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Samenvatting naturalistic inquiry
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Samenvatting boek: Doing qualitative research, the craft of naturalistic inquiry
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Qualitative research methods
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Doing Qualitative Research Joost Beuving - CIS Qualitative
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Qualitative methodsBook reference:
Beuving, J., & De Vries, G. (2015). Doing qualitative research: the craft of naturalistic
inquiry. Amsterdam University Press.
Introduction
Your perspective causes you to only see a part of all the things that are going on.
In order to see what’s going on we also need to know a bit of the historical processes (going
on).
Naturalistic inquiry: An initial definition of naturalistic inquiry is studying people in
everyday circumstances by ordinary means. All knowledge can be gathered empirical from
real life and naturally occurring phenomena. Naturalistic inquiry aims to bridge the gulf that
has emerged between social scientists on the one hand and the rest of humanity on the other
hand.
- It s an unobtrusive strategy. It cannot – nor does it want to – dissect or
manipulate a situation like experimenters can.
Because of its non-standardized nature, naturalistic inquiry cannot be learned by reading
books or by following specialized classes. It is a craft
Foreshadowed problem = a problem, issue, area of concern that you want to fucus your
research on. A concern of something happening in society, making your research
relevant. Broad, anticipated research questions to be reformulated during the data collection.
A relatively open question that points at a particular problematic.
Saturation = you come to a point in research where new questions do not add additional
understanding in your in research. It is not necessary to pose new RQ’s. At a certain moment
in your research, you have gathered enough data that you see certain phenomena reappear
again and again. There is nothing new coming up in your results. Then you can start drawing
conclusions.
Arc (of naturalistic inquiry) Empirical cycle = the whole process of systematically
gathering knowledge and the way you do your research. It is an arc, because with an arc you
end up at a difference place than where you started.
- The arc symbolizes the distance the
naturalistic inquirer travels.
- The arc symbolizes that the
naturalistic inquirer returns to her
initial problem, but not at the same
spot upon which she started. She
has carried the problem further and
she has provided new, deeper
insight into it.
- Typically, a naturalistic researcher
regularly shuttles back and forth
along the arc.
,As you proceed, questions tend to become more focused up to a point that you reach
saturation: new questions do not result in additional understanding. The process itself is done
by making observations of everyday-life social practices; by carrying out qualitative
interviews based on asking open or semi-structured questions; by collecting and studying
available texts, images and things people produce; by exploring networks (of kinship,
friendship, work, sex); by systematically comparing various interpretations and explanations;
and last but not least by writing a text that ties everything together and solves the initial
problem in a convincing way – the most convincing way, given the materials gathered.
The key difference between participating in society naturally and researching society
naturalistically is that, while participating, the naturalistic inquirer makes a sustained effort to
reflexively understand both society and her own participation in it.
Reflexive understanding = the examination of one’s own beliefs, judgments and practices
during the research process and how these may have influenced the research.
Iterative = Iterative means that you go back and forth in the steps of doing research. Iteration
means incorporating what you learn at one point in the research process into the remainder of
the research. The naturalistic researcher shuttles back and forth from description, via
interpretation to explanation, gradually moving forward along the arc of naturalistic inquiry.
Qualitative research = qualitative research in social science aims to describe, interpret, and
explain social reality through the medium of language (as opposed to quantitative research,
which aims to do so through the medium of mathematics). Qualitative research thus is a
generic approach in social research covering ethnography, anthropological fieldwork,
qualitative sociology, organizational fieldwork, interpretive research, oral history, narrative
research, and so on. Naturalistic research is qualitative research by ordinary means into
everyday situations, aiming to disturb these situations as little as possible.
Naturalistic research = the activity and methods of doing research with naturalistic inquiry.
Grand theories = abstract theory (theory that were already developed about the construct of
society) a concept all theories that points to all theories on a macro level about everything in
society (for example, feminism).
Chapter 1: On naturalistic inquiry: Key issues and practices
Heider experiment: many people come up with different extensive stories with very abstract
materials, while almost nothing happens
- Know how the Heider-Simmel experiment works as a participant
- Understand how the Heider-Simmel experiment sheds light on human behavior
The classic animation experiment by Heider and Simmel (1944) revealed that humans have a
strong tendency to impose narrative even on displays showing interactions between simple
geometric shapes.
Key concepts:
Interpretivism -> sees society as emerging from the actions and perspectives of its members.
Subjective, how you interpret your findings. Trying to understand human behavior.
,It adopts the view that social order follows from how humans understand their situation and
act upon that. Understanding is a prerequisite to explaining. In order to explain human
actions, we first have to understand what those actions mean to those who perform them.
(Interpretivism and naturalistic inquiry) Rather than controlling the research situation, they
seek to study social life as it presents itself to the members of a society under ordinary,
everyday circumstances. In a naturalistic design, the researcher responds to whatever pieces
of information the research situation presents to her. To study that emergent aspect of society,
practitioners of naturalistic inquiry usually make a distinction in their work between
describing, understanding, and explaining what people say and do, subsequently showing how
in daily practice acts and meanings continuously interact.
Positivism -> empirical. It is the epistemological assumption that the natural world and the
social world are ordered by similar principles. It must further be considered that a positivist
research situation engenders a set of expectations about how to behave. It looks for universal
laws in society. Researcher seeks to control the situation -> artificial situation! (Highly
standardized)
The term ‘control’ has a specific meaning here: it refers to reducing and standardizing the
properties under study – for example by devising scales – in order to make them suited for
statistical analysis and modelling.
In preparation of the research, the researcher formulates fore shadow problems.
For shadow problems: issues that she expects to be important in the studied society
In the course of the research, these issues come more clearly into focus, enabling the
researcher to gradually conceptualize more precisely the nature of the properties under
study.
In a sense, whereas a concern for standardization drives positivist methods, a readiness for
constant adjustment is what characterizes naturalistic methods.
The choice of research participants presents another distinction between positivist and
naturalistic designs. In naturalistic inquiry, specifying criteria for the sampling of participants
is expected to be part of the research process, rather than to precede the data collection. In
naturalistic inquiry, identifying informants usually takes the form of what is known as
‘theoretical sampling’. This means that you first look for instances or situations that are
relevant for the topic under study and only then select individual informants based on their
relation with that instance or situation. Thus, in a naturalistic design, the researcher responds
to whatever pieces of information the research situation presents to her. The management of a
naturalistic inquiry rather revolves around a mental preparedness.
Verstehen -> create a deep understanding. Society is best understood in the mental categories
of its members.
Quantitative methods can contribute to Verstehen, and their usage is not in fundamental
contradiction with the unobtrusive ambition of naturalistic inquiry. They can have their place
in a naturalistic research design as long as deploying them does not contradict the ambition of
naturalistic inquiry: to study a society as it presents itself to its members in everyday life.
, Emic -> Emic is the meaning of things (acts, behavior, human products) to the people
involved, the insiders
Etic -> tic is the meaning or significance attributed by those studying them, the social
scientists, the outsiders
‘If people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences’ -> People act
according to the meaning they impute in situations.
Social facts: The consequences of definitions of situations of older generations appear to
younger generations as established institutions
Today’s definitions of situations are tomorrow’s social facts, acts and meaning
continuously interact, therefore, we live in a second-hand world.
Second-hand world -> a world that has been shaped and that has crystallized before we were
born.
In naturalistic inquiry, attention is focused less on individuals and their properties and more
on persons and their situation. Looked at from a macroscopic viewpoint, the term ‘situation’
refers to the position that a person occupies in a society. Equally important, however, are the
microscopic considerations: a person’s social network, past experiences, their propensities.
Key in naturalistic inquiry is that the situation in which a person finds herself is thought to
depend on her understandings of that situation.
The findings collected in a naturalistic inquiry are usually presented to the reader as a
narrative, as a story about society. Therefore, naturalistic inquirers are frequently accused of
subjectivism that bears more resemblance to fiction than to (social) science. Thus, violating
the principles of validity and reliability.
Validity -> accuracy of the findings (does it measure what it is supposed to measure?)
Reliability -> consistency of the findings (are the results the same when repeated?)
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