1 t I i. ! THE LANDSCAPE Oľ QUALITATIVE RESEARCH ---------------,--------------------------------------------------------------- As always, we appreciate ihc efforts of Lenny ľricdmau, i|ic dircUofrVf marketing at Sage, along with his staff, for (heir indefatigable efforts in getting the word out about the Handbook to teachers, researchers, and incthodologists around ihc world. Astrid Virding was essential in moving this project through production; wc are also grateful to the copy editor, Judy Selhorst, and to those whose proofreading and indexing skills were so central to the publication or the Handbook on which these volumes are based. Finally, as ever, wc thank our spouses, Katherinc Ryan and Egon Gtiba, for their forbearance and constant support. The idea for this three-volume paperback version of the Handbook did not arise in a vacuum, and we arc grateful for the feedback we received from countless teachers and studeníš, both informally and in response to our formal survey. We wish especially to thank the following individuals: Jim Haunt, University of Utah; Joanne Cooper, University of I iawaii; Fran Crawford, Curtin University; Morten linder, University of North Dakota; Rich Hoffman, Miami University of Ohio; Patti Lather» Ohio State University; Michael Lissack, Henley-on-Thames; Martha MacLeod, University of Northern British Columbia; Suzanne Milter, University of Buffalo; Peggy Rios, University of Miami; Cynthia Russell, University of Tennessee,—. Memphis; Diane Schnelker, University of Northern Colorado; Coleen Shannon, University of Texas at Arlington; Barry Shealy, University of Buffalo; Ewart Skinner, Bowling Green State University; Jack Spencer, Purdue University; and Carol Tishchnau, Karolínska Institute. NORMAN K. WiNZlN UnhHtsttij <>f Illinois at UrbarvľGiampalQn yvonnaS. Lincoln Texas AStM University X i. 1 t. I ŕ fc-J í i I I li i í »Ji 1 Introduction Entering the Field of Qualitative Research Norman K Dentin & Yvotma S. Lincoln A Qualitative research has a long and distinguished history in the ^ human disciplines. In sociology the work of tbc "Chicago school" in the 1920s and 1930s established the importance of qualitative research for the study of human group life. In anthropology, during the same period, the pat h breaking studies of Boas, Mead, Benedict, Batcson, livans-Pricchard, Radcliffe-Brown, and Malinowski charted the outlines of the fieldwork method, wherein the observer went (o a foreign setting to study the customs and habits of another society and culture (for a critique of this tradition, sec Rosaldo, 1989, pp. 25-45). Soon qualitative research would be employed in other social science disciplines, including education, social work, and communications. The opening chapter in Part I, Volume 1, by Vidich and Lyman, charts key features of this history. In this introductory chapter we will briefly define the field of qualitative research, then review tltc history of qualitative research in the human disciplines, so that this volume and iis contents may be located in their proper historical moment. A conceptual framework for reading the qualitative AUTHORS'NOTE: vJfc arc grateful i« tlic many people win» have helped wiili iliii chapter, Im ludlng Mltth Allen, Kill hemic I!- Ryan, and I l.u ry wblcoll. 1 6268 ' I '( i L I I ' t I L ' í I I THE LANDSCAPE OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH ______________________I_____________________________._______________________________________________________________ what is available in the context, and what the researcher can do in chat setting. Qualitative research is inherently multimcthod in focus (Brewer ÔC Hunter, 1989). However, the use of multiple methods, or Triangulation, reflects an attempt to secure an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon in question. Objective reality can never be captured. Triangulation is not a lool or a strategy of validation, but an alternative to validation {Denzin, 1989a, 1989b, p. 244; Fielding & Fielding, 1986, p. 33; Flick, 1992, p. 194). Tlie combination of multiple methods, empirical materials, perspectives and observers in a single study is best understood, then, as a strategy that adds rigor, breadth, and depth to any investigation (see Flick, 1992, p. 194). The bricoieur is adept at performing a large number of diverse tasks, ranging from interviewing to observing, to interpreting personal and historical documents, to intensive self-re flection and introspection. The bricoieur reads widely and is knowledgeable about the many interpretive paradigms (feminism, Marxism, cultural studies, constructivism) that can be brought 10 any particular problem. He or she may not, however, feel that paradigms can be mingled, or synthesized. That is, paradigms as overarching philosophical systems denoting particular ontologies, episte-mologics, and methodologies cannot be easily moved between. They represent belief systems that attach the user to a particular worldview. Perspectives, in contrast, are less well developed systems, and can be more easily moved between. The cesearcher-as-^r/co/tw-thcorist works between and within competing and overlapping perspectives and paradigms. The bricoieur understands that research is an interactive process shaped by his or her personal history, biography, gender, social class, race, and ethnicity, and those of the people in the setting. The bricoieur knows that science is power, for all research findings have political implications, l'Jicrc is no value-free science. The bricoieur also knows that researchers all tell stories about the worlds they have studied. Thus the narratives, or stones, scientists tell are accounts couched and framed within specific storytelling traditions, often defined as paradigms (e.g., positivism, postpositivism, constructivism). The product of lbe bricoieur'& labor is a bricolage, a complex, dense, reflexive, collagelike creation that represents the researcher's images, understandings, and interpretations or the world or phenomenon under analysis. This bricolage will, as in the case of a social theorist such as Simmel, connect the parts to the whole, stressing the meaningful relation- 4 L- .1 t _ 1 L ! t J t- _. J V _ 1 V___I V___\ t------1 Mi Inltoduclion ships that operate in the situations and social worlds studied (Weinstein ôc Weinstein, 1991, p. 164). Qualitative Research as a Site of Multiple Methodologies and Research Practices Qualitative research, as a set of interpretive practices, privileges no single methodology over any other. As a site of discussion, or discourse, qualitative research is difficult to define clearly. It has no theory, or paradigm, that is distinctly its own. As Part II of this volume reveals, multiple theoretical paradigms claim use of qualitative research methods and strategies, from constructivism to cultural studies, feminism, Marxism, and ethnic models of study. Qualitative research is used in many separate disciplines, as we will discuss below. It does not belong to a single discipline. Nor does qualitative research have a distinct set of methods (hat are entirely its own. Qualitative researchers use semiotics, narrative, content, discourse, archival, and phonemic analysis, even statistics. They also draw upon and utilize the approaches, methods, and techniques of ethnomctho-dology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, feminism, rhizomatics, deconstrue-tionism, ethnographies, interviews, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, survey research, and participant observation, among others (see Nelson ct al., 1992, p. 2)." All of these research practices "can provide important insights and knowledge" (Nelson et al., 1992, p. 2). No specific method or practice can be privileged over any other, and none can be "eliminated out of hand" (p. 2). Many of these methods, or research practices, are also used in other contexts in (he human disciplines. Lach bears the traces of its own disciplinary history. Thus there is an extensive history of the uses and meanings of ethnography and ethnology in education (Hymes, 1980; LeCompte & Preissle, 1992); participant observation and ethnography in anthropology (Marcus, Volume 1, Chapter 12), sociology (Atkinson Ěc Hammcrslcy, Volume 2, Chapter 5), and cultural studies (Fiske, Volume 1, Chapter 11); textual, hcrmcncutic, feminist, psychoanalytic, semiotic, and narrative analysis in cinema and literary studies (Lentricchia ÔC Mclaughlin, 1990; Nichols, 1985; see also Manning & Cullum-Swan, Volume 3, Chapter 9); archival, material culture, historical, and document analysis in history, biography, and archaeology (Hodder, Volume 3, Chapter 4; Smith, Volume 2, Chapter 8; Tnchman, Volume 2, Chapter 9); and discourse and fi i. u u íl__I b—[ fc-J h—I THE LANDSCAPE OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH conversational analysis in communications and education (Holstein &c Gubrium, Volume 2, Chapter 6). The many histories thai surround each method or research strategy reveal how multiple uses and meanings arc brought to each practice, lextual analysis in literary studies, for example, often treat texts as self-contained systems. On lbe other hand, a researcher employing a cultural studies or feminist perspective would read a text in terms of its location within a historical moment marked by a particular gender, race, or class ideology. A cultural studies use of ethnography would bring a set of understandings from postmodernism and poststructuralism to the project. These understandings would likely not be shared by mainstream postpositivist sociologists (see Atkinson" & Hammersley, Volume 2, Chapter 5; AUheidc St Johnson, Volume 3, Chapter 10). Similarly, postpositivist and poststructural historians bring different understandings and uses to the methods and findings of historical research (see Tuchman, Volume 2, Chapter 9). These tensions and contradictions arc all evident in the chapters presented here. These separate and multiple uses and meanings of the methods-af qualitative research make it difficult for researchers to agree on any essential definition or the field, for ir is never just one thing/ Still, a definition must be established for use here. We borrow from, and paraphrase. Nelson et al.'s (1992, p. 4) attempt to define cultural studies: Qualitative research is an interdisciplinary, iransdisciplinary, and sometimes counterdisciplinary field. It crosscuts the humanities and the social and physical sciences. Qualitative research is many things at the same lime. It is multiparadigmatic in focus- Its practitioners arc sensitive to the value of the multimcthod approach. They arc committed to the naturalistic perspective, and to the interpretive understanding o/human experience. At the same time, the field is inherently political and shaped by multiple ethical and political positions. Qualitative research embraces two tensions at the same time. On the one hand, it is drawn to a broad, interpretive, postmodern, feminist, and critical sensibility. On the other hand, it is drawn to more narrowly defined posirivist, postpoiieivist, humanistic, and naturalistic conceptions of human experience and its analysis. This rather awkward statement means that qualitative research, as a set of practices, embraces within iis own multiple disciplinary histories, con- fi U ! I, í í. I u t, U U U Introduction staut tensions, and contradictions over the project itself, including its methods and I lie forms its findings and interpretations take. The field sprawls between and crosscuts all of the human disciplines, even including, in some cases, the physical sciences. Its practitioners are variously committed to modern and postmodern sensibilities and the approaches to social research that these sensibilities imply. Resistances to Qualitative Studies The academic and disciplinary resistances to qualitative research illustrate the politics embedded in this field of discourse. The challenges to qualitative research are many. Qualitative researchers are called journalists, or soft scientists. Their work is termed unscientific, or only exploratory, or entirely personal and full of bias. It is called criticism and not theory, or ii is interpreted politically, as a disguised version of Marxism, or humanism. These resistances reflect an uneasy awareness that the traditions of qualitative research commit the researcher to a critique of the positivist project. But the positivist resistance to qualitative research goes beyond the "ever-present desire to maintain a distinction between hard science and soft scholarship" (Carey, 1989, p. 99). The positive sciences (physics, chemistry, economics, and psychology, for example) are often seen as the crowning achievements of Western civilization, and in their practices it is assumed that "truth" can transcend opinion and personal bias (Carey, 1989, p. 99). Qualitative research is seen as an assault on this tradition, whose adherents often retreat into a "value-free objectivist science" (Carey, 1989, p. 104) model to defend their position. They seldom attempt to make explicit, or to critique, the "moral and political commitments in their own contingent work" (Carey, 1989, p. 104). The opposition to positive science by the postpositivists (see below) and the postsiructuralisis is seen, then, as an attack on reason and truth. At the same time, the positive science attack on qualitative research is regarded as an attempt to legislate one version of truth over another. This political terrain defines the many traditions and strands of qualitative research: the British tradition and its presence in other national contexts; the American pragmatic, naturalistic, and interpretive traditions in sociology, anthropology, communications, and education; the German and French phenomenological, hermeneutic, semiotic, Marxist, structural, and poststructural perspectives; feminist, African American studies, Latino studies, gay and lesbian studies, and studies of indigenous and aboriginal 7 Ilíi t____I b_____I. fc_____I fc—I fc—i fc—I t THE LANDSCAPE OF QUAUTAIIVE RESEARCH cultures (Nelson et al., 1992, p. 15). The politics of qualitative research Creates a tension dim informs each of the above traditions. 1 lus icnsion itself is constantly being reexamined and interrogated, as qualitative research confronts a changing historical world, new intellectual positions, ami its own institutional and academic conditions. To summarize: Qualitative research is many tilings to many people. Its essence is twofold: a commitment to some version of the naturalistic, interpretive approach to its subject matter, and an ongoing critique of the politics and mejhods of positivism. Wc turn now to a brief discussion of the major differences between qualitative and quantitative approaches to research. Qualitative Versus Quantitative Research The word qualitative implies an emphasis on processes and meanings thai arc not rigorously examined, or measured (if measured at all), in terms of quantity, amount, intensity, or frequency. Qualitative researchers stress the socially constructed nature of reality, the intimate relationship between the researcher and what is studied, and the situational constraints that shape inquiry Such researchers emphasize the value-laden nature of inquiry. They seek answers to questions thai stress how social experience is created and given meaning. In contrast, quantitative studies emphasize the measurement and analysis of causal relationships between variables, not processes. Inquiry is purported to be within a value-free framework. Resesrch Styles: Doing the Same Things Differently? •- Or course, both qualitative and quantitative researchers "think they know something about society worth telling to others, and they use a variety of forms, media and means to communicate their ideas anil findings" (Ucckcr, 19K6, p. 122). Qualitative research differs from quantitative research in five significant ways (Keeker, 1993). These points of difference turn on different wtays of addressing the same set of issues. They return always to the politics of research, anil who has the power to legislate correct solutions Co these problems. Uses of positivism. First, both perspectives are shaped by the positivist and post positivist traditions in the physical and social sciences (sec the discus- G i i. i i, i r, i i, i i. i i. i i. i i Introduction sion below). These two positive science traditions hold to naive and critical realist positions concerning reality and its perception. In the positivist version it is contended that there is a reality out there to be studied, captured, and understood, whereas postpositivists argue lhal nalily can never be fully apprehended, only approximated (Cuba, 1990, p. 22). Post positivism relies on multiple methods as a way of capturing as much of reality as possible. At the same time, emphasis is placed on the discovery and verification of theories. Traditional evaluation criteria, such as internal and external validity, are stressed, as is the use of qualitative procedures that lend themselves to structured (sometimes statistical) analysis. Computer-assisted methods of analysis that permit frequency counts, tabulations, and low-level statistical analyses may also be employed. The positivist and pOStpositivist traditions linger like long shadows over the qualitative research project. Historically, qualitative research was defined within the positivist paradigm, where qualitative researchers attempted to do good positivist research with less rigorous methods and procedures. Some mid-century qualitative researchers (e.g., Becker, Gccr, Hughes, & Strauss, 1961) reported participant observation findings in terms of quasksiaiistics. As recently as 1990, two leaders of the grounded theory approach to qualitative research attempted to modify the usual canons of good (positívístic) science to fit their own postposiiivist conception of rigorous research (Strauss & Corbin, 1990; see also Strauss 8c Corbin, Volume 2, Chapter 7; but also see Glaser, 1992). Some applied researchers, while claiming to be atheoretical, fit within the positivist or postpositivist framework by default. Spindler and Spindler (1992) summarize their qualitative approach ro quantitative materials: "Instrumentation and quantification arc simply procedures employed to extend and reinforce certain kinds of data, interpretations and test hypotheses across samples. Both must be kept in their place. One must avoid their premature or overly extensive use as a security mechanism" (p. 69). Although many qualitative researchers in the postpositivist tradition use statistical measures, methods, ami documents as a way of locating a group of subjects within a larger population, ihcy seldom report their findings in terms of the kinds of complex statistical measures or methods to which quantitative researchers are drawn (<-'-g-> path, regression, or log-linear analyses). Much of applied research is also atheoretical. Acceptance of postmodern sensibilities. The use of quantitative, positivist methods and assumptions has been rejected by a new generation of 9 990345