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Appendix 3: Papers Presented by Workshop Participants
Qualitative Research...What’s in a Name?
Julia AdamsYale UniversityThe Oxford English Dictionary (OED) pretty quickly dispatches the category of “quantity” – not enoughof a challenge, I guess – but struggles mightily with the definition of “quality.” Let’s hope we have aneasier time of it at NSF! The compound term “qualitative analysis,” however, is not quite as hard, sinceit emerges, from the OED’s rambling historical style, that things became definitionally tidier when“qualitative” was linked to what is now its established “quantitative” flip side. Privileging chemistry, theOED goes on to define qualitative analysis as “identification of the constituents (e.g. elements and ions) present in a substance.” (And yes, I know I’m beginning with the lexical, in strict defiance of our confer-ence instructions! But bear with me...)Elements, then. In chemistry elements may be one thing – but in the sociological space, the “constitu-ents” with which we researchers operate are first of all signs. A “sign,” you will remember, was thestructural linguist Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1965) name for a signified (a concept) and the signifier (asound pattern, bit of writing, gesture, etc.) that evokes it. But anything can function as a signifier, and become a bearer of meaning, and sociological researchers engage with a variety of substances that doso: bodies; various social practices; natural objects, etc. All sociologists, whether quantitative or qualita-tive, begin by deploying one body of signs (our social science words/concepts and the theories that are built out of them) that are embedded in and shape our disciplinary practices, and use them to interpret asecond level of significant social practice, which sociologists disengage from the analytical material or data under examination. These data are not just “given,” of course: our research practices help create it.So it is the job of the qualitative analyst to confront those data, and to use her or his social science signs – which we often call “conceptual lenses” – to identify the qualitatively separable elements that emergefrom those data. Those elements will themselves be organized in significant patterns – whether or not theresearcher can see them – in a way that chemical substances are not. For sociologists are studying hu-man actors, who are nothing if not signifying animals, and the modes of action in which they engage. Note that the OED definition highlights what would be the qualitative dimension present in
all
socialscience research; I hope this will help keep us from falling into easy, dismissive polarities. The qualita-tive dimensions I am referring to involve: (1) marking the relevant distinctions among concepts thatenable precise descriptions and theories; (2) disengaging the elements that emerge from our observationsof the data we’ve assembled and produced. There are two epistemological levels here, and I think thatkeeping both in mind is important to our collective project because both bear on what makes for goodresearch. If we skip (2), we’ll become solipsistic idealists, conceiving the world as the projection of our paradigms; if we ignore (1) – for example in the fantasy of “grounded theory” – we’ll fall into rank empiricism. Emphasizing both dimensions as empirically interrelated but analytically distinguishablemoments of social research may not offer any guarantees, but it’s a start.Both levels are certainly present in what we call “quantitative research” as well, although they may be relatively underdeveloped depending on how much of the researchers’ energies are directed towardenumerating or counting what turns up. As quantitative methods have gotten fancier and have absorbeda higher proportion of practitioners’ attention, that necessary, even unavoidable qualitative moment inquantitative social research has been unduly neglected – witness the sheer number of articles submit-
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