A Grounded Theory of Credibility Work and Illness
Explication and Application to the Case of Women on Trial in Health Care
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21424329 |
|---|---|
| Authors | C M Thompson (0000-0002-5946-7153, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA, corresponding author), Sara Babu (0000-0002-3004-3066, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA), Shana Mako (0009-0002-8423-8181, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Shana Makos (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue | 8 |
| Pages | 1059-1085 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Communication Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0093-6502 • E-ISSN: 1552-3810 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00936502231184318 |
| OpenAlex | W4383620891 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 21 |
| References cited | 55 |
We make the communicative labor of illness credibility explicit by moving the concept of work into critical interpersonal theory to develop a grounded theory of credibility work . Synthesizing multi-disciplinary literature and drawing on interviews with 36 women in the United States whose health issues have been dismissed by health care providers, friends, and family, we forward a definition of credibility work, six postulates about its nature, and a broad typology of credibility work strategies. We then apply our theory to the data, contextualizing the strategies women engaged with their health care providers using the metaphor of a trial— building a case and presenting the case —and including the communicative double binds that accompanied their efforts. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this research, namely attention to the cultural, material, and embodied significance of communication labor endured to be believed, understood, and taken seriously for health issues
Credibility · Epistemology · Explication · Grounded theory · Health care · Health communication · Interpersonal communication · Linguistics · Metaphor · Political science · Qualitative research · Social science · Sociology · Typology · Communication in Education and Healthcare · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Social Psychology
The invisible labor of assimilation by individuals with stigmatized identities
Theory of communicative (dis)enfranchisement
Being Sick Does Not Define You”
“I felt like they were doing things to me, not with me”
“I have to fight for them to investigate things”
Grieving “The Death of Possibility”
Coming to Terms with Our Racecar Brains
Developing Measures for and Testing the Theory of Communicative Disenfranchisement (TCD) in the Context of Chronic Pain
“Saving us to Death”
Cycles of (Dis)engagement
Framing Chronic Pain in U.S. News Coverage of the Opioid Epidemic (2012-2022)
The Autoimmune Library
(Re)making Scales
A Longitudinal Interview Study of People with Long Covid
The Communicative Disenfranchisement of Disabled Individuals During Healthcare Appointments
Heteronormativity as Hegemonic Ideology
Communication work about chronic pain
The communicative labor of LGBTQ+ individuals to live authentically with/in families
“It’s Like a Second Job
Navigating Healthcare as a Woman of Color With Autoimmune Disease
Anticipating, experiencing, and responding to disenfranchising talk
“Brave Men” and “Emotional Women”
Accounting for the visit
Credibility work and moral evaluation at the ED
Theorizing disenfranchisement as a communicative process
African American Women’s Maternal Healthcare Experiences
Women’s Experiences of Health-Related Communicative Disenfranchisement
Parents’ Communication Work in the Management of Food Allergies
Communication Work About Chronic Unexplained Pain
Healthcare Providers’ Impact on the Care Experiences of Patients with Endometriosis
“It’s All in Your Head”
The labor of talking to stay healthy and socially connected
“I Don’t Claim to Be the World’s Foremost Expert, But . . . ”
Epistemic injustice in healthcare
Feminist, Queer, Crip
What counts as critical interpersonal and family communication research? A review of an emerging field of inquiry
Testing Vicarious Experiences as Antecedents of Medical Mistrust
Introduction
Enigmatic Illness
What’s the Big “D”? Contemporary Approaches to Discourse in Interpersonal and Family Communication Scholarship
Rethinking the Rhetorical Epistemics of Gaslighting
Where Is the Critical Empirical Interpersonal Communication Research? A Roadmap for Future Inquiry into Discourse and Power
Crying wolf
It’s My Job Now, I Guess”
Unending Work and Care
Mapping the Margins
Toward a theory of schizophrenia
How and why patients made Long Covid
Obstetric gaslighting and the denial of mothers' realities
Encountering the downward phase
Prestige rankings of chronic diseases and disabilities. A survey among professionals in the disability field
I am not the kind of woman who complains of everything
Staying Healthy From Fibromyalgia Is Ongoing Hard Work
Living With a Contested, Stigmatized Illness
It is hard work behaving as a credible patient
Even my sister says I'm acting like a crazy to get a check
Managing chronic illness at home
The need for a standardized conceptual term to describe invalidation of patient symptoms
Erasure of the Credible Subject
The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences
Towards a sociological understanding of medical gaslighting in western health care
Epistemic in/justice in patient participation. A discourse analysis of the Dutch ME/CFS Health Council advisory process
Illnesses you have to fight to get
| Unique citing works | 21 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 7 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 21 |