Announcing 'Stammering Research' - Stammering Research - UCL
Announcing 'Stammering Research' - Stammering Research - UCL
Announcing 'Stammering Research' - Stammering Research - UCL
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<strong>Stammering</strong> <strong>Research</strong>. Vol. 1.<br />
These stories, as Sage discovered, contain both shared and unique elements. Each of the four<br />
participants, for example, describe having suffered since childhood as a result of negative self-images<br />
reflected by the careless or cruel comments of others. The stammer hence takes on social meaning for<br />
interlocutors in a range of contexts (from the family to the school, to the work environment). The<br />
Goffmanian theme of the stigmatization that follows difficulty in maintaining “normal appearances” in<br />
everyday social interaction is hence of general analytical relevance. Further, for each participant, the<br />
stammer comes to occupy a salient and problematic place in self-identity, lending it significance well<br />
beyond the physical dimension of dysfluent speech production. Alongside these shared or general<br />
themes we find, as would be expected, unique and particular experiences and issues. Hence although<br />
Robert’s stammer is doubtless salient to his identity, he describes it in a relatively objective way<br />
compared to the “one-eyed ugly creature” of John, the “feeble and cowardly” attribute of Paul and the<br />
revolting and hateful object of Helen. ‘Subjective’ information such as this is directly relevant to an<br />
acknowledgement of the actual nature of the client’s problem and provides access to factors that<br />
contribute to its perpetuation (such as strategies for avoiding ‘problematic’ situations).<br />
Having indicated my appreciation, I will now turn to my worries. First and most significantly, the<br />
paper under consideration contains no analysis section. Instead, the transcribed interviews are<br />
presented un-analyzed, but for the fact that material considered irrelevant has been cut out. Thus, apart<br />
from a little analytical work presented in the discussion section (the comparison of thematic similarities<br />
and differences for example), this is a qualitative report without a qualitative analysis. This is<br />
somewhat surprising given that much of the content of the introductory sections are devoted to debates<br />
around analysis. One wonders about the value of discussing, for instance, the three stages of Glaser and<br />
Strauss’s (1967) famous grounded theory procedure, which concern a laborious process of coding and<br />
categorizing the transcribed data into an elaborately interconnected conceptual network. In sum,<br />
although Sage clearly recognizes the inability of data to “speak for themselves”, she appears content to<br />
abandon her transcripts to a life without representation. In principle, of course, this is a defensible<br />
procedure. A logical extension of the imperative to avoid imposing researcher categories onto data is to<br />
not impose researcher categories at all. But I would expect to see at least a justification for such a<br />
radical ‘analysis free’ methodology.<br />
Second, to my mind researchers have a duty to report as clearly and simply as possible exactly what<br />
they did in a study and why, and to ensure that the introductory material is relevant to these concerns. I<br />
consider it neither useful nor clear to have 4 separate and fairly lengthy sections dealing with extremely<br />
general and controversial issues of methodology. Perhaps I am merely expressing an idiosyncratic<br />
foible, but it seems to me that qualitative methodologists are acquiring an unfortunate tendency to<br />
evangelize, to define what they do negatively (as above all not quantitative), and to indulge in<br />
interminable quasi-philosophical meanderings. Taken together, these constitute a syndrome that<br />
threatens to obscure the signal of their participants’ expressed viewpoint with the noise of largely<br />
unnecessary epistemological discussion. Discussions of positivism, emotionalism and constructionism,<br />
for instance, are surely only relevant if they demonstrably inform the research project. Why discuss the<br />
inter-relationships of verbal to non-verbal behaviour, the contingent nature of interaction and the<br />
multiple functions of language if none of these themes are used analytically to make sense of the data?<br />
Third, under the header ‘Method’ we find a discussion of the chosen technique of data collection: a<br />
structured interview. This, in its place, is an appropriate technique. However, Sage presents this choice<br />
as if it somehow guaranteed the validity and reliability of the results, which naturally it does not. Citing<br />
Sellitz et al (1964) in support, she states: “Even more important for reliability… was the need to follow<br />
standardized protocol for their delivery”. Insisting that interviewers present questions in an inflexible<br />
order and stick to the exact wording of a pre-formulated question, in no way ensures the reliability or<br />
validity of a qualitative study, although it might make cross-interview comparisons more<br />
straightforward. In fact, such a structured approach can hinder validity, since it leaves no room for the<br />
kinds of qualifications, embellishments, illustrations and clarifications that routinely occur in interview<br />
settings.<br />
Finally, if Sage really believes that the “structured design” can “give the procedure validity and<br />
reliability” then one wonders why she endorses Silverman’s (2003) observation concerning the “need<br />
to go beyond my questions in various unforeseen ways so as to obtain the sort of answers I wanted”.<br />
This seems particularly important given the stated aim of discovering what the research is about<br />
through the process of doing it. In part this confusion over reliability and validity is attributable to a<br />
curiously behaviouristic notion of the need to “achieve equivalence of stimulus conditions to prevent<br />
bias”. In fact, an interview question is poorly understood as a ‘stimulus’. One cannot ensure, for<br />
example, that a proposition is understood in the same way by different people simply by repeating the<br />
words in the same order. This applies especially when one is dealing with deeply ambiguous questions<br />
such as “Do you see your stammer as an issue for life?” Paul, for example, quite legitimately<br />
interpreted this as meaning ‘an issue that will be with me for life’: “My stammer is part of me - and I<br />
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