Elements of naturalistic inquiry
The social and educational world is a messy place, full of contradictions, richness, complexity, connectedness, conjunctions and disjunctions. It is multilayered, and not easily susceptible to the atomization process inherent in much numerical research. It has to be studied in total rather than in fragments if a true understanding is to be reached. Chapter 1 indicated that several approaches to educational research are contained in the paradigm of qualitative, naturalistic and ethnographic research. The characteristics of that paradigm (Boas 1943; Blumer 1969; Lincoln and Guba 1985; Woods 1992; LeCompte and Preissle 1993) include the following:
O Humans actively construct their own meanings of situations.
O Meaning arises out of social situations and is handled through interpretive processes (see http://www.routledge.com/textbooks/
9780415368780 – Chapter 7, file 7.1. ppt).
O Behaviour and, thereby, data are socially situated, context-related, context-dependent and context-rich. To understand a situation researchers need to understand the context because situations affect behaviour and perspectives and vice versa.
O Realities are multiple, constructed and holistic.
O Knower and known are interactive and inseparable.
O Only time-bound and context-bound working hypotheses (idiographic statements) are possi- ble.
O All entities are in a state of mutual simultaneous shaping, so that it is impossible to distinguish causes from effects.
O Inquiry is value-bound.
O Inquiries are influenced by inquirer values as expressed in the choice of a problem, evaluand or policy option, and in the framing, bounding and focusing of that problem, evaluand or policy option.
O Inquiry is influenced by the choice of the paradigm that guides the investigation into the problem.
O Inquiry is influenced by the choice of the substantive theory utilized to guide the collection and analysis of data and in the interpretation of findings.
O Inquiry is influenced by the values that inhere in the context.
O Inquiry is either value-resident (reinforcing or congruent) or value-dissonant (conflicting).
Problem, evaluand, or policy option, paradigm, theory and context must exhibit congruence (value-resonance) if the inquiry is to produce meaningful results.
O Research must include ‘thick descrip- tions’ (Geertz 1973b) of the contextualized behaviour.
O The attribution of meaning is continuous and evolving over time.
O People are deliberate, intentional and creative in their actions.
O History and biography intersect – we create our own futures but not necessarily in situations of our own choosing.
O Social research needs to examine situations through the eyes of the participants – the task of ethnographies, as Malinowski (1922: 25) observed, is ‘to grasp the point of view of the native [sic], his [sic] view of the world and in relation to his life’.
O Researchers are the instruments of the research (Eisner 1991).
O Researchers generate rather than test hypo- theses.
O Researchers do not know in advance what they will see or what they will look for.
O Humans are anticipatory beings.
O Human phenomena seem to require even more conditional stipulations than do other kinds.
O Meanings and understandings replace proof.
O Generalizability is interpreted as generalizabil- ity to identifiable, specific settings and subjects rather than universally.
O Situations are unique.
O The processes of research and behaviour are as important as the outcomes.
O People, situations, events and objects have meaning conferred upon them rather than possessing their own intrinsic meaning.
O Social research should be conducted in natural, uncontrived, real world settings with as little intrusiveness as possible by the researcher.
O Social reality, experiences and social phe- nomena are capable of multiple, sometimes contradictory interpretations and are available to us through social interaction.
O All factors, rather than a limited number of variables, have to be taken into account.
O Data are analysed inductively, with constructs deriving from the data during the research.
O Theory generation is derivative – grounded (Glaser and Strauss 1967) – the data suggest the theory rather than vice versa.
Lincoln and Guba (1985: 39–43) tease out the implications of these axioms:
O Studies must be set in their natural settings as context is heavily implicated in meaning.
O Humans are the research instrument.
O Utilization of tacit knowledge is inescapable.
O Qualitative methods sit more comfortably than quantitative methods with the notion of the human-as-instrument.
O Purposive sampling enables the full scope of issues to be explored.
O Data analysis is inductive rather than a priori and deductive.
O Theory emerges rather than is pre-ordinate. A priori theory is replaced by grounded theory.
O Research designs emerge over time (and as the sampling changes over time).
O The outcomes of the research are negotiated.
O The natural mode of reporting is the case study.
O Nomothetic interpretation is replaced by idiographic interpretation.
O Applications are tentative and pragmatic.
O The focus of the study determines its boundaries.
O Trustworthiness and its components replace more conventional views of reliability and validity.
LeCompte and Preissle (1993) suggest that ethnographic research is a process involving methods of inquiry, an outcome and a resultant record of the inquiry. The intention of the research is to create as vivid a reconstruction as possible of the culture or groups being studied (p. 235). There are several purposes of qualitative research, for example, description and reporting, the creation of key concepts, theory generation and testing. LeCompte and Preissle (1993) indicate several key elements of ethnographic approaches:
O Phenomenological data are elicited (LeCompte and Preissle 1993: 3).
O The world view of the participants is investigated and represented – their ‘definition of the situation’ (Thomas 1923).
O Meanings are accorded to phenomena by both the researcher and the participants; the process of research, therefore, is hermeneutic, uncovering meanings (LeCompte and Preissle 1993: 31–2).
O The constructs of the participants are used to structure the investigation.
O Empirical data are gathered in their naturalistic setting (unlike laboratories or in controlled settings as in other forms of research, where variables are manipulated).
O Observational techniques are used extensively (both participant and non-participant) to acquire data on real-life settings.
ELEMENTS OF NATURALISTIC INQUIRY 169
Chapter 7
O The research is holistic, that is, it seeks a description and interpretation of ‘total phenomena’.
O There is a move from description and data to inference, explanation, suggestions of causation, and theory generation.
O Methods are ‘multimodal’ and the ethno- grapher is a ‘methodological omnivore’
(LeCompte and Preissle 1993: 232).
Hitchcock and Hughes (1989: 52–3) suggest that ethnographies involve
O the production of descriptive cultural knowl- edge of a group
O the description of activities in relation to a particular cultural context from the point of view of the members of that group themselves
O the production of a list of features constitutive of membership in a group or culture
O the description and analysis of patterns of social interaction
O the provision as far as possible of ‘insider accounts’
O the development of theory.
Lofland (1971) suggests that naturalistic methods are intended to address three major questions:
O What are the characteristics of a social phenomenon?
O What are the causes of the social phenomenon?
O What are the consequences of the social phenomenon?
In this one can observe: the environment; people and their relationships; behaviour, actions and activities; verbal behaviour; psychological stances;
histories; physical objects (Baker 1994: 241–4).
There are several key differences between the naturalistic approach and that of the positivists to whom we made reference in Chapter 1.
LeCompte and Preissle (1993: 39–44) suggest that ethnographic approaches are concerned more with description rather than prediction, induction rather than deduction, generation rather than verification of theory, construction rather than enumeration, and subjectivities rather
than objective knowledge. With regard to the latter the authors distinguish between emic approaches (as in the term ‘phonemic’, where the concern is to catch the subjective meanings placed on situations by participants) and etic approaches (as in the term ‘phonetic’, where the intention is to identify and understand the objective or researcher’s meaning and constructions of a situation) (LeCompte and Preissle 1993: 45).
Woods (1992: 381), however, argues that some differences between quantitative and qualitative research have been exaggerated. He proposes, for example, that the 1970s witnessed an unproductive dichotomy between the two, the former being seen as strictly in the hypothetico- deductive mode (testing theories) and the latter being seen as the inductive method used for generating theory. He suggests that the epistemological contrast between the two is overstated, as qualitative techniques can be used both for generating and testing theories.
Indeed Dobbert and Kurth-Schai (1992: 94–5) urge not only that ethnographic approaches become more systematic but also that they study and address regularities in social behaviour and social structure. The task of ethnographers is to balance a commitment to catch the diversity, variability, creativity, individuality, uniqueness and spontaneity of social interactions (e.g.
by ‘thick descriptions’: Geertz 1973b) with a commitment to the task of social science to seek regularities, order and patterns within such diversity. As Durkheim (1950) noted, there are
‘social facts’.
Following this line, it is possible, therefore, to suggest that ethnographic research can address issues of generalizability – a tenet of positivist research – interpreted as ‘comparability’
and ‘translatability’ (LeCompte and Preissle 1993:
47). For comparability the characteristics of the group that is being studied need to be made explicit so that readers can compare them with other similar or dissimilar groups. For translatability the analytic categories used in the research as well as the characteristics of the groups are made explicit so that meaningful comparisons can be made with other groups and disciplines.
Spindler and Spindler (1992: 72–4) put forward several hallmarks of effective ethnographies:
O Observations have contextual relevance, both in the immediate setting in which behaviour is observed and in further contexts beyond.
O Hypotheses emerge in situ as the study develops in the observed setting.
O Observation is prolonged and often repetitive.
Events and series of events are observed more than once to establish reliability in the observational data.
O Inferences from observation and various forms of ethnographic inquiry are used to address insiders’ views of reality.
O A major part of the ethnographic task is to elicit sociocultural knowledge from participants, rendering social behaviour comprehensible.
O Instruments, schedules, codes, agenda for interviews, questionnaires, etc. should be generated in situ, and should derive from observation and ethnographic inquiry.
O A transcultural, comparative perspective is usually present, although often it is an unstated assumption, and cultural variation (over space and time) is natural.
O Some sociocultural knowledge that affects behaviour and communication under study is tacit/implicit, and may not be known even to participants or known ambiguously to others. It follows that one task for an ethnography is to make explicit to readers what is tacit/implicit to informants.
O The ethnographic interviewer should not frame or predetermine responses by the kinds of questions that are asked, because the informants themselves have the emic, native cultural knowledge.
O In order to collect as much live data as possible, any technical device may be used.
O The ethnographer’s presence should be declared and his or her personal, social and interactional position in the situation should be described.
With ‘mutual shaping and interaction’ between researchers and participants taking place (Lincoln and Guba 1985: 155), researchers become, as it
were, the ‘human instrument’ in the research, building on their tacit knowledge in addition to their propositional knowledge, using meth- ods that sit comfortably with human inquiry, e.g. observations, interviews, documentary anal- ysis and ‘unobtrusive’ methods (Lincoln and Guba 1985: 187). The advantage of the ‘human instru- ment’ is his or her adaptability, responsiveness, knowledge, ability to handle sensitive matters, ability to see the whole picture, ability to clarify and summarize, to explore, to analyse, to examine atypical or idiosyncratic responses (Lincoln and Guba 1985: 193–4).
The main kinds of naturalistic inquiry are (Ar- senault and Anderson 1998: 121; Flick 2004):
O case study: an investigation into a specific in- stance or phenomenon in its real-life context
O comparative studies: where several cases are compared on the basis of key areas of interest
O retrospective studies: which focus on biographies of participants or which ask participants to look back on events and issues
O snapshots: analyses of particular situations, events or phenomena at a single point in time
O longitudinal studies: which investigate issues or people over time
O ethnography: a portrayal and explanation of social groups and situations in their real-life contexts
O grounded theory: developing theories to explain phenomena, the theories emerging from the data rather than being prefigured or predeter- mined
O biography: individual or collective
O phenomenology: seeing things as they really are and establishing the meanings of things through illumination and explanation rather than through taxonomic approaches or abstrac- tions, and developing theories through the dia- logic relationships of researcher to researched.
The main methods for data collection in naturalistic inquiry (Hammersley and Atkinson 1983) are as follows:
O participant observation
O interviews and conversations
PLANNING NATURALISTIC RESEARCH 171
Chapter 7
O documents and field notes
O accounts
O notes and memos.
Planning naturalistic research
In many ways the issues in naturalistic research are not exclusive; they apply to other forms of research, for example identifying the problem and research purposes; deciding the focus of the study;
selecting the research design and instrumenta- tion; addressing validity and reliability; ethical is- sues; approaching data analysis and interpretation.
These are common to all research. More specifi- cally Wolcott (1992: 19) suggests that naturalistic researchers should address the stages of watching, asking and reviewing, or, as he puts it, experi- encing, enquiring and examining. In naturalistic inquiry it is possible to formulate a more detailed set of stages that can be followed (Hitchcock and Hughes 1989: 57–71; Bogdan and Biklen 1992; LeCompte and Preissle 1993). These eleven stages are presented below and are subsequently dealt with later on in this chapter (see http://
www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415368780 – Chapter 7, file 7.2. ppt):
1 Locating a field of study.
2 Addressing ethical issues.
3 Deciding the sampling.
4 Finding a role and managing entry into the context.
5 Finding informants.
6 Developing and maintaining relations in the field.
7 Data collection in situ.
8 Data collection outside the field.
9 Data analysis.
10 Leaving the field.
11 Writing the report.
These stages are shot through with a range of issues that will affect the research:
O Personal issues: the disciplinary sympathies of the researcher, researcher subjectivities and characteristics. Hitchcock and Hughes (1989:
56) indicate that there are several serious
strains in conducting fieldwork because the researcher’s own emotions, attitudes, beliefs, values, characteristics enter the research;
indeed, the more this happens the less will be the likelihood of gaining the participants’
perspectives and meanings.
O The kinds of participation that the researcher will undertake.
O Issues of advocacy: where the researcher may be expected to identify with the same emotions, concerns and crises as the members of the group being studied and wishes to advance their cause, often a feature that arises at the beginning and the end of the research when the researcher is considered to be a legitimate spokesperson for the group.
O Role relationships.
O Boundary maintenance in the research.
O The maintenance of the balance between distance and involvement.
O Ethical issues.
O Reflexivity.
Reflexivity recognizes that researchers are in- escapably part of the social world that they are researching (Hammersley and Atkinson 1983: 14) and, indeed, that this social world is an already interpreted world by the actors, undermining the notion of objective reality. Researchers are in the world and of the world. They bring their own biographies to the research situation and partici- pants behave in particular ways in their presence.
Reflexivity suggests that researchers should ac- knowledge and disclose their own selves in the research, seeking to understand their part in, or influence on, the research. Rather than trying to eliminate researcher effects (which is impossible, as researchers are part of the world that they are investigating), researchers should hold themselves up to the light, echoing Cooley’s (1902) notion of the ‘looking glass self’. As Hammersley and Atkinson (1983) say:
He or she [the researcher] is the research instrument par excellence. The fact that behaviour and attitudes are often not stable across contexts and that the researcher may play a part in shaping the context becomes central to the analysis. . .. The theories we
develop to explain the behaviour of the people we study should also, where relevant, be applied to our own activities as researchers.
(Hammersley and Atkinson 1983: 18–19) Highly reflexive researchers will be acutely aware of the ways in which their selectivity, perception, background and inductive processes and paradigms shape the research. They are research instruments. McCormick and James (1988: 191) argue that combating reactivity through reflexivity requires researchers to monitor closely and continually their own interactions with participants, their own reaction, roles, biases, and any other matters that might affect the research.
This is addressed more fully in Chapter 5 on validity, encompassing issues of triangulation and respondent validity.
Lincoln and Guba (1985: 226–47) set out ten elements in research design for naturalistic studies:
1 Determining a focus for the inquiry.
2 Determining the fit of paradigm to focus.
3 Determining the fit of the inquiry paradigm to the substantive theory selected to guide the inquiry.
4 Determining where and from whom data will be collected.
5 Determining successive phases of the inquiry.
6 Determining instrumentation.
7 Planning data collection and recording modes.
8 Planning data analysis procedures.
9 Planning the logistics:
O prior logistical considerations for the project as a whole
O the logistics of field excursions prior to going into the field
O the logistics of field excursions while in the field
O the logistics of activities following field excursions
O the logistics of closure and termination 10 Planning for trustworthiness.
These elements can be set out into a sequential, staged approach to planning naturalistic research (see, for example, Schatzman and Strauss 1973;
Delamont 1992). Spradley (1979) sets out the stages of: selecting a problem; collecting cultural data; analysing cultural data; formulating ethno- graphic hypotheses; writing the ethnography. We offer a fuller, eleven-stage model later in the chapter.
Like other styles of research, naturalistic and qualitative methods will need to formulate research questions which should be clear and unambiguous but open to change as the research develops. Strauss (1987) terms these ‘generative questions’: they stimulate the line of investigation, suggest initial hypotheses and areas for data collection, yet they do not foreclose the possibility of modification as the research develops. A balance has to be struck between having research questions that are so broad that they do not steer the research in any particular direction, and so narrow that they block new avenues of inquiry (Flick 2004: 150).
Miles and Huberman (1994) identify two types of qualitative research design: loose and tight.
Loose research designs have broadly defined concepts and areas of study, and, indeed, are open to changes of methodology. These are suitable, they suggest, when the researchers are experienced and when the research is investigating new fields or developing new constructs, akin to the flexibility and openness of theoretical sampling of Glaser and Strauss (1967). By contrast, a tight research design has narrowly restricted research questions and predetermined procedures, with limited flexibility.
These, the authors suggest, are useful when the researchers are inexperienced, when the research is intended to look at particular specified issues, constructs, groups or individuals, or when the research brief is explicit.
Even though, in naturalistic research, issues and theories emerge from the data, this does not preclude the value of having research questions. Flick (1998: 51) suggests three types of research questions in qualitative research, namely those that are concerned, first, with describing states, their causes and how these states are sustained; second, with describing processes of change and consequences of those states; third, with how suitable they are for supporting or not supporting hypotheses and assumptions or for