Week 8: final comment from Mary Hamilton

Original post: https://modules.lancs.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=23783

We have touched on this during the past week: for example Steve's posting about his perspective as a practitioner pointed out 'how the validity of qualitative, interpretive forms of enquiry need to consider strongly the values of the researcher and the researched'. He states his own overriding interest in researching  'to make a difference to his and others' practice'. This is a strong statement about relevance and purpose which some of us may share, while others may have equally strong but other ideas about the goal of the enquiries we would like to pursue.

 

I conclude from this that while the choice of research methods are certainly to do with underpinning philosophical ideas and with practicalities, values also play a big part. 

 

In particular the  kind of relationship a researcher has or wants to have with their respondents, site gatekeepers, funders etc. is crucial. Who does the research make a difference to? Who will see it as relevant and for what purpose? Who has the power to define the research and make other decisions about it? 

 

Often as a researcher you have to, or want to, share this power. In other cases you accept the role of expert and make the decisions yourself. Perhaps in some mixed method designs you are playing more than one role, speaking to different audiences so you want to work with respondents to voice their understandings of the phenomenon in question, but you also  need to compare these findings with a more externally or pre-defined set of descriptions that will speak to the concerns of a funder or some other stakeholder group. 

 

It is conventional these days in a thesis to include a discussion about these issues in which you reflect on your stance as a researcher. There are even theories about how to do this well, such as "standpoint theory" that requires you to be rigorously analytical about what your own position is in the network of relationships and interests you are working within and to communicate this to your readers so they can judge for themselves what kinds of bias or limitations you bring to the research. If anyone is interested in pursuing this, I am happy to offer some references to follow up. For the moment you may feel you have more than enough to be going on with!