Interviewees are not automatons

Reading from:

Foddy, W. (1993). Interviews and questionnaires: Theory and practice in social research. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

This information is taken from chapter 2 of this book. The chapter is entitled: A theoretical framework.

This paper links to the session we undertook on questionnaires and interviews. In it, Foddy discusses the issues associated with both a quantitative method of survey and also qualitative. Foddy introduces symbolic interactionism (SI) as a way of social actors in a social situation negotiating a shared definition of the situation.

An overview

Foddy introduces the positivist approach which attempts to discover the 'real world' 'out there'. To do this they use a 'stimulus/response' model of questioning, with carefully controlled questions and also answers. They aim for standardised understanding and standardised responses, to provide validity.

Foddy discusses ten key assumptions associated with positivistic surveys, primarily that the researcher provides clear definitions and the respondent is able to provide appropriate standardised answers in the specific situation, and that answers from different respondents can be meaningfully compared.

Pawson (n.d.) suggests that questions and answers are simplified to a 'lowest common denominator' approach. This is a very behaviourist approach. Control is by the researcher, trying to formulate standardised questions and limiting the respondent to standardised answers.

In contrast, 'qualitative field researchers' are interested in how human beings 'experience' their world, for example through the use of non-directive, open questions. They are committed to understanding the respondent's 'meaning' so use near-to-naturalistic unstructured interviews. The researcher and respondent should come to a joint construction of meaning. The data are narrative. Questions have been asked about he 'validity' of qualitative researchers' data, and the fact that it is difficult to replicate studies.

Within quantitative research, they still cannot control for the respondent not understanding the question 'correctly'. This is equally true for qualitative research, with the respondent often looking to the interviewer to show evidence of arriving at a "shared understanding" of questions and answers.
[Note: may need to consider Lyotardian paralogy here, to go past this shared understanding - see my notes on Lather].

Symbolic Interactionist (SI) theory

SI was coined by Blumer (1967, 1969).
- Humans interpret and define each other's actions; they do not react in a stimulus/response way.
- Humans can be the objects of their own attention - the concept of 'self';
- Conscious social behaviour is intentional. We construct and rehearse different possible lines of action before choosing how to act in a given social situation;
- These are ongoing processes, occurring at every stage of a social interaction. Both parties take part in this. Each social actor takes their view of the other into account but also the other's view of themselves, when constructing and choosing possible lines of action.
- Human intelligence is, in part reflexive, for example when you 'take the role' of the other.

SIs claim that social actors in any social situation are constantly negotiating a shared definition of the situation.

Implications of SI theory for social research

Survey researchers and qualitative field researchers have paid little attention to respondents 'taking the role' of the researcher when framing answers. Similarly the reason for asking the question. SI theory suggests that respondents will constantly try to reach a mutually shared definition of the situation with the researcher. Respondents search for clues if the information they require are not forthcoming. Different respondents may attach to different 'clues' and so differently interpret a question - so there is little reason for comparing respondents' different answers.

There are at least four additional sources of response variability that the researcher should keep in mind when formulating questions. Different respondents can interpret the same question in many different ways and give many different answers to it.

My thoughts

In the questionnaire exercise in the first weekend, it was clear to see that including free text answers in such a questionnaire led to a wide range of interpretations of the question. The questionnaire wasn't designed particularly well, but even so the relatively straightforward questions were open to different interpretations. It's probable that the same respondent could answer differently at a different time. So, quantitative work is subject to this issue.

The SI viewpoint seems to be to accept/embrace this multitude of potential answers. The participant will take their cues from the researcher and respond to the researcher to try and reach concordance.

Relevance to me? Again, I think this highlights the importance of thinking about my own frames of reference and being aware of them throughout an interview process, from writing the questions to the questioning itself and then on to the analysis. Just to be aware that the respondent is not only responding to the question I ask but more particularly the question they think I asked, and looking to me to help them provide the answer they think I want. Difficult!

 

Surveys, data and interpretation

There are two opposing schools of thought with regard to surveys: post-positivism and interpretivism. We completed an activity to look at a sample survey from these two different viewpoints.


Firstly, a word about the survey. Even a brief look at it suggested problems. It was, apparently, a survey produced by a professional research group, rather than an undergraduate up against a hand-in deadline.

The information/brief notes below come from the class session. I need to read through Foddy's (1993) work (hard copy of chapter 2 provided) to understand more.

Foddy explores the key assumptions of behaviourism (a post-positivist school of thought):

1. The purpose of a survey is to discover information about the world objectively, as it exists 'out there'. Behaviourists produce questions that allow us to access that view as accurately as possible - behaviourists believe you can reach this truth.
2. Everyone has a common and shared understanding of the questions posed; questioning is based on the view of a common vocabulary. Language is unambiguous, and clear questions can provide accurate objective data. Whole heap of problems within here to unpack!
3. Questions utilise a stimulus-response model in which they are carefully standardised to ensure that the respondent gives only one response. These are directive questions, with a closed question approach.
4. Because questions are standardised and respondents provide only one response, each question can be meaningfully compared, otherwise there is a problem with consistency.

Symbolic interactionism:
Blumer (1997) states that the SI approach rests upon the premise that human action takes place always in a situation that confronts(?) the actor. The 'being with' is significant; different interviewers will elicit different responses from people.

The SI perspective:

1. Reality is negotiated; we are interpreting the interpretation of others (secondary interpretation). Behaviourists want to control a situation by forms of words. SIs believe that this is folly.
2. Attitudes are transient. Responses vary according to time and place.
3. The social context is paramount; each person has a self concept and is reflexively shaped and influenced.

Therefore, there is no single response to be accessed but a range that varies according to the time/location/social situation.

Analysing the questionnaire

We were asked to critique it from an SI point of view. These are my thoughts:

• directive tick boxes are used extensively
• Use of examples limit responses
• There are some free text boxes, but these limit free text as they are only one to two lines.
• It provides just an overview - there is no depth of understanding
• It is situational - where you complete the questionnaire may affect how you answer it (at home/work)
• questioning on the role at the start of the sheet may set the 'character' of the 'actor' in completing the work: I'm deputy head, so I must write as that role rather than my true feelings
• SIs would not use anything like this!

The behaviourists noted:

• questions could be interpreted in a range of ways
• acronyms were not explained
• vague, open questioning
• Categories - what's the difference between 'a little' and 'some'?
• Eliding of categorical data with ordinal data causing confusion and ambiguity (q4)
• What is good is that there are some closed questions.

Surveys will always inevitably be conceptually flawed as an attempt to reach some form of 'truth'. You need to realise that they are not an easy option, and also to consider how you will analyse the data, from the design stage.

Interviews may be onerous (transcription etc.) but provide richer data, through listening, interpreting and analysing.

The most interesting part of the activity for me was when the tutor provided the responses to one of the questions ('what image does educational research conjure up for you?') and asked us to draw together themes. This was quite labour intensive, but it was relatively straightforward to pull out the common threads. Of course, I say that but I have to begin to consider how my own frames of reference can (and indeed do) affect the sorts of themes I draw out and how I'd write an analysis based on those themes.

The themes I pulled out in this brief activity include:

• a dichotomy between those talking about 'doing' research and those talking about 'being done to'
• How research is used/misused
• questioning the relevance of research
• it's academic, not practice-based
• an imposition on the workload
• for the development of practice
• discussion of the mechanics - the techniques used
• Used to justify change for change's sake
• Deliberate manipulation of findings to suit the audience
• Research is done, but is not implemented
• The excitement of new, positive ideas
• Promoting a positive change
• acknowledging complexity - no clear answers.

The general overview of those themes seems strikingly negative and pessimistic on the role of research. However, the tutor then provided us with the analysis produced by the researchers...

This starts by suggesting that a number of important themes emerge (but... who decides that they are important? That also suggests that some are unimportant). It uses numbers within the analysis in an attempt to provide 'evidence' of scientific robustness. The word 'unsurprisingly' is used to explain that a number of respondents look at the technical side. That's rather loaded. Who is it who is/isn't going to be surprised? To be honest, based on the question asked, I'm quite surprised that people answered it with 'technical' words such as 'statistics' or 'graphs, surveys and videos'. Perhaps if the respondents had been given more room to write, more meaningful data could have been produced. The analysis then goes on to talk about the positives drawn from the findings, even though these are much fewer. There is an acknowledgement that some answered 'yes, but...' ie qualified their positive outlook with a negative viewpoint. The research then admits to the dominant negative views of research. It pulls out the most dominant negative theme as research being done by 'others' not on the ground.

This analysis is constructed in such a way as to emphasise the positive over the negative. Certain responses are privileged, that is they are selected over other, discarded responses. Tis links back to research concealing as well as revealing. research is a 'snapshot' which reveals the motivation of the researcher. it is a construct which shows the researchers' views of teachers' views of research. We all do it, but we need to recognise that we do. There is always 'the view from somewhere', and no impartiality, with emphasis, privileging and focussing on particular themes over others.

Relevance to me?

An interesting exercise in drawing out themes from data. Something I enjoyed, although having to think about my own viewpoints and how they affect the data I'm drawn to and emphasise makes my brain ache just to think about it! Maybe I can see a use for this within my research for this module. I don't think I would feel comfortable about a survey (and having to justify its use) but within interviewing instead.

Weekend 1

My first EdD weekend took place on Friday evening and on Saturday. A chance to meet the other people on the long journey to a doctorate. Many of the others are specialists in primary and early years, with a smattering of university employees and one or two secondary teachers. There's even a retired  teacher who has already completed a PhD after retiring. whilst some seemed to have an understanding of some of the concepts, I wasn't the only one who seemed new to it all.

After a brief course introduction, we started into the first module, research methodologies for professional enquiry. This is the source of the reading I've been doing over the past fortnight. There was a brief overview of the assignment, then straight into considering our views on research. We worked as small groups to winnow 27 statements about research down to what we considered the six most important. We were the only group to make it to six, and we managed to have quite a discussion whilst doing so. I wish I'd noted down the statements, but in general, they seemed to relate to an interpretivist viewpoint, from what I've read.

One group only agreed on a single statement - that research is always parasitic. Our group did discuss this, but we discounted it. Parasitism is a negative process to the host, and whilst some research (if not done ethically) *may* cause harm to the participant(s), overwhelmingly research will at least cause no harm and can have positive effects. The whole point of critical theory paradigm seems to be that one completes research in order to transform the lives of those who are underdogs and have been ignored or actively put down by the dominant section of society.

We were then allocated one of the pre-reading texts to go over ready for an activity the next day. Typically, it was, for our group, the one paper I'd barely started reading. I had a chance to read over Patti Lather's paper once that night and then first thing in the morning, but it made little sense. Some more time reading during the activity did clarify areas for me, but it wasn't easy. More on that in the blog post about that article.

In the afternoon, we looked at the role of questionnaires as methods of gathering data. The tutor introduced two opposing schools of thought (post-positivist and interpretative. We then analysed a questionnaire from one of these viewpoints. Half of the class from a behaviourist viewpoint and half from a symbolic interactionist view. The summary was that, despite it being a questionnaire from a well-respected research group, the design of it was rather appalling, ultimately satisfying no-one. An extension of this activity was to investigate some of the key themes drawn out from one  of the free-answer questions on the questionnaire. I found this very interesting. Note to self: could I use this approach in my assignment? We then looked at the interpretation published by the research group. fascinating differences appeared, giving a positive spin to the results. It also illustrated one of the research definitions we did choose the previous evening: research conceals as well as reveals. It selected in particular (privileged) responses, whilst 'selecting out' others.

After an investigation of our view of ourselves as professionals and people, the day was finished. Reading to do, writing up to clarify, and thinking about assignment. Lots of things to do if I want to stay on track and organised.

Planned blog posts:
1. Complete reading blogposts
2. Post on starting the assignment
3. Reworking notes taken during the weekend
4. Read and blog on the reading we were given during the weekend.

A scary first session over.