A nice little intro

I was glad to see a discussion on etic and emic approaches. I was also happy to see that Potter had the guts to finally put the dumb objectivity debate to rest with these words: “there is no ultimate, defensible truth; there are only interpretations of it” (p. 85).
The discussion about the three types or research was interesting, but I´m not quite sure if it always works. Aren’t there some researches that fall somewhere between these descriptions?
Although this wasn’t said in readings, I think quantitative research tends to operate in the macrolevel, but, at least some of the time, they go about gathering their data more or less like a researcher working at the mid-level (i.e. they get their data from groups of students, etc.).
The author also approached the numbers thing with some interesting ideas. My only problem with it was that he oversimplified the whole ordeal: using numbers to help describe our methodology is not what we discuss when we talk about quantitative research. As Potter mentioned, the problem that arises when data is “translated” (p. 91) into numbers is that we have to use statistical procedures to MAKE SENSE of it and, as Bob Jensen clearly states, MEANING gets lost in the process. How can we believe we’re getting useful, real data when we ask someone how the feel about something and then we give them four or five answers to choose from?
I have a small problem with saying that an interview is a way to get people to “react verbally” (p. 96). A well-conducted interview can get a person to react verbally and non-verbally in equal manner. In fact, analyzing the facial expressions of our interviewees can be as interesting as listening to what they have to say.
I’ve always been interested in the “going native” (p. 101) phenomenon. If we observe and interact with a group long enough, isn’t it just a byproduct of our research? Does it really affect our ability to be researchers? Hadn’t we gotten over the objectivity BS a while ago?
Pauly (p. 106): I agree! In any case, I think we can blame quantitative research and the way it’s all explained in an almost condescending way for the fact that people freak out when a researcher sort of skips over the sampling information and goes straight to what matters.
I was glad to learn that qualitative research can actually be co-authored… who would’ve thought! If two researchers reach more or less the same conclusion on their own, doesn’t that make the research all that much stronger and, in a weird sense, generalizable?
Expectations (p. 117) are always a part of research: as soon as we ask ourselves a question, our brains tries to conjure up an answer. Some folks call it a hypothesis and some call it “a priori expectations” (p. 118), but what it boils down to is how we deal with it when what we find goes against what we thought we would find.
“The interpretive nature of qualitative research does indeed present a real problem to scholars who attempt to explain the process.” (p.120). Agreed. Nevertheless, we can pick a toll to interpret pour data and, if we’re successful at picking the proper tool, explaining what we did becomes that much more easy. Then again, are interested in what we find or in explaining in excruciating detail how we went about finding it? Maybe it’s because they all do the same process and it is thus taken for granted, but I’ve never read a quantitative article that explains where they clicked on SPSS in order to figure out of something was statistically significant.
Chapter 9 was a commendable endeavor in the sense that concepts and methods that can occupy a very large library with the amount of books that have been written about them are explained (more or less) in a concise way that serves as an introduction. Picking Bathers and Saussure was great: they are the Fathers, but it left out Baudrillard, Eco and Derrida, to name just a few. The same happened with the rest of the analytical methods explained. I’m sure Dr. Harp could write more than the one page Potter had in there on Feminist analysis off the top of her head… and I won’t even start with psychoanalysis.
Anyway, is this all becoming a little clearer now?