a way to map this experiential knowledge more systematically, without falling in the dual trap of either over-relying on in-depth, but highly specific phenomenological 'insider'-approaches that are hard to generalize, or, alternatively, problematically reducing the rich life-worlds of patients to a set of indicators in a questionnaire. The main focus of this paper is theoretical and conceptual: explaining the Imitation Game method, discussing its usefulness in the health care domain, and exploring the ways in which the approach can be utilized for chronic illness care. The paper presents both a conceptual and empirical exploration of how the Imitation Game method and its underlying theoretical concepts of 'contributory expertise' and 'interactional expertise' can be transferred from the sociological realm to the field of health care, what kinds of insights can be gained from the method, which methodological issues it may raise, and what potentially fruitful research routes can be explored. I argue that the Imitation Game can be thought of as a 'social learning experiment' that simultaneously enables the participants to learn from each other's perspectives, allows researchers to explore exciting new possibilities, and also offers the tools to intervene in the practice that is being studied.
本文探讨了一种名为“模仿游戏”的创新社会学研究方法在医疗保健研究中的潜力和相关性。尽管这种方法及其潜力直到最近才在社会学领域得到探索，但有许多有趣且有前景的方面可能使这种方法在医疗保健领域富有成效，最显著的是关于慢性病患者的经验知识或“专业技能”（以及不同医疗保健专业人员能够理解这种经验知识的程度）的问题。“模仿游戏”可能特别有用，因为它提供了一种更系统地描绘这种经验知识的方法，而不会陷入两种双重陷阱：要么过度依赖深入但高度特定的现象学“局内人”方法，这种方法难以推广；要么将患者丰富的生活世界有问题地简化为问卷中的一组指标。本文的主要重点是理论和概念性的：解释“模仿游戏”方法，讨论其在医疗保健领域的有用性，并探索该方法可用于慢性病护理的方式。本文对“模仿游戏”方法及其“贡献性专业技能”和“互动性专业技能”的基础理论概念如何从社会学领域转移到医疗保健领域、可以从该方法中获得哪些见解、它可能引发哪些方法学问题以及可以探索哪些潜在富有成效的研究途径进行了概念性和实证性探索。我认为“模仿游戏”可以被视为一种“社会学习实验”，它同时使参与者能够从彼此的角度学习，让研究人员探索令人兴奋的新可能性，还提供了干预正在研究的实践的工具。
