Linking qualitative health sociology and epidemiology around preventive care: A look back on a heuristic epistemological test
This article offers a perspective on an original research collaboration between sociology, epidemiology and medicine, focusing on the preventive care provided by general practitioners. After reflexively tracing the history and conditions under which doctors were introduced to and involved in qualitative research nourished with social sciences, the authors explain the main epistemological tensions produced by this intellectual encounter in a four-dimensional synthesis (status of culture, meaning of inquiry, conduct of analysis and writing process), as well as the ways in which they were able to resolve these tensions. The social utility of the enterprise is then examined in the light of its potential for valorization, as well as the gains in intelligibility it has enabled, illustrated by the case of gynecological cancer screening.