- the importance of the interrelationship between the content of what is said and the context in which it is said
- This approach brings to light key contextual issues that are sometimes ‘swept under the rug’ when reporting research results…the way in which research participants perceive the research process.
Meaning in context: is there any other kind?
(Mishler, 1979)
“knowledge is personally constructed, socially mediated, and inherently situated”
- Critical attention in research reports is often given to the first two attributes but the third, the research context, is often dismissed more quickly than we feel is prudent
- When, as is the case with two of our own studies reported below, knowledge claims are constructed largely from what is said in interviews, it seems important to have not only a descriptive account of the interview setting but also some understanding of how the participants experienced those interviews.
- one way of deriving such understandings and incorporating them into our research is to ask the participants about their involvement in the research process in a series of separate interviews conducted after the completion of the principal data-collection phase of a research study
Vignette #1: ‘study over-runs’
- We were led to believe that this was a congenial site for conducting research and that the teachers were enthusiastic participants.
- She learned that the participants in the original study were still angry about their treatment by the previous researcher.
- Not only did the participants question substantive issues drawn from their interview comments (something that member checking, had it been used, may have highlighted), but they were equally surprised by omissions in descriptions of the research process
- the second researcher learned that the original researcher often phoned the participants on weekends and evenings to go over material covered in earlier interviews – a protocol that the participants had not agreed to prior to the study and one which they found increasingly intrusive as the study progressed. As a result, the teachers noted that their responses to successive interviews became more perfunctory and routine.
- the teachers related occasions when the researcher arrived late for scheduled interviews but expected them to immediately alter their teaching schedules to ensure that the duration of the interviews would be the same as originally planned.
- the participants were surprised when the data collection expanded to include a range of documents and items that were not mentioned when they signed consent forms
- That these differences were not reported or apparently taken into account in the formulation of the knowledge claims arising from the study seems to constitute a breach of faith between the researcher, the readers of his report, and the participants in the study. Indeed, it appears that the research process did not enable – even allow – the participants’ ‘voices’ to be heard in his description of the context of the study
Vignette #2: ‘key information absent
- Two years after the study was completed, it came to light that the student teacher whose transcript excerpts were most prominent in supporting the claims about ‘becoming a teacher’ had actually failed his practicum.
- Readers were left to wonder about the author’s silence on this issue: Does this constitute a significant contextual omission from the report? What questions does it raise about the claims she made about ‘learning to teach’?
- Ignorance or the deliberate omission of such information from research reports diminishes the work of the educational research community as a whole.
- The express purpose of the meta-interviews were:
- The types of questions asked in our meta interviews included:
‘‘the critical issue is not the determination of a singular ‘truth’ but the assessment of the relative plausibility of an interpretation’’ (Mishler, 1986, p. 112)
- “In a subsequent refinement of this claim, Hammersley (1990) contrasted plausibility with credibility as the two key elements of validity”
- We are not claiming that we were able to overcome all the tensions and anxieties that our participants felt as they worked with us (which is why we deliberately selected excerpts for this paper that revealed some of those tensions) but at least the meta-interviews provided information that allayed our concerns as to potential tensions.
- The meta-interviews themselves would require meta-meta-interviews to supply information about the context of the first meta-interview.
five points we would like to conclude
- we would like to reiterate that the nature and substance of meta-interviews, while occurring in the same temporal space, are distinctly different from member-check interviews. The two should not be conflated.”
- concerning the practicality of conducting meta-interviews, we recognise the need for additional resources that they impose (independent researcher, transcription of data sets, etc.). While the degree to which meta-interviews can be incorporated into a project will depend upon budgetary constraints, alternatives such as a standard ‘‘Participant Evaluation of the Research Process’’ form, completed by all participants and submitted to the relevant ethical approval body at the researcher’s institution, could be explored. The underlying intention is to incorporate in the initial research design an opportunity for participants to provide feedback on their experience of the research process.”
- while meta-interviews breathe life into the interplay between context and content as we report our research, we are mindful that they are but one way of addressing this interplay. We acknowledge their limitations (as with any research strategy) and continue to seek additional ways of enhancing the ways in which we conduct and report our research.”
- The fourth issue has to do with the ability to enhance the credibility of one’s research. We contend that meta-interviews, by informing readers as to the circumstances of the research process, can enhance the persuasiveness of the research document,
- on an increasing basis, we hear compelling arguments for whose ‘voice’ is heard in the research document. We believe that meta-interviews bring the participants’ voices to the foreground in an informative way that has not been reported using other research strategies.