(1999) seven principles for interpretive research in IS were also used to ensure checks and balances in the pursuit of quality assurance. Derived from hermeneutics, phenomenology and anthropology, the seven principles are a response to concerns about quality in interpretive field research, and Klein and Myers (1999) applied them to review three published studies. The authors see them as improving the “plausibility and cogency” of interpretive studies (Klein and Myers, 1999, p.79). These include:
1. The Fundamental Principle of the Hermeneutic Circle
This principle suggests that all human understanding is achieved by iterating between consideration of the interdependent meaning of parts and the whole that they form. This principle of human understanding is fundamental to all other principles and was the cornerstone of this interpretive study, which required the researcher to engage in a recursive inductive exercise to understand the parts that constituted the whole picture. The inductive study provided elements to understand the parts: researchers, particular Kenyan contexts, their research needs and priorities which informed the whole – contextual framework of factors that affected the diffusion and adoption of ICT for research communication.
To capture the scenario holistically, the researcher interviewed researchers in both national and international research institutions; senior government officials engaged in planning and decision-making processes that affected researchers and how they do their business; and information professionals and science editors that
worked along with researchers to manage the content or outputs of the research endeavour.
2. The Principle of contextualisation
This one requires the researcher to critically reflect on the social and historical background of the research setting, so that the intended audience can see how the current situation under investigation has emerged. Being a public servant and a Kenyan, and having interacted with some of the institutions in her work programme as a programme officer and also during a previous research study, the researcher already had an understanding of the institutional background against which the study was undertaken. Contextualisation was also achieved through analysing the data from individual research participants into specific codes, informed by the participants’ experience in their individual organisations.
3. The Principle of interaction between the researcher and the subjects
Here, the researcher is to critically reflect on how the research materials (or “data”) were socially constructed through the interaction between the researcher(s) and participants. In this case, the researcher was aware her interaction with participants could encourage sharing or withholding of information owing to her position as a government officer in the Ministry of the Office of the President, and in a department that was known for rationalisation of government functions and retrenchment. Indeed, this caused some senior government officers and researchers to demand the researcher produced a letter from her employer indicating that she was really an officer on official study leave, authorised to undertake the specific research. It was only when reassured of the researcher’s identity and that her research was purely for academic purposes, not some other agenda, that some participants felt free to share information, despite the valid research permit from the authorised ministry.
On the other hand, some participants saw the researcher’s connection with the Office of the President as an opportunity to tell the government what it could do to enhance strategic ICT-enabled research communication. Also, because the researcher was a civil servant, not affiliated to the research institutions, many researchers, science editors and librarians felt able to comment freely on the
institutional leadership or other limitations that have hampered widespread adoption of ICT for research communication.
4. The Principle of Abstraction and Generalisation
The researcher is required to relate the idiographic details revealed by the data interpretation, through the application of principles one and two, to theoretical, general concepts that describe the nature of human understanding and social action. Guided by DOI, Hofstede’s cultural perspectives and gaps identified from the literature, the researcher led participants to share their experience of ICT adoption and use in their institutions and socio-cultural milieu in an attempt to achieve a satisfactory theoretical generalisation (Walsham, 1995). The researcher also took care to incorporate emerging, unique nuances not reflected by the theoretical framework. The intrinsic and iterative nature of inductive thinking, coding procedure and analytical memo writing that is the hallmark of interpretive research, led the researcher to the conceptual understanding of the problem, which could be extended to other settings.
5. The Principle of Dialogical Reasoning
This requires the researcher to be sensitive to possible contradictions between the theoretical preconceptions guiding the research design and actual findings (“the story which the data tell”) with subsequent cycles of revision. Hence the researcher forgot the preliminary theoretical framework and immersed herself and interacted with the data from the interview transcripts for possible theoretical insights – points of convergence and divergence from extant theories and literature, as she sought explanations of the emerging patterns from data. This helped minimise prejudices owing to the subjective nature of interpretive study and instead the researcher remained able to identify and incorporate new insights emerging from evidence.
6. The Principle of Multiple Interpretations
It requires the researcher to be sensitive to possible differences in interpretations among the participants, which are typically expressed in multiple narratives or stories of the same sequence of events under study. It is similar to multiple witness accounts, where all tell it as they saw it. During the fieldwork, the
researcher formally interviewed 46 participants, together with an unplanned focus group of 8 in one government ministry, making the total number of interviewees 56. The researcher also interacted and spoke with many others and reviewed documents (reports, brochures, policy documents, strategic plans, other studies, newspapers and institutional websites). These sources at times gave conflicting accounts of some incidents which the researcher turned into opportunities for further interviewing and probing, thus, leading to rich and different perspectives of same issue. This led to deeper understanding of the differing perceptions about ICT-enabled research communications which enabled the researcher to make informed recommendations for policy considerations.
7. The Principle of Suspicion
It demands that researchers be sensitive to possible “biases” and systematic “distortions” in the narratives collected from the participants (Klein and Myers, 1999, p.72). This research targeted researchers, senior government officials, librarians and science editors, whom the researcher felt would give complementary information on factors affecting the adoption of ICT for research communication from their own experience and perspectives. The researcher approached them, especially government officials and researchers, with a lot of scepticism about whether they would be willing to share government information, because the majority of them were vetted officers. The researcher also feared they might tell her what they felt she wanted to or should hear, not the real picture on the ground. This awareness made her alert enough to look for nuances of possible distortions and biases. However, the researcher was amazed with the honesty and transparency of the majority of interviewees, especially after they discovered she was a government officer and her research was purely academic. They not only gave frank accounts of what was happening in their institutions but also how they saw their contribution and failure in the whole process of ICT-mediated research communication. It is the researcher’s belief that she was able to differentiate the real picture from exaggeration.