Women's Decision-Making And Factors Affecting Their Choice Of ...

There is an argument for analysing what people are doing in interview
talk, rather than taking the data as representation of reality (Baker 1984;
Silverman 1985). In this way, interview data would be analysed in terms of the
assumptions, and moral and cultural forms that they display (Dingwall 1981;
Silverman 1985). Murphy et al (1998) cite Silverman's work of contrasting two
studies of children with serious diseases to illustrate the difference between
treating interview data as representing reality versus analysing the data. One of
the two studies involved parents of children with cystic fibrosis (Burton 1975),
and the other included parents of children with congenital heart disease (Baruch
1981).
Both studies reported that parents had expressed concerns about their
children to health professionals before the children's diagnosis was made, and in
both cases their concerns were dismissed as groundless. Approaches to the
analysis of data in the two studies were different. In Burtods study, at
interactionist approach was taken, and the reports were viewed as accurate
representations of external events (Burton 1975). In contrast, Baruch (1981)
analysed the interview data in terms of what the parents could be seen to be doing
in the interviews. His argument is that the interview data represent parents'
display of their moral responsibility. Murphy et al (1998) note that Baruch, like
Stimson and Webb, was concerned with functions of the accounts rather than as
straightforward reports of what happened.
Hammersley and Atkinson (1995) do not accept that interview data may
never be read for what they tell about the subject to which they refer. They
contend that the trustworthiness of interview data should not be taken at face
value, but understood in the context in which it was produced. By so doing, they
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