Qualitative_data_analysis

262 QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS
The observations we have made have been informed throughout by our
conceptualizations. No more than in any other form of research can qualitative
analysis provide some kind of ‘privileged’ access to ‘how things really are’
independently of our ways of thinking about them.
Before we despair, however, or abandon ourselves to an unalloyed subjectivity
(which for a social scientist is much the same thing), let us take heart from our example
of time. We can accept without qualms the idea that my watch is ‘valid’ if it tells the
right time. And how do we tell the ‘right’ time? To check the validity of my watch, I
rely on other measurements of time. In my case, I watch the six o’clock news, or I
phone the speaking clock. If the time on my watch is consistent with the time as
measured by other ‘instruments’ like the speaking clock, I am happy to accept it as a
valid measure. This is so, incidentally, even though I have no idea of what time
‘really’ is. The common sense view of time is that an interval between two events
would be the same for all observers. This does not fit with my psychological
experience of time (I find the hour in which I give a lecture tends to pass very
quickly, but the hour in which I listen to a lecture passes very slowly!). Nor does it
fit with the modern physicist’s view, where time is not separate from space, each
observer has his own measure of time, and identical clocks carried by different
observers won’t necessarily agree (Hawking 1988:18–22).
This process of checking the validity of my watch is more complex than it might
at first appear. Let us consider it more closely. Suppose I have a digital watch with a
range of functions. To check the time, I look at my watch and read off a set of
numbers. What have these numbers got to do with what time it is? The answer may
be—nothing. I could be looking at the date, or the time that I have set the alarm to
wake me up tomorrow morning. The first thing I have to be sure of is that the
numbers I’m looking at are about what time it is, and not about something
completely different. If my watch only has one function, then of course I can be
pretty sure. But even so, this assumes that I have at some point set the watch so that
it will tell the time. If my niece has in the meantime got hold of my watch, and
treated it as an interesting toy rather than a measuring instrument, I may be misled.
If the reading I make doesn’t ‘fit’ with the reading I’d expect if my watch was telling
the time, I may begin to doubt its validity as a measure of time. This fit (or lack of
it) between our observations (the numbers) and our concept (‘telling the time’) is aptly
called the ‘face’ validity of a measure. We have to decide whether ‘on the face of it’
the observation is consistent with the concept. In the case of the watch, this may be
so straightforward that we take it for granted. But in qualitative analysis, the fit
between observations and concepts may be far less obvious.
Once I’m satisfied that my watch is telling the time, I want to know if it’s the
‘right’ time, and I check it against the time given by the speaking clock. In making
this comparison, I am implicitly assuming that telling the time with my watch is