blackmail (adults help out of guilt, concern about inheritance, worry that siblings will be favoured unless they help)? Is the help reciprocal? What were the patterns of help in the past? What is the history of parent-child relationships in this family? What particular forms of help are given? What type of help is withheld? Why do people give the help? How happily is it accepted? What happens if help is not offered? What are the norms regarding family loyalty and help within the community, class and ethnic group in which this family is situated? What are the rules of inheritance in this society? What are the legal obligations, if any, of children to care for elderly parents? We would need to address these and other questions before we could build up a picture of the meaning of intergenerational help and the possible causes of help in a particular case. To isolate the behaviour from this broader context and to strip it of the meaning given to it by actors is to invite misunderstanding and thus threaten the internal validity of the study. To take a further example: our research goal may be to gain an understanding of drug addiction. To make sense of addiction in a particular case we would need to understand its social and institutional context. Was addiction the outcome of medical treatment to control pain (addiction from treatment)? Did it originate with emotional distress following relationship breakdown (addiction as escape)? Was drug use a taken for granted part of the immediate social context in which the person lived (addiction as conformity)? Did the person come from a very anti-drug background (addiction as rebellion)? The context is all-important for understanding the phenomenon (addiction) and presumably is crucial in shaping appropriate ways of managing or treating the addiction.