Announcing 'Stammering Research' - Stammering Research - UCL

RESEARCH COMMENTARY ON SAGE
Stammering Research. Vol. 1.
On reaching the parts that quantitative researchers cannot:
Commentary on Sage, R. (2004) “How interviews with adults who
stammer inform research directions”
Paul Stenner
Department of Psychology
University College, London
P.Stenner@ucl.ac.uk
Abstract. The issues raised by Sage (2004) are discussed from the perspective of qualitative research in
general. While highlighting the importance of this approach to the examination of practical issues, some ways
in which the approach could be taken forward in this application area are discussed. Keywords: Qualitiative
approaches to stuttering.
A quick glance at the ever-growing number of new books, journals and articles on qualitative
methods makes it patent that the attitudes of social and psychological researchers have ‘softened up’
somewhat to the soft end of the knowledge industry. One clear marker of this is that the British
Psychological Society, in their wisdom, insist that a recognized Psychology Degree must involve
instruction in qualitative methods. As a social psychologist with some interest in qualitative research
techniques I am, naturally enough, positively inclined towards arguments in support of their use. I am
especially enthusiastic about work that demonstrates the practical benefits that can flow from a
qualitative investigation.
But the flip-side of this feel-good story of increasing presence is a story of decreasing value. The joy
of the growing acceptability of qualitative research is thus mixed with a certain worry about standards.
This combination, of course, is all too familiar in other domains of life, and I do not hesitate to call it
inflation. In this context, qualitative researchers are obliged to reflect critically upon the quality of their
own work, and that of others. In doing so, however, it quickly becomes apparent that clear guidelines
for the conduct and reporting of qualitative research, where they exist, are woefully inadequate. In a
classic text on discourse analysis, for example, we are informed that the analytic process is “like riding
a bicycle”! (a description destined to confuse the more literal minded of our colleagues). Joking apart,
there is some merit in such refusals to prescribe, since more directive instructions typically succeed in
removing performance anxiety only at the risk of defeating the object of the research. Insisting upon
procedures for testing diachronic reliability (the stability of a finding over different time-periods) when
one’s aim is phenomenological description, for instance, might be counterproductive. Ensuring that
one’s data speak directly to a clearly stated hypothesis, to give a second example, might be poor advice
if “over the course of the study one discovers what the research is about” (Sage, 2004). It must be
acknowledged, therefore, that a certain amount of anxiety is included in the price the qualitative
researcher must pay for their valued ‘softness’ 1 .
On reading Rosemary Sage’s paper “How interviews with adults who stammer inform research
directions” I experienced exactly the combination of joy and worry described above. I find articulating
the ‘positives’ the easy part, and so will start with them. The aims of the research are clearly stated and
highly commendable. The research, that is, was designed to inform a research and practice agenda of
direct relevance to those who stammer. Given 50% relapse rates following intervention, there is a clear
need to do something deceptively simple and astonishingly rare in scientific circles: to talk to the
clients about what they consider their problems to be and about what they find helps them. Naturally,
compared to high-tech research programmes deploying PET, FMRI and other state-of-the-art
technologies, this research agenda cannot help but to appear somewhat antiquated. Nevertheless, as
Sage’s research illustrates, this natural attitude towards big-science should not bewitch us into
forgetting that phenomena such as stammering are never just mechanical faults of the human biological
machine. People that stammer are also beings that are thoroughly implicated in the complex networks
of communication that make up our social worlds. Further, they are conscious psychological beings
with self-identities, biographies and anticipated futures. Stammering and its perpetuation are invariably
wrapped up in these complex and variable social and psychological circuits of communicated and uncommunicated
meaning. The most direct way of discovering how – even in the 21 st Century - is to
listen, in a disciplined way, to the stories of those who stammer.
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