Manejo de modelos y datos

Having constructed an argument that attempts to provide a transparent approach to the discourse analytical techniques used in this study, attention is now turned to deconstructing the status of this ‘truth’ (Burman & Parker, 1993). What follows is a presentation of the various competing and contradictory claims to truth about the maintenance of research rigour.

Belonging to a paradigm other than that of post-structural approaches, the positivist trinity of validity, generalisability and reliability is dismissed as inappropriate criteria for this study (Janesick, 2000). What have become traditional and general criteria for qualitative approaches are fittingness, credibility and auditability (Beanland, Schneider, LoBiondo-Wood, & Haber, 2000). Fittingness concerns the use of literature to support the concepts emerging from the data and is a less relevant criterion for a post-structural approach, given the literature itself is treated as data. However, fittingness can be applied to whether the chosen methodology was a ‘good fit’ with the aims of the study.

Part One Part Two: Creating an Interstice Part Three: Practising in the Interstice 1. Introduction 4. Political discourses outside nursing

• Social welfarism • Neoliberalism • The Third Way

8. Discourses of ownership • Medical privilege

2. Theory 5. Political discourses inside nursing • Discourses of representation • Nurses and nursing

9. Discourses of ownership • Prescriptive privileges

3. Methodology 6. Constructing the Competent Nurse • Discourse of regulation • Discourse of education

10. New positionings

“the possibility of new and potentially more liberating modes of subjectivity” (Allen, 2000, p. 125)

7. Constructing the most expert nurse • Convergence of discourses on the

Taskforce

Credibility concerns member checking of the analysis, and it too is problematic in post-structural terms given its purpose is to establish the ‘truth’ of the researcher’s interpretation. Auditability, however, refers to the provision of sufficient detail for a reader to understand the analytical techniques used to produce the final text. These processes have been described in the previous sections, and inevitably there will be different views about whether a sufficient audit trail was provided, or if perhaps there was too much detail. Including formative evidence such as discourse sketches and project journal excerpts has served as sign posts to the decision trail used, but the detail is constrained by space.

There is also a body of literature that argues these qualitative criteria rearticulate those of quantitative research (Guba & Lincoln, 2000) and a way of assessing and maintaining rigour in postmodern/post-structural research is suggested by Richardson (2000). Eluding the positivist drive to ‘validate’ findings via methods of triangulation, Richardson proposes that ‘validity’ can be deconstructed using the imagery of crystallisation. The amorphous nature of the crystal as a prism reflecting and refracting light allows data to be viewed as though it were itself, a crystal. Turning the crystal reveals the multiple layers of meaning, helping to uncover hidden assumptions and perceived ‘truths’. Considered in this light, validity is not something to be defined in advance “but must be attended to at all times as the study shifts and turns” (Freeman, deMarrais, Preissle, Roulston, & St Pierre, 2007, p. 29). Rather than being a question of method, Rolfe (2006, p. 13) argues that validity or trustworthiness “is concerned not with whether the data have been rigorously collected but with their interpretation and presentation”.

Pertinent to the presentation of a discourse analytical methodology are some of the common shortcomings identified by writers such as Antaki, Billig, Edwards and Potter (2003). ‘Under-analysis through summary’ refers to an over-emphasis on presenting the data and then summarising the data without actually doing anything with it (Antaki et al., 2003; Burman & Parker, 1993). Similarly, ‘under- analysis through over-quotation’ is when quotes are allowed to stand for themselves without being analysed, or they are used as proof of the author’s argument (Antaki et al., 2003). Stevenson (2004) suggests that these problems occur when a researcher is uncertain of how to approach the text. These were

problematic issues at the beginning of this project, but the development of in-text and out-of-text tools created certainty in the approach I eventually took.

Antaki et al. (2003) also warn against an author ‘taking sides’ in an analysis. Not simply a case of declaring I did or did not do this, my own position as a nurse is evident throughout the thesis. Parker and Burman (1993, p. 162) suggest those who demand neutrality are “subscribing to a fantasy of non-involvement in the material [in ways] not dissimilar from the traditional methodologies we turned to discourse analysis to escape”. It is important also to emphasise that the purpose of a post-structural approach has been to champion subordinate discourses of nursing (Agger, 1994; Parker & Burman, 1993), marginalised in the wider medical discourse of health care.

What discourse analysis is not is comprehensively explored by Erica Burman (1991) and Parker and Burman (1993). What these authors also point out is that discourse analysis must make a worthwhile political contribution. Neither politics by itself nor devoid of politics, this thesis has set out to answer the all-important question of how an analysis can be used to clarify the consequences of particular discursive frameworks in the construction of a nurse practitioner identity.

Summary

The purpose of this chapter has been to detail the approach to discourse analysis I have used in this study. Guided by a plural approach of both textuality and discursivity, the techniques of analysis involved a micro-focus on text as well as a macro-focus on discourse. The selection of in-text tools informed by Riggins (1997) and out-of-text tools informed by Foucault (1977c, 1983b) served as the methodological tool-kit for determining which particular discourses were at play, as well as the power/knowledge implications created by a given discursive framework.

In the hope of enhancing transparency, later sections of the chapter have focused on a reflexive account of how I have used the tools described, as well as my own subject position as nurse, student and author/researcher arising from the process of constructing the text of the research report. How I am constructed as an ethical

subject is determined by the extent to which I conform to particular activities established for the conduct of ethical and convincing research. Above all, this chapter reiterates that the interpretation offered in this thesis is inevitably partial and subject to the discourses that have constructed its author. In the next part of the thesis, Creating an Interstice, and using the tools described, I trace the political discourses that have shaped how nursing has been represented and the space created from where the most expert nurse, the nurse practitioner, could emerge.