Research dynamics: a PhD case study

Rebecca TiptonUniversity of Salford 27 June 2011

‘Synchronicity’ and the problem of originalityAn anecdote about George Friedrich Handel:

“Someone accused him of stealing an idea from another composer and he shrugged and said, ‘Yes, but what did he do with it?’”

Anecdote told by a character in a novel byRobertson Davies 1989, The Lyre of Orpheus,

p.212, cited by Dunleavy (2003: 40).

Aims

To provide insights into the dynamics of fieldwork

research in Interpreting Studies with an emphasis

on Public Service Interpreting

Case study approach that draws on my PhD study

Overview• Brief description of thesis• Insider / outsider doctrine and its impact on

research design• Ethical issues in research - The ethical researcher- Ethics approval processes • Data collection (theory and practice)- Data status- Gaining access to the field- Focus groups, interviews and questionnaires

Focus of PhD study• Sociology of the workplace• Emphasis on (re)-socialisation in the interpreter-

mediated workplace• Context: Social Services (esp. social work contexts)• Focus of study: investigation of intra- and inter-

professional relationships (intersubjective understandings of workplace ‘other’) through the lens of the structure/agency debate in sociology and social theory

• Key assumption: Neither social workers nor interpreters constitute homogenous occupational groups

• Approach draws on: constructivism / theories of perception

Other salient aspects

•Interdisciplinary approach•Theoretical and empirical•Specific political context (informs CDA

approach to data analysis)•Interventionist aims (the ‘so what’

question)

Epistemological considerations‘Reflexive interpretivism’ = overarching

methodology(drawing on the work of Alvesson and Sköldberg)

Designed to:- promote polyvocality;- take account of change over time;- incorporate a critical dimension;- take due account of insider / outsider status (two

types: practitioner-researcher / interdisciplinary focus);

- promote transparency (associated issues of validity) and Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology programme.

Insiders / outsiders

Merton (1972)

- The ‘egocentric predicament’

Bahadir (2004)

‘cultural, social and professional identities are multiple and subject to hybridization’

Key issues

•High degree of abstraction in research questions

•Can these be investigated empirically?•How to marry theoretical and empirical

approaches in ways that meet the interventionist aims of the thesis?

•What approach to take: inductive / deductive…?

Research design

- Inductive

- Deductive

- Abductive

Abductive approachesAbduction/Interpretivism acknowledges thathuman behaviour depends on how individualsinterpret the conditions in which they findthemselves and accepts that it is essential to havea description of the social world on its own terms.It is the task of the social scientist to discover anddescribe this world from an 'insider' view and notimpose an 'outsider' view.Source: http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/~dwa/Methods.html

“A lot of what happens in the real world happensout of sight of the sociologist – many actual eventsnever becoming empirical events for her. Andwhen things do happen within her sight, there isno guarantee at all of access to the thoughts of thecharacters involved” (original emphasis).

Stones (1996: 151)

Staged approach to data collection•Focus groups (to help formulate questions

for final interviews in social service contexts)

•Questionnaires (to help formulate questions to put to interpreters)

•One-to-one interviews (with interpreters and social service providers)

…at least that was the plan

Ethical issues

- The ethical researcher

- What makes an ethical researcher? Is a good researcher an ethical researcher?

- The ethics approval process

Ethics approval

Internal vs external approval

Guiding principles:

Kvale’s (1996) seven-stage guide to ethicalresearch:

themes, design, interview situation, transcription, analysis, verification and reporting .

Accessing the field and data collection

- Recruiting participants- Sample size- Running a focus group- Administering questionnaires- Conducting one-to-one interviews

Focus group data: the messy reality of talk‘There is a lot of advocacy on behalf of the service user and a couple of words, and sowhat I can do is observe their response, their attitude of the service user to see if the isthe same as the interpreter’s. This is how I do it for that. If I’m not sure, I will ask them‘could you repeat the same question to the service user’ and I want to know the typicalanswer. And the interpreter obviously well this is what she means, you know I ask herthe same question, can ask a different question and things like that. And I say no, itdoesn’t matter I can observe whether she is answering the same question and theinterpreter seems like sometimes ‘oh God you don’t understand what I am asking’ so itseems like putting the blame on the interpreter but I say no, no, no it’s not your fault,absolutely not your fault’…because I understand the situation it is sometimes difficult totranslate to different parties. So ‘don’t worry about it and I can observe so take moreease’

One-to-one interviews: how to encourage an interviewee to see their work as multilayered?This led to various strategies by the researcher toelicit specific examples and reflection of a moregeneral nature by posing the same question fromdifferent angles (e.g. II4: 13-18; 34-36; 72-79),strategies that were broadly unsuccessful. Forinstance, attention is drawn to a stock response ofthe respondent of ‘just be professional’.

Ethical presentation of data

51 S2: Yes, I agree with [previous speaker – name removed]. For the Initial Assessment I still insist on using an interpreter, even if the SU can speak reasonable English. But in the review or meetings or the rest of it, if I think the SU can speak to us understand a little bit so they don’t need an interpreter..

Transcript narratives: making sense / keeping track of themes

Researcher performance 1

Researcher performance 2

In the interview with S1, a number of thequestions posed by the researcher related toaspects that fell beyond the realm of the

SP’sexperience and as a result led to speculation

andhypothesising (S1: 80, 109) and so this is an

areafor further work.

Constructed worlds: how CA techniques can help investigate interview ‘truths’

Thank you for listening

Any questions?

R.Tipton@Salford.ac.uk

ReferencesAlvesson, Mats and Sköldberg, Kaj (2000) Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for QualitativeResearch. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage.Bahadir, Sebnem (2004) ‘Moving In-Between: The Interpreter as Ethnographer and the

InterpretingResearcher as Anthropologist’, Meta, Vol 49(4), pp. 805-821Bourdieu, Pierre and Wacquant, Loïc (1992) An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology.

Cambridge: PolityPress. Dunleavy, Patrick (2003) Authoring a PhD: How to plan, draft, write and finish a doctoral

thesis or dissertation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kvale, Steiner (1996) InterViews: An Introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing.

ThousandOaks California, Sage. Merton, R.K. (1972) ‘Insiders and Outsiders: A chapter in the sociology of knowledge’.

AmericanJournal of Sociology, Vol 78 (1): 9-47.Stones, Rob (1996) Sociological Reasoning: Towards a Post-Modern Sociology. London:

Macmillan.