Announcing 'Stammering Research' - Stammering Research - UCL

Stammering Research. Vol. 1.
These stories, as Sage discovered, contain both shared and unique elements. Each of the four
participants, for example, describe having suffered since childhood as a result of negative self-images
reflected by the careless or cruel comments of others. The stammer hence takes on social meaning for
interlocutors in a range of contexts (from the family to the school, to the work environment). The
Goffmanian theme of the stigmatization that follows difficulty in maintaining “normal appearances” in
everyday social interaction is hence of general analytical relevance. Further, for each participant, the
stammer comes to occupy a salient and problematic place in self-identity, lending it significance well
beyond the physical dimension of dysfluent speech production. Alongside these shared or general
themes we find, as would be expected, unique and particular experiences and issues. Hence although
Robert’s stammer is doubtless salient to his identity, he describes it in a relatively objective way
compared to the “one-eyed ugly creature” of John, the “feeble and cowardly” attribute of Paul and the
revolting and hateful object of Helen. ‘Subjective’ information such as this is directly relevant to an
acknowledgement of the actual nature of the client’s problem and provides access to factors that
contribute to its perpetuation (such as strategies for avoiding ‘problematic’ situations).
Having indicated my appreciation, I will now turn to my worries. First and most significantly, the
paper under consideration contains no analysis section. Instead, the transcribed interviews are
presented un-analyzed, but for the fact that material considered irrelevant has been cut out. Thus, apart
from a little analytical work presented in the discussion section (the comparison of thematic similarities
and differences for example), this is a qualitative report without a qualitative analysis. This is
somewhat surprising given that much of the content of the introductory sections are devoted to debates
around analysis. One wonders about the value of discussing, for instance, the three stages of Glaser and
Strauss’s (1967) famous grounded theory procedure, which concern a laborious process of coding and
categorizing the transcribed data into an elaborately interconnected conceptual network. In sum,
although Sage clearly recognizes the inability of data to “speak for themselves”, she appears content to
abandon her transcripts to a life without representation. In principle, of course, this is a defensible
procedure. A logical extension of the imperative to avoid imposing researcher categories onto data is to
not impose researcher categories at all. But I would expect to see at least a justification for such a
radical ‘analysis free’ methodology.
Second, to my mind researchers have a duty to report as clearly and simply as possible exactly what
they did in a study and why, and to ensure that the introductory material is relevant to these concerns. I
consider it neither useful nor clear to have 4 separate and fairly lengthy sections dealing with extremely
general and controversial issues of methodology. Perhaps I am merely expressing an idiosyncratic
foible, but it seems to me that qualitative methodologists are acquiring an unfortunate tendency to
evangelize, to define what they do negatively (as above all not quantitative), and to indulge in
interminable quasi-philosophical meanderings. Taken together, these constitute a syndrome that
threatens to obscure the signal of their participants’ expressed viewpoint with the noise of largely
unnecessary epistemological discussion. Discussions of positivism, emotionalism and constructionism,
for instance, are surely only relevant if they demonstrably inform the research project. Why discuss the
inter-relationships of verbal to non-verbal behaviour, the contingent nature of interaction and the
multiple functions of language if none of these themes are used analytically to make sense of the data?
Third, under the header ‘Method’ we find a discussion of the chosen technique of data collection: a
structured interview. This, in its place, is an appropriate technique. However, Sage presents this choice
as if it somehow guaranteed the validity and reliability of the results, which naturally it does not. Citing
Sellitz et al (1964) in support, she states: “Even more important for reliability… was the need to follow
standardized protocol for their delivery”. Insisting that interviewers present questions in an inflexible
order and stick to the exact wording of a pre-formulated question, in no way ensures the reliability or
validity of a qualitative study, although it might make cross-interview comparisons more
straightforward. In fact, such a structured approach can hinder validity, since it leaves no room for the
kinds of qualifications, embellishments, illustrations and clarifications that routinely occur in interview
settings.
Finally, if Sage really believes that the “structured design” can “give the procedure validity and
reliability” then one wonders why she endorses Silverman’s (2003) observation concerning the “need
to go beyond my questions in various unforeseen ways so as to obtain the sort of answers I wanted”.
This seems particularly important given the stated aim of discovering what the research is about
through the process of doing it. In part this confusion over reliability and validity is attributable to a
curiously behaviouristic notion of the need to “achieve equivalence of stimulus conditions to prevent
bias”. In fact, an interview question is poorly understood as a ‘stimulus’. One cannot ensure, for
example, that a proposition is understood in the same way by different people simply by repeating the
words in the same order. This applies especially when one is dealing with deeply ambiguous questions
such as “Do you see your stammer as an issue for life?” Paul, for example, quite legitimately
interpreted this as meaning ‘an issue that will be with me for life’: “My stammer is part of me - and I
291