Note
Chapter 4 Methodology
2.1 Key principles of qualitative research
Quantitative research designs tend to specify the outcomes of the research process through clearly defining hypotheses, and examining specific relationships between variables. In a qualitative research approach the relationships one is examining are not defined as distinctly.
The ‘outcomes’ of the research process are not foreseen. It might begin with some expectations about causal connections, but generally, it can be described as a more open- ended and inductive exploration of a phenomenon (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994).
Wardekker (2000) argues that within the qualitative paradigm, the assumption is that humans are interpreters and constructors of a meaningful world. In this paradigm,
humans think about themselves, about other people, and about the world and attach meaning to everything they encounter. These meanings guide their practices. They are essentially individual constructions, although coordinated with those of others through common elements. People do not discover the world, as in the nomological paradigm, but rather construct it. Of course, this construction is not seen as totally free; it has to take into account the physical properties of the world and the constructions of other people in the same cultural group. Also, it has a history and is built up through personal experience and meaning-making. (ibid, 2000, p. 265)
Quantitative approaches seek to establish the causal relationships at work in a phenomenon.
Qualitative approaches go beyond a focus on causation, to try and explore the reasons why a phenomenon is like it is, for example, what is the mechanism that leads to the relationship between x and y? The concern within qualitative approaches is thus to ‘make sense of’, or
‘understand’, human experience, not to merely describe the relationship between variables (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994). For example, the interpretive paradigm attempts to “find out what meanings people construct, how they construct them, and how these constructions guide their actions” (Wardekker, 2000, p. 266).
Wardekker (2000) comments that within the interpretive/humanist paradigm there are
differences of opinion about how this construction and maintenance of ‘meaning’ takes place.
A range of sub-paradigms incorporate these different positions, for example, phenomenology, ethnography, narrative research, social constructionism, and hermeneutics. From the social constructionist perspective participants’ thoughts, feelings and experiences are products of systems of meaning at a social level (Terre Blanche, Kelly & Durrheim, 2006). Interpreting this social world means understanding and examining this system of meanings, these representations of reality, practices, and physical arrangements which “construct particular versions of the world by providing a framework or system through which we can understand objects and practices as well as understand who we are and what we should do in relation to these systems” (ibid, p. 282). When we act, Terre Blanche et al. (2006, p. 282) argue, what we achieve is to “reproduce the ruling discourses of our time and re-enact established relational patterns”. Although the approaches might differ, epistemologically, in general, the qualitative paradigm rests on understanding and interpreting what is human about human beings (Lemke, 2008).
Qualitative research processes assume that the meaning of human experiences is inextricably interwoven with context. Understanding human experience therefore requires that the phenomenon be contextualised (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005; Schwandt, 1994; Morse &
Richards, 2002). The assumption is that the meaning of a phenomenon is indexical, and thus human experiences need to be explored and examined in context, as they are lived.
Many qualitative approaches focus on people’s subjective experiences, the meaning these experiences have for them, and thus their representation of reality (Kvale, 1996). Within research processes, there is a search for a detailed, ‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1973), of these experiences. However, some of the approaches argue that there is also a need to go beyond describing and ‘understanding’ human experience in situ. Kelly (1999), for example, argues that the participant, embedded in his or her reality, perspective and context, does not have a privileged perspective on the phenomenon. There is a need to provide an account of a
phenomenon which exceeds the self-understanding of the participants, a distanciated account (Kelly, 2006).
The research design of this study could broadly be defined as a qualitative, exploratory study conducted within the ambit of CHAT. The design is qualitative in the sense that it is an open- ended and inductive exploration of a phenomenon, with an attempt to obtain an understanding of sexual activity in a particular context. This means a focus on the participants’ subjective experiences of sexual activity and the meaning that these experiences have had for them. In addition to describing these experiences in rich detail, there is a need to provide an
interpretation of this subjective human experience, and an elaboration or expansion of the participants’ accounts (Terre Blanche et al., 2006). However, this study goes beyond the frame of qualitative research in the sense that CHAT provides a different kind of focus on the
‘problem’ of human behaviour.
3 CHAT: Beyond a qualitative approach
Activity theory makes a significant contribution to the methodology of studying human behaviour and understanding the problem of behaviour change in the context of HIV and AIDS. Firstly, it ‘recovers’ the notion of activity making it pivotal to an understanding of behaviour. Secondly, it ‘makes’, or produces context, thereby illustrating and explicating the individual-social dialectic. Lastly, it identifies activity, and its contextualisation, as
characteristically turbulent, and this is significant for understanding the potential for change in human behaviour. In the section below I discuss each of these contributions before I present an application of the approach in the research study.