Damico Aiming for Explication 2014

Reflections on the Qualitative Process.

What is the goal of qualitative research?

The goal of qualitative research is explication. The starting point for any set of reflections should appropriately begin with a discussion of the primary goal of qualitative research in our discipline. Practically speaking, why do qualitative research? What’s in it for us?

What is the primary reason why some researchers turn to qualitative research approaches?

Jack Damico state that while I cannot answer for the other qualitative researchers who operate within our discipline, I do know that my primary reason for turning to qualitative research approaches was because these approaches best met my needs—to understand how (and sometimes even why) social action is accomplished through communicative interactions in both ordered and disordered populations. Consequently, I was driven to find better ways to meet the demands of my clinical life and to re-establish my intellectual equilibrium. I eventually turned to the qualitative paradigm. As I reviewed my de-contextualized clinical practices and read the experimental research in the literature, I recalled a few research studies that I had read that took a different route.

What does qualitative research allow us to do?

Stated directly, I believe the primary reason for engaging in qualitative research is because it enables us to accomplish a special form of explication. That is, an attempt to try and work out the extent to which both unremarkable and remarkable descriptions of an individual’s communication are based upon a set of social-intentional elements that systematically and predictably drive social action. This explication certainly involves construction of rich or detailed descriptions of what is occurring; however, even more is involved. Specifically, there is the additional facet of contextualizing communication within the social-cognitive fabric that defines our lives so that we can achieve a deeper understanding of the actions individuals produce and how these actions are accomplished. In a sense, this form of explication strives for interpretive sufficiency; we attempt to determine not only what is happening but how (and sometimes, even why) it is happening.

What is the difference between “thin” and “thick” description?

When reflecting on this form of explication, Gilbert Ryle’s (1949) distinction between “thin” and “thick description” may be beneficial. This philosopher discussed the difference between formulating a behavioral description of an action as if taking a picture (thin description) versus characterizing the action with references to its social context—its intentions, circumstances, history, and hoped for future (thick description). In other words, thick description is the creation of a discussion of targeted behavioral acts relative to their social action. Consequently, this description of a social action is thick not only with intentionality but also with social-organizational matters (Sharrock & Button, 1993, p.169). The anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973) was aware of these distinctions. He stated that various forms of qualitative research should not be assessed according to the amount of information that they contain but by the clarification they provide about the social/cultural actions observed within the targeted context. In fact, Geertz used Ryle’s example of a boy winking, recognizing that to appropriately unravel the wink’s significance as (alternatively) a parody, an imitation of a parody, a conspiratory gesture, flirting, or something else, interpretation based upon the contextual constraints was necessary.

What can the goal of achieving explication when studying some phenomenon of communication lead to?

This goal of achieving explication when studying some phenomenon of communication can lead to a greater understanding of the phenomenon and the intentions, mechanisms and constraints by which it operates. Emanuel Schegloff has described the value of such explication. He implied that conversation analysis has the potential to provide a clear depiction and exemplars of “… how the prima facie, observable embodiment of sociality—action, activity, and conduct in interaction—as effectuated through the deployment of language and the body can be put at the center of theorizing about the social and can be grounded and elaborated in detailed, empirical analysis of that conduct” (1996, p. 162). While Schegloff was positioning conversation analysis as a necessary contribution to sociological theory when he wrote that statement, I believe that his depiction of explication can be extended, to some extent, to all qualitative research methodologies, since the focus of such qualitative studies is on how social-communicative experience is created and given meaning. In contrast, quantitative-experimental studies emphasize the measurement and analysis of causal relationships between variables—not processes—and these studies are typically de-contextualized (Maxwell, 2012).

Why do we employ qualitative research as our preferred paradigm?

So then, this is why we employ qualitative research as our preferred paradigm. Because we recognize qualitative research as a situated activity that locates the researcher in the targeted world by using a set of interpretative practices that make that world visible to us (Denzin & Lincoln, 2008). Consequently, we can investigate the complexity of language and communication as social action, and we can strive to embrace that complexity through this research paradigm since it is best suited to accomplish our goal of explication in all of its potential.

What is the second issue of importance when employing qualitative research?

A second issue of importance when we employ qualitative research in our discipline involves how well we actually understand the foundations of this paradigm. When I became interested in this research perspective, it was important to me that I understood the warrants for qualitative research. That is, how is the qualitative paradigm handled from a theoretical perspective? Is there support in science for this paradigm?

As practioners in the social and psychological sciences, how does Jack Damico believe we often view research from?

As practioners in the social and psychological sciences, we often view research from a methodological perspective (Hornstein, 1988). That is, when we consider the scientific enterprise, we tend to think about the scientific method, our hypotheses or questions, and the design and implementation of our research. Doubtless, these are important components of the enterprise. Science, however, is more than a set of methods; what we believe and how we use those beliefs to act upon the world through science is actually directed by the various theoretical orientations that we possess. While there are a number of theoretical ideas linked within science in general (e.g., Kuhn, 1962; Olby, Cantor, Christie, & Hodge, 1990; Salmon, 1989), the most pervasive ideas involve how we view reality and how we can come to know that reality. These two questions often give rise to what we consider the nature of science and how it is employed and benefits us.

What is ‘ontology’?

The philosophic investigation of the first question, how we view reality or what is the actual nature of reality, is referred to as ontology. Since the latter part of the 20th century, the dominant ontological position in the philosophy of science has been one of realism. D.C. Phillips, in the glossary of his book, Philosophy, Science, and Social Inquiry, defined realism as “the view that entities exist independently of being perceived, or independently of our theories about them” (1987, p. 205). That is, there is a reality outside of our human experiences made up of atoms and objects, worlds and stars, along with ideas and processes that have existence regardless of how (or how accurately) we conceptualize or identify them. In science we struggle to understand this reality to the best of our abilities, but we realize that our best may not be sufficient to actually discern the true nature of reality (Bhaskar, 1978; Cartwright, 1999). Consequently, it is the task of science to assume an attitude of striving to create as functional and accurate an approximation of reality as is possible; one that is sufficiently accurate to enable us to create technologies and knowledge bases that ultimately have given rise to our modern world, but one that is tentative rather than dogmatic so that our ideas are open to continual modification as we move closer to accurate understanding of reality. This brand of philosophical realism has a number of versions, all very complex. However, as discussed by Maxwell, “A distinctive feature of all of these forms of realism is that they deny that we can have any ‘objective’ or certain knowledge of the world, and accept the possibility of alternative valid accounts of any phenomenon” (2012, p. 5). Whether considering the physical or social sciences, this view of the necessity for the tentative nature of science should govern our perceptions and practices.

What is ‘epistemology?’

The second question, how we can come to know that reality (if we can, in fact, know it), is referred to in philosophy as epistemology. In the psychological and social sciences, constructivism has been the dominant epistemological position for nearly 50 years. As a response to positivism and its descendant, behaviorism, this position has asserted that human knowledge is constructed rather than directly perceived via our sensorial experiences (see Damico & Ball, 2010; Mills, 1998; Phillips, 2000; Shuell, 1986, for further discussion). Whether we are discussing the acquisition and use of cognitive structures in individuals (psychological constructivism) or the knowledge bases that are obtained and employed in the various social and cultural disciplines and realms (social constructivism), our knowledge of reality is constructed from a specific vantage point dependent primarily upon the minds of the knower(s) and whatever set of sociocultural influences are present when the individual or community is in the process of active construction. Jean Piaget, a genetic epistemologist and foundational figure in constructivism, put it succinctly for psychological constructivism: Fifty years of experience have taught us that knowledge does not result from a mere recording of observations without a structuring activity on the part of the subject. Nor do any a priori or innate cognitive structures exist in man; the functioning of intelligence alone is hereditary and creates structures only through an organization of successive actions performed on objects. Consequently, an epistemology conforming to the data of psychogenesis could be neither empiricist nor preformationist, but could consist only of a constructivism. (1980, p. 23)

What do the ‘constructivist stand on?’

Given the theoretical and empirical support for it, as we investigate the human psychological and symbolic processes and as we look to research paradigms to aid in these investigations, the constructivist stand on human knowledge acquisition and use should be paramount in our considerations.

What is ‘critical realism’ and how is qualitative research designed to accomplish this enterprise in social science?

The work of Joseph Maxwell is especially pertinent to the weaving together of these two philosophical stances regarding qualitative research. His most recent book, A Realist Approach for Qualitative Research (2012), argues for “critical realism” (the combination of ontological realism and epistemological constructivism) as a most useful and important resource for the qualitative paradigm. Since his version of critical realism adopts ontological realism as a starting point, and this paradigm asserts that reality is both complex and multi-layered, and that it is likely beyond our capacity to obtain certain knowledge of it, research as an activity must be considered a difficult enterprise that requires systematic and interpretive practices designed to seek answers to questions that stress how actions and experiences within this complexity are created and sustained (Damico & Ball, 2010). Qualitative research is designed to accomplish this enterprise in social science via a set of descriptive analytic procedures oriented toward providing a detailed view of the procedural affairs underlying observable social phenomena in order to explain how social actions are accomplished.

What does ‘critical realism’ and ‘ontological realism’ serve as?

In terms of critical realism serving as a resource for the qualitative research paradigm, ontological realism enables qualitative researchers to operate from the belief that there is an actual reality (even if we may never objectively know it). Consequently, we can organize our research efforts to try and seek this reality (social reality in our case) and this gives us a genuine goal or objective. We can strive to understand as best we can and, in doing so, we can try to derive a progressively improved or more approximate knowledge base about the objects of our research efforts. Additionally, unlike versions of positivism or empiricism that reject theoretical terms and concepts (causality, mental states and attributes) as fictions that might be predictably useful but that don’t have any reality themselves (they are considered logical constructions based on observational data of the real world), critical realism enables an ontological perspective to be applied to less concrete objects. That is, the meanings that individuals construct and hold, their cultural conceptions, intentions and feelings, are also aspects of reality, especially since we employ them to help guide our everyday lives. These meanings and ideas are real because we use them to act upon the world in systematic fashion and they have consequences in the same way that more physical objects and events do. Although physical and mental/social entities may be conceptualized differently (see Maxwell, 2012, Chapter 3), they both have reality. Consequently, mental/social entities are central to our understanding of the social world and, since they are seen as real phenomena, they are available for investigation. This is a powerful resource for qualitative research since a research paradigm that enables the investigation of social processes and social action is a dynamic resource for understanding symbolic and social realities.

What does ‘critical realism suggests?

Since critical realism employs a constructivist epistemology, it suggests that all explanation and conceptions of the world are grounded in a particular worldview or perspective dependent on the contexts and experiences. While this view does not allow for the idea that there are multiple realities, it does recognize that there are different but valid perspectives on reality that are based upon context and experience. If one hopes to investigate and interpret these perspectives (including how they operate and influence individuals and societies), one must have a flexible enough methodology to deal with the complexities of social action and experience as well as the interpretations of these actions and experiences. Since qualitative research is designed to employ systematic research techniques in naturalistic settings that are oriented to accounting for the complexity of social action instead of controlling it, this paradigm is well suited for constructivist operations in the real world. The strengths of qualitative methodologies revolve around studying social phenomena within their natural contexts and from the perspective of the participants so that the variables that make up the events and structures of social action can be accounted for within the actual contexts rather than controlled through experimental designs. Based upon these points, qualitative research appears ideally suited to critical realism and it is a means to implement research in this complex social reality.

What does qualitative research offer that positivism, behaviorism, and experimentalism doesn’t?

As philosophy of science has changed over the past 50 years and moved theory and research away from positivism, behaviorism, and experimentalism, we find that qualitative research does offer a more open and flexible approach to the systematic investigation of the social world, one consistent with the changes noted in the physical and social sciences in the latter half of the 20th and in the 21st centuries. Based upon these changes, there are philosophic and scientific foundations for qualitative research. Of course, this discussion of critical realism is our current best approximation of these philosophical issues. Some qualitative researchers have produced different interpretations (e.g., Denzin & Lincoln, 2008; Smith & Deemer, 2000), and this type of debate is in keeping with the best operational tenets of science. To suggest that this version of critical realism is the ultimate correct paradigm would be inconsistent with its basic premises. However, along with numerous other theorists and researchers, I believe that it is our best current theoretical position, and it has great utility for qualitative research.

What is ‘behaviorism?’

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