In class today, we discussed the idea of research and it’s inherent in/objectivity. Someone brought up the idea of an interviewee bending his/her “story” to accommodate the interviewer.
“That’s not the way people work,” was the response. Maybe, but maybe in certain situations they do censor self. Maybe the story is just a bit different. Maybe one aspect is left untold. I have a difficult time believing that all language is value-free or universal especially in the arena of research. Every researcher has a motive, something to find out, otherwise there wouldn’t be anything to research. The questions would not be there to ask.
I mean, when I say "Horse" what do you think of?
Michel Foucault in his essay, “The Discourse on Language,” writes of prohibition in discourse communities. “We know perfectly well that we are not free to say just anything, that we cannot speak simply of anything, when we like or where we like; not just anyone, finally, may speak of just anything.”
There are power struggles in discourse. What should be revealed and what should be hidden in any conversation? How will I, the researcher or the human-subject, interpret your symbols of communication?
“Whose theory, whose language, whose interpretation, and whose narrative voice would prevail?”
Language is subjective. Language is interpretive. Most things are, in fact, up for grabs.
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I don't know how common it is, but I do know that there are human subjects researchers who have had the problem of interviewees shading their responses to please, and if you think about it, that is a natural response for a participant who "just wants to help," one who doesn't realizes that shading responses ultimately is no help at all to the researcher.
In your research methods class, you may have heard the term "triangulation." Researchers use this as a mark of "validity": a research project must not depend on only one method of input. A common mix would be to not only do interviews, but to also have a larger scale survey and field observations. In my blog project I triangulated by having a four-month window of posts for analysis (the primary method), interviews with the case studies, and a survey open to the complete blog cluster, including less active "readers."
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