LAS ISLAS CANARIAS Y LA SITUACIÓN DEL HABLA CANARIA

Methods of Data Collection |

Reflexivity

3.2 Audiencing and the principal approach

3.2.1 Audiencing

Harris, Wilson and Ateljevic (2007) refer to audiencing as ‘a method for how we write and position our voices’. They argue that audiencing depicts how we speak and translate research into various forms to engage with various groups and individuals.

Hall (2004:142) argues that academic writing in the third person conveys an

‘impression of objectivity and scientific rationality which is almost the antithesis of the realisations of reflexive modernity’. He further argues that if an article was submitted written in the first person, to most academic tourism journals, the likelihood is that it would not be accepted, or that major modifications would have to occur before it was accepted. Because of the conservative nature of a thesis it is usually expected that it is written in the academic style of the third person. However, the researcher feels that this does not sufficiently convey the sensitivity and reflexivity of the qualitative research process in particular. To fully include the researcher in the

research process, the method of data collection section of the methodology will tell the researcher’s story, and will be written in the first person.

All research is influenced by the philosophical position of the researchers, the nature of their projects and the intended audience. The research philosophy underpinning the design of a study therefore impacts on both the way data are gathered and how they are analysed to create knowledge. In any research project it is imperative that the method chosen is appropriate for the goal of the study rather than choosing a method because it is convenient or familiar (Jordan & Gibson, 2004). The goal of this study was to gain an in-depth understanding of the nature of the relationship between the host and their commercial home. To achieve this it was determined that empirical research designed from a qualitative perspective would be best. Such an approach to data collection would enable the gathering of rich descriptive accounts of hosts’

stories by providing them with an opportunity to respond to open-ended questions.

This study was therefore considered within an interpretive paradigm, particularly corresponding to a phenomenological research approach (Henderson, 1991). In an interpretive paradigm, ‘the central endeavour is… to understand the subjective world of human experience’ (Cohen & Manion, 1994:36). This research is concerned with theorising experiences of the host-home relationship, and in doing so, endeavouring

‘to get inside the heads and hearts of the hosts’, therefore research designed within an interpretive paradigm would enable this to be done effectively. Data was collected using photographs and in-depth, one-to-one, face-to-face interviews in which hosts were encouraged to talk about their feelings and experiences, within a semi-structured framework. In doing so topics were explored that may not have been thought about when designing the research but which the hosts themselves identified as being significant. Thus, instead of imposing preconceived notions of the host-home relationship, the semi-structured questions acted as a guide to stimulate discussion about the hosts’ actual experiences of being a commercial home host.

3.3.2 The Principal Approach

Any research project can be categorised using three main classifications. These have been extensively discussed in numerous textbooks (e.g. de Vaus, 2001; Malhotra,

2000; Selltiz et al., 1964) and need not be repeated in detail here. In essence, these categories are: (i) the type of research, i.e. exploratory, descriptive or explanatory/causal; (ii) the type of data used in the analysis, namely qualitative (words) or quantitative (numbers); and (iii) the direction of reasoning, that is, deductive (where a general explanation is applied to a specific case) or inductive (a general understanding is built from a number of cases).

Traditionally, qualitative research has been viewed somewhat simplistically as a set of different research methods that have certain features in common. In this respect, qualitative methods are employed to collect data about activities, events, occurrences and behaviours and to seek an understanding of actions, problems and processes in their social context (Phillimore & Goodson, 2004). Those who viewed qualitative research merely as a set of methods have been accused of having an oversimplified view that fails to acknowledge the multiplicity of forms and functions of qualitative research (Silverman, 2000). In recent times literature concerned with the nature of social research is more likely to refer to qualitative research as ‘a distinctive research strategy simply than a set of methods’ (Bryman, 2001:264). As a strategy, qualitative inquiry can generate theory out of research, ‘should place emphasis on understanding the world from the perspective of its participants, and should view social life as being the result of interaction and interpretations’ (Phillimore & Goodson, 2004:4).

3.2.3 Paradigm

The researcher’s actions are underpinned by a basic set of beliefs that define their worldview, known as a paradigm, which has three main elements: ontology, epistemology and methodology (Phillimore & Goodson, 2004). Knowledge production relies heavily upon the ontology of the researcher – their definition of reality. Their epistemology – what they count as knowledge – depends on what they want knowledge about, while the kind of knowledge they seek determines their methodology (Jones, 1993). Within this, methods are merely tools which take on meaning according to the methodology within which they are employed (Silverman, 2000). The researcher can identify their inquiry paradigm by answering three interconnected questions, Table 4:

Table 4. Questions asked to identify inquiry paradigm

The ontological question What is the form and nature of reality and what can be known about reality?

The epistemological question What is the nature of the relationship between the researcher and what can be known?

The methodological question How can the researcher find out what he/she believes can be known?

(Phillimore & Goodson, 2004:35)

There are four major paradigms which structure research: positivist, post-positivist, critical and interpretive. Each provides flexible guidelines that connect theory and method and help determine the structure and shape of any inquiry. Guba and Lincoln (1998) give an example of a positivist paradigm where the researcher believes only in the existence of the ‘real’ (observable) world. Given that a ‘real’ reality is assumed, the relationship between the researcher and reality can only be one of objective detachment or value freedom to determine how things really work (Phillimore &

Goodson, 2004:35). Feminists in particular have argued that the ideal objectivity portrayed by positivists is actually a generalisation from the subjectivity of a small group of people. Instead they argue that values, politics and knowledge are interconnected rather than hierarchical, and thus there is a need to explore how knower’s values and politics impact upon the ways in which they undertake research and create knowledge (Alcoff and Potter, 1993).

Researchers influenced by interpretivist paradigms, turn the conventional positivist approach to knowing on its head. Rather than arguing that only the qualified researcher is capable of knowledge production, they consider that the complex world

can be understood only from the point of view of those who operate in it (Phillimore

& Goodson, 2004). Thus, research is undertaken in a collaborative fashion, with the researcher and the researched viewed as partners in the production of knowledge and the interaction between them being a key site for both research and understanding (Schwandt, 1998). Accordingly, this research is influenced by interpretivist inquiry paradigms.

Unless we can take account of the researcher’s inquiry paradigm and how it influences the choices they make throughout the research process, then we are unable to explore how the values associated with their worldview may have impacted on judgements about issues ranging from selection of research topic to deciding what conclusions to reach.

(Phillimore & Goodson, 2004:36)

Hollinshead (2004) argues that paradigms are indeed highly distinguishable by the under-suspected cognitive interests which propel them (Firestone, 1990). Under contructivism (or constructionism, or social constructivism), the ontological thought is relativist, seeking to understand the identities of, the meanings attributed by and the experiences of different populations, against a background of competing perspectives of different populations, against a background of competing perspectives on life and the world, within the setting being investigated (Hollinshead, 2004:77).

Hollinshead (2004:72) argues that Holliday’s attempt to distinguish naturalistic frames of reference from progressive frames of reference should be regarded not as a definitive indexing of available qualitative approaches but merely as a suggestive and illustrative mapping of new options in latter-day research. Furthermore Hollinshead suggests that while naturalistic researchers tend to gravitate towards like-it-is forms of understanding which seeks to capture the assumed single reality of a specific physical or geographical place, progressivist forms of research tend to take no such supreme universalisms for granted. Consonantly, progressive qualitative researchers tend to inspect not only how the people within the specific place construct the world, but how different groups of those people differentially construct the world, and, more especially how they each differentially construct the world in various settings.

Holliday’s progressive qualitative outlooks are: critical theory, constructivism,

postmodernism and feminism. He argues (a) reality and science are socially constructed, (b) researchers are part of research setting, (c) investigation must be in self-critical, creative dialogue, (d) aim to problematise, reveal hidden realities, and initiate discussions. This research is positioned within a constructivism outlook, as the hosts’ view is looked at and interpreted as what they say as their world view.

Ontologically, qualitative interpretations are often richer or more pertinent where the researcher generates ‘open-ended’ and ‘contingent’ evocations of being and meaning, rather than yielding totalised, clean and tidy, non-complex classifications of lived reality. Epistemologically, the commonplace messiness of data and settings teaches experienced qualitative researchers not to assimilate their new ontological subjects or their ontological settings too quickly (Marcus, 1994). Almost all qualitative analyses can only ever be partial, and therefore open-ended, forms of inquiry are required;

many researchers believe they can only ever yield ‘findings’ tentatively held, and never ‘results’ firmly concluded (Hollinshead, 2004:73).

Denzin and Lincoln (2000) divide the history of social research into seven phases which they have called ‘moments of qualitative research’. They argue that the moments ‘overlap and simultaneously operate in the present’. The first moment, ‘the traditional period’, is associated with the positivist, foundational paradigm. The

‘modernist’ or ‘golden age’ and ‘blurred genres’ moments are connected to the appearance of postpositivist arguments. In the blurred genres phase, the humanities became central resources for critical, interpretative theory, and for qualitative research. The researcher became a ‘bricoleur’, learning how to borrow from many different disciplines. The blurred genres phase produced the next stage, the ‘crisis of representation’. Here researchers struggled with how to locate themselves and their subjects in reflexive texts. The ‘postmodern’ moment was defined in part by a concern for literary and rhetorical tropes and the narrative turn, a concern for storytelling. In the ‘postexperimental inquiry’ moment researchers continued to move away from foundational and quasi-foundational criteria. The ‘future’, the seventh moment, is concerned with moral discourse, with the development of sacred textualities.

3.2.4 Role of Researcher

It has been argued by Phillimore & Goodson (2004) that research should be viewed as an interactive process whereby the researcher, merely through being present to observe or question, impacts upon the responses or behaviour of the researched.

Following on from this, the perspective the researcher develops about the researched then impacts on the way in which they collect and interpret findings. Finally the whole notion of objective, value-free research has been challenged (Guba and Lincoln, 1998) with the argument that every researcher brings something different to a study: ‘different attitudes, values, perspectives, ideologies’, etc., all of which impact upon the unavoidable impact of the individual upon the research from its inception to its dissemination (Phillimore & Goodson, 2004:33). The role of the researcher and the impact on the research will be explored more fully in the Reflexivity section of this chapter.

3.2.5 Aspects of Validity and Reliability

Schutt (2001), Silverman (1993) and Yin (2003) note that the quality of any research project can principally be assessed by its reliability and its validity. Although numerous threads to these criteria have been identified, research is, in essence, reliable when it can be repeated. In contrast, the validity of research is split into (i) construct validity: are the applied methods of data collection correct? (ii) internal validity: have all variables been identified in the causal relationship? (iii) external validity: can the findings of the study be generalised beyond the immediate scope of the project? Finally, research is reliable when it can be repeated elsewhere. It is worth noting that not all types of research are concerned with all quality assessment criteria.

Specifically, descriptive research is not concerned with internal validity because no causal relationships are determined.

Researchers often seek to generalize their conclusions from the population they studied to some larger target population. The validity of generalizations of this type is necessarily uncertain, for having a representative sample of a particular population does not at all ensure that what is found will hold true in other populations.

Nonetheless, the cumulation of findings from studies based on local or otherwise

unrepresentative populations can provide important information about broader populations (Schutt, 2001).

However, as qualitative research is less concerned with reliability and validity and more with ‘footsteps in the sand’, it is more important to have a local narrative rather than a grand narrative, and emerging concepts can subsequently be tested/explored elsewhere.

The following section will explain the challenges and strategic decisions made during the data collection.